Short Take Road Test
In preparing this short take road test, we spent time perusing the Car and Driver archives for road tests of the original Dodge Challenger. In doing so, we came across an original road test of a 1970 model and realized that, really, Dodge’s pony car hasn’t changed much and that what we said then still very much applies today. Excerpts from that original road test follow in roman type, and our modern-day commentary is rendered in italics.
[From the November 1969 issue of Car and Driver. Download a PDF of that article here.]
Major truth: Since the first Mustang rolled out of a dealer's showroom in 1964 sales of that class of car have been as high as 13 percent of Detroit's total yearly volume—and Dodge has not enjoyed a single dollar of that business. Second major truth: It's bad enough to be late into the market place but to be late with the wrong kind of a car can be fatal (even if only crippling it is still an offense which requires all of the product planners to fall on their swords). Now let's talk about Dodge's Challenger—easily three years too late to be a smashing success but something Dodge is counting on to make a few bucks nonetheless.
To understand the Challenger you first [had] better know a little bit about Chrysler Corporation and its strategies. Chrysler doesn't do anything first. Instead, it carefully watches what everybody else in Detroit is doing and when it sees an area of abnormal market activity it leaps exactly onto that spot. Because it always leaps late—which is inevitable if it doesn't begin to prepare its entry into the market until someone else already has one—it tries to make up for being late by jumping onto said spot harder than everybody else. There is another problem, too. Sometimes when you leap late you find that by the time you hit your target everybody else has gone somewhere else.
In the flesh there's no doubt [the Challenger] is a handsome car but it also has a massive feeling which is totally unwelcome in a sporty car—a massive feeling which results from a full five inches more width than a Mustang and a need to sign up with Weight Watchers.
The modern Challenger is only about two inches wider than a Mustang, but the weight problem remains: This car is more than 300 pounds heavier than the last V-6 Mustang we tested. It looks massive from the outside, too. Parked next to other cars, the contemporary Challenger looks cartoonishly bloated, a 5/4-scale pony car for Avatar’s extraterrestrial race.
But face it, width isn't that important in a four-passenger car when there is already enough room for two people side by side. A far more important dimension is rear-seat legroom and there the Challenger has, at very best, an inconsequential half-inch advantage over the Camaro—it's uncomfortable and damn near impossible to sustain for a trip of any duration. One of the managers in Dodge's product planning section summed up the situation this way, "In the other sporty cars the rear seat is worthless about 95 percent of the time. That area in the Challenger is worthless only about 75 percent of the time."
The Challenger’s rear legroom advantage is 2.7 inches today, and although it makes the rear seat more livable than that of a 2010 Camaro, the point still stands: Who’s going to sit back there?
Chrysler passed up a splendid opportunity to make an exceptional performance car. It's simply too heavy. And the Challenger is so wide that it has none of the agility associated with this class of car. Before we go any further we should make it clear that the test car is perfectly satisfactory for normal maneuvers like going to church and fetching grandma. [But] strong understeer is apparent in places where you might try to hurry, like expressway entrances, and really flogging on a twisting road or a tight road course is a waste of time. The car just won't cooperate.
The same ailments afflict the present-day Challenger. Ours groaned around the skidpad to the tune of 0.78 g, receiving an understeer grade of “excessive” from our tester. Its saving grace, however, is its otherwise velvety demeanor. The Chrysler 300–based bones make for an expectedly smooth freeway ride, by far the most tolerable among the modern Challenger’s often stiff-legged competitive set. This is a car meant more for the type of cruising often done today in a 1970 original than the sort of back-road hooliganism other coupes inspire. Straight-line performance, too, is relaxed: The sprint to 60 mph was more of a jog, at 7.5 seconds, and the quarter-mile took 15.8 seconds at 90 mph.
As there are optional engines so are there a multitude of appearance options—all of which are calculated to give the Challenger that broad-based appeal which Dodge is counting upon.
The star-spangled appearance of our 2010 Challenger SE tester comes courtesy of options totaling $975—well, on top of the $2740 Preferred gatekeeper package. The costs: $225 for the Deep Water Blue paint and $750 for the Rallye group, which includes the stripes, spoiler, 18-inch wheels, and shiny gas flap. The Preferred bundle, which must be selected to unlock the Rallye pack, nets Sirius satellite radio, 225/60-18 Continental tires, leather trim on the steering wheel and shifter, and illuminated vanity mirrors in the visors. Seems like a rip-off, but it’s partly offset by the relatively low price of the Rallye stuff. We’d recommend skipping both and drumming up the Rallye gear from third-party suppliers.
In addition, our Challenger was laden with an upgraded stereo for $1370, leather seats (heated in the front) for $855, and a $950 sunroof. Our total price of $30,350 is about $1200 short of a V-8 R/T’s, which sounds mighty appealing both in price and exhaust rumble. Then again, you don’t buy a 3800-pound Challenger because you’re looking for performance from your $30,000 coupe. You buy one for the look, and with the Rallye pack, the Challenger positively nails it. This is as close as you’ll get to the original if you buy the redux. Still…
In all, the SE package serves to exemplify the entire Challenger approach—lavish execution with no thought to practical application.
But never mind all of these details. If Dodge's sporty car is like everyone else's, its success will depend entirely upon public acceptance of its looks. Still, we are disappointed that looks are awarded such a high priority over function and we think Dodge has had enough time to build a more purposeful car. It's our humble suggestion that, to avoid similar ineptitude in the future, all of the Challenger product planners fall on their swords immediately. [As per company policy, C/D no longer promotes hara-kiri as a means of facilitating development-team turnover. We’re cool, however, with several really hard noogies—Ed.]
