Of all the tortures that have been inflicted on muscle-car fans since the vehicles' heyday around 1970, the new Dodge Challenger may be the most painful. Don't misunderstand me -- this is arguably the best muscle car ever built. But why now?
After enduring the late-1970s era of dwindling horsepower in the name of cleaner emissions, then suffering through the downsizing that shrank many muscle machines into compacts in the 1980s, and having witnessed the near disappearance of the genre in the 1990s, it seems cruel and unusual for this car to hit the streets today. Gasoline is at record prices, congestion chokes most metropolitan areas, roads are often in rotten shape and plenty of drivers treat their cars as little more than mobile phone booths. I can't imagine a worse time for Chrysler to launch a 425-horsepower, 15-mile-per-gallon behemoth that mimics the look and feel of the original 1970 Challenger.
Except that, strangely enough, we are in the midst of a revival of these "pony cars." Just as it seems we most need the auto industry to start building the cars of the future, we're getting the cars of the past. It began with the neo-retro 2005 Ford Mustang, and will continue with the launch next year of GM's revived Chevrolet Camaro.
To make a period-correct analogy, if the original Mustang and Camaro were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, that made the Challenger something like Creedence Clearwater Revival. Great, yes. The greatest? Hardly. This time Chrysler was spurred to beat the Camaro to market by quickly adapting the hardware that underpins its Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger sedans to create the 2008 Challenger SRT8. On sale since April, it's the most expensive and powerful of what will be three variants of the car.
While Chrysler is much too late to the party to enjoy the $2-a-gallon gasoline the revamped Mustang did at its launch, some people have been waiting over three decades for cars like this to return. This group mainly comprises baby boomers accustomed to spending any amount to make them feel 18 again. In this case, that would be $40,095, including the federal gas-guzzler tax. I suppose it's easier to swallow $4.35-a-gallon premium if you're looking for youth serum.
The Original: Dodge was late to the party, launching the 1970 Challenger long after the Mustang and Camaro.
But you don't even have to drive the new Challenger to appreciate it. This is the sort of car you can park in the driveway, pop the hood and stand around admiring with your buddies. Not because it's a slavish copy of the old one, but because it isn't. The modern car looks exactly the way you picture the vintage one in your mind, meaning bigger and badder, with fatter, more muscular fenders and huge wheels. Attention has been lavished on the details, from the cast aluminum fuel filler cap to the matte-finish rear spoiler to the round headlights fashioned to resemble the decades-old sealed-beam design. Inside the Challenger, things are disappointingly cheap and dull. But everywhere you look on the exterior you see history brilliantly rewritten, a truly innovative piece of design, even as it revels in its own myopia.
Out on the road, the Challenger performs as you'd want and expect, hurtling along with a roar from the exhaust. The big, Hemi-branded 6.1-liter V8 gives the car tremendous power, which is routed through the rear wheels for optimal, straight-line, drag-strip-style acceleration. But the real surprise is how well the car does other things. For one, it really corners. Its giant, sticky 20-inch tires and modern suspension give it an athleticism rarely -- make that never -- found in muscle cars of yore. Braking, too, has been considerably improved since the Nixon administration, and of course, the Challenger SRT8 contains all kinds of good stuff that wasn't available back in the day, like multiple airbags and traction control.
Yet among these modern amenities is a five-speed automatic transmission with electronic throttle control, which brings up the Challenger's biggest problem. Unlike in the good old days, when there was a cable connecting the gas pedal to the engine, today a computer sits between the two and tries to calculate our best intentions for us. While this system is wonderful for producing smoother acceleration, more efficient fuel consumption and optimal shift patterns, it can be a bummer for the sort of exuberant driving that anyone with a pulse will want to engage in the minute he or she gets behind the wheel. The Challenger's throttle seems at times to have a mind of its own, refusing to dole out the power as quickly as your lead foot desires. And the sentient transmission has a great affection for its fourth and fifth gears, those more efficient at cruising and gas-saving -- and ones that didn't exist in automatic transmissions in the first muscle-car era.
If this threatens the Challenger's suspension of disbelief, the good news is there's a cure coming. For next year, Chrysler will revise the throttle settings to better simulate a real throttle cable and, better yet, offer a six-speed manual in the Challenger SRT8, which I will recommend, sight-unseen. In fact, unless there is some great bucket-list urgency to acquiring a Challenger, you would do well to wait for the fall anyway, when the rest of the lineup goes on sale. (These 2009 model year cars will likely be easier to find, too.) The new derivatives include the Challenger R/T, with a slightly less powerful 5.7-liter V8, as well as a V6-powered SE model. At roughly $30,000 for the former, it looks to be not only Chrysler's volume leader, but the best value of the three.
