Photo: Dodge on Instagram
For this year’s Halloween, the peeps at Dodge have Frankensteined a Charger with bits and bobs from the Challenger to create a rendering.
There is, however, a bit of sense to their insanity because the Charger entered production for the 1966 model year on the B-body platform in the guise of a two-door fastback. Dodge switched to a hardtop for the 1968 model year, the second generation we all know and love thanks to the Roots-blown hero car driven by Vin Diesel in the very first Fast & Furious movie.
Instead of killing off the Charger, the Chrysler-owned subsidiary revived this nameplate in 1981 as a performance package for the Omni. Fast forward to the 1983 model year, and that’s when Dodge renamed the Omni to Charger. After that woeful abomination of a car, the Charger was reinvented in 2005 for the 2006 model year as a four-door sedan on the LX platform that morphed into the LC for the 2008 model year Challenger.
The Challenger doesn’t have a spotless history either. Dodge marketed a rebadged variant of the Mitsubishi Galant Lambda in the guise of the subcompact Colt Challenger, and later on, the Colt moniker was axed.
Fortunately for the Dodge brand, these fallacies have been forgiven a long time ago. The current-gen Charger and Challenger are wickedly impressive when fitted with the 6.2-liter Hellcat, especially the 840-horsepower Demon version of the pushrod V8. What’s even more impressive is that both of these nameplates continue to sell pretty darn well in this SUV-driven era.
Be that as it may, Dodge intends to redesign them because the LX platform is getting long in the tooth and because gas-guzzling V8s will be rendered obsolete by emission regulations. A plug-in hybrid powertrain is expected to be revealed next year, and 2022 will also see the preview of an e-AWD electric muscle car that was teased at Stellantis’ EV Day back in July 2021.
Instead of killing off the Charger, the Chrysler-owned subsidiary revived this nameplate in 1981 as a performance package for the Omni. Fast forward to the 1983 model year, and that’s when Dodge renamed the Omni to Charger. After that woeful abomination of a car, the Charger was reinvented in 2005 for the 2006 model year as a four-door sedan on the LX platform that morphed into the LC for the 2008 model year Challenger.
The Challenger doesn’t have a spotless history either. Dodge marketed a rebadged variant of the Mitsubishi Galant Lambda in the guise of the subcompact Colt Challenger, and later on, the Colt moniker was axed.
Fortunately for the Dodge brand, these fallacies have been forgiven a long time ago. The current-gen Charger and Challenger are wickedly impressive when fitted with the 6.2-liter Hellcat, especially the 840-horsepower Demon version of the pushrod V8. What’s even more impressive is that both of these nameplates continue to sell pretty darn well in this SUV-driven era.
Be that as it may, Dodge intends to redesign them because the LX platform is getting long in the tooth and because gas-guzzling V8s will be rendered obsolete by emission regulations. A plug-in hybrid powertrain is expected to be revealed next year, and 2022 will also see the preview of an e-AWD electric muscle car that was teased at Stellantis’ EV Day back in July 2021.
Google News