Another quarter has passed, and the automakers have released their sales results. As is tradition, things aren’t going the best over at the Stellantis brands. Case in point, Dodge! The core brand has seen its sales cut almost in half as critical new models struggle to get off the starting line.
The sales charts make for sobering reading if you’re a Dodge executive—otherwise, they’re kind of funny. In the first two quarters of 2025, Dodge has sold just 47,481 vehicles. Contrast that to 2024, when the brand sold 92,735 units in the same period. It’s a sales drop of 49%—the kind of number that really sets alarm bells ringing.
When a brand struggles for sales, the problem is often diffuse, spread across the whole lineup. In Dodge’s case, though, it’s easy to see what’s gone wrong. Without its core muscle cars, the brand has lost a massive chunk of the market. Let’s break down the numbers, for they tell a very sad story indeed.
2024 was a major turning point for Dodge. The brand had announced it would be phasing out the long-running Charger and Challenger models. The V8 hero cars had become the icons of the brand, but would soon end production. In the first half of 2024, Dodge would go on to sell 26,876 Chargers and 21,217 Challengers. This was less than previous years, but still solid figures.
Cut to 2025. The ICE-powered Charger and Challenger are gone. Dodge has managed to sell 1,630 and 1,501 units, respectively. These sales came from old stock, which was still sitting around from previous years, much of which likely sold at a big discount.
Of course, Dodge didn’t cancel these cars without a replacement in mind. It prepared the Charger Daytona, which promised to combine muscle car panache with an electric drivetrain. However, the Daytona has failed to connect with customers. Dodge sold just 4,299 examples up to the end of June. Sales have been slow enough that multiple dealers have offered five-figure discounts on the brand-new EVs.
Add up the numbers, and you can see what a bleak scenario Dodge is in. Compared to the 48,093 Chargers and Challengers sold in 2024, the Daytona sold less than a tenth of that in comparison.
Muscle cars aren’t Dodge’s only problem, just the biggest. The unloved Hornet is also a pain point, with sales down 52% year-on-year thus far. The only model in the positives is the Durango, up 4%, with a total of 34,399 units sold up to the end of June (though Dodge has been also discounting those).
“How’s Dodge going to get out of this one?!” you might ask, for the fiftieth time in the last three years. Well, we can assume the Badassador program has failed to net any real sales boost. Instead, Dodge might hope that new product turns the tide. New Chargers are coming that feature good old internal combustion drivetrains, in the form of Dodge’s powerful Hurricane inline-six. Four-door models are also on the way, which could boost interest in both the ICE and EV versions. There have long been whispers that the Hemi V8 could return, too, which might reignite the passions of a grunt-thirsty America.
Ultimately, Dodge might be turning into a Harley-Davidson story at this point. It was treading water with aging product, while failing to attract new blood to the brand. It might find some gains by going back to what it was doing, but it’s unclear how long that would actually help.
Unless something drastically changes, Dodge will have a hole in its sales figures a full 50,000 cars wide. That’s going to take some fixing, and I’m not sure what else they could possibly have to fill it with.
Image credits: Dodge
Apparently, one of the early cost-cutting measures at Dodge was to turn off all alarm bells.
I rented a ’24 Charger in Hawaii a few months ago and it was horrible. I wish they had had a Pacifica available. I don’t have any great ideas of how to fix Dodge’s problems, but I wish them luck.
Interesting. We rented a 2023 Charger in Maine and my wife LOVED it.
The auxiliary controls just seemed weirdly arranged, the accelerator seemed overly aggressive to me and the front air dam scraped on a lot of seemingly minor pavement dips and bounces. Perhaps a previous renter had gotten it caught on a parking block, but I did get on my knees and look, and all the fasteners seemed intact.
It certainly didn’t ruin my vacation. Just annoyances. I ended up turning Bluetooth off on my phone, because even though I hadn’t linked it to the infotainment, it would link up and start playing my music while we were trying to listen to the fun local radio stations.
But I’m glad your wife LOVED it.
I’m sorry you had a bad experience.
Our rental had the V-6 which didn’t have the horrendous turbo lag in her Jeep Renegade. (Yes. Turbo Lag in this day and age!) The seats were comfortable and heated. The control placement was similar to the Renegade so they felt familiar. Same for the infotainment screen. (Man I hate those things.) We always keep our Bluetooth off when driving so we didn’t have that problem.
No issues with the underside, but my wife did scrape the hell out of the front valance on my 99 Legacy at a rest stop parking block. (One reason why she loves her Renegade. She now refuses to slow down for speed bumps.)
The main thing was that the Charger was comfortable. Way better than her 2006 Honda Accord. That thing was awful!
I don’t know whether our rental had a turbo. My guess is that it didn’t. But the throttle was really touchy at tip-in. Maybe it would have been better with a little turbo lag. Lol.
My wife once ripped up the front air dam on one of those parking blocks in my ’01 Jetta. She was used to driving a Grand Cherokee.
I have a ’17 Accord and I like its handling and ride comfort balance. I had an ’86 Accord as well and it also had a nice balance. We also had an ’06 CR-V which rode okay and handled well for a crossover, but man, that thing had a lot of road noise. Very reliable, though.
I’ve scraped the front underside of my Accord on a few curbs and blocks, but it hasn’t torn anything up backing up afterwords. They don’t use salt around here so I’m not too worried about corrosion and I do ask about what things look like up front when it’s up on a lift for tire rotations. So far, so good.
It is my wife’s Renegade that has the turbo. Sorry for that confusion. Having a touchy pedal sucks.
I’m glad you had great experiences with your Hondas. The road noise is interesting to me. It definitely highlights a line I heard about Whiskey; “The best Whiskey is the one you like to drink, the way you like to drink it.”
IT’s good to remind myself that about cars as well.
Cheers!
Rented a new’ish Charger GT about a year ago. I was pleasantly surprised. More than enough power, roomy, decent infotainment in old school packaging, good handling and comfortable enough seats. My son is Jonesing for a SCAT Pack version and he kept hinting that since I liked the rental so much, the SCAT Pack was my next logical car. Thing is, the Charger is still a Stellantis product at the end of the day.
Maybe I’m just turning into a cranky old man.
I certainly don’t dislike that some people have a pleasant experience with them. I just didn’t like it very much.
I liked the ’24 Chevrolet Impala we rented on Oahu a lot better. I have enjoyed rental Impalas since they went FWD in 2000. Nice ride. Decent fuel economy on the highway. I don’t hoon rental cars, so I don’t know what they would do at the edge, but I never had to do anything extreme to avoid an accident.
It’s quite possible the Charger could outperform the Impala on a racetrack, but the Impala was my preference for driving around in the real world.
Are you sure it was a 2024 Chevrolet Impala and not a Malibu?
The Impala was discontinued in 2020. The Malibu is similar in some ways to an Impala, but not as big. Still a decent rental and could be considered ‘nice’ in higher trim levels, but most rentals seem to be the low trims.
I was in Maui a year before the fires and the Nissan Altima was THE rental sedan. Jeep Wranglers and Nissan Altimas dominated the rental lots.
Could well have been. Another person in our party rented that one. And I wasn’t really paying attention.
I rented the Charger (not by choice). We did Oahu (Chevy) and Kauai (Charger) but we also did an hour in an AS-350 helicopter, which easily eclipsed both vehicles.
I did rent some Malibus in my travelling engineer days and they were pleasant too.
I wonder what’s the breakdown of pursuit variants for those sales numbers.
Police, fire and rescue might have been propping Dodge up.
I feel sorry for any cop getting issued a Durango
Anecdotally speaking, non-pursuit Durangos are a common sight where I live.
There’s one in my garage, in fact.
Okay, so Dodge selling Peugeot cars in the US? Actually makes total sense.
I just drove a Peugeot 3008 around southern Spain for a week, and here’s the thing: it’s aggressively French in the most ridiculous ways possible. The cruise control stalk? Hidden behind a steering wheel spoke. Completely unusable. The USB port for Android Auto? Buried in a cubby hole where you have to basically stick your head upside down to see it.
But then there’s the switchgear. Oh man, the switchgear. Instead of normal buttons, they’ve got these chrome “piano key” toggle switches lined up below the air vents. Six little chrome keys that you press to control climate, navigation, and phone functions. It’s like someone looked at a regular dashboard and thought “you know what this needs? More musical instrument vibes.”
Now, any reasonable engineer would look at this and think “wow, that’s terrible design.” But here’s the weird part—it actually wasn’t that bad to drive. Sure, the French apparently held a meeting and decided “let’s make everything slightly inconvenient for no reason,” but the car itself? Pretty solid.
And when you compare it to literally anything Dodge has made recently, it’s like comparing a decent pizza to a cardboard box with ketchup on it.
So yeah, bring on the Peugeots. At least their weird design choices come with competent engineering underneath.
This sounds less like a car and more like a scaled up fisher price toy.
This diatribe is exactly why everything is the car industry is bland and homogenous.
Just wait until the new SRT team gets ahold of that one car that they sell, I’m sure that will turn their fortunes around!
Wow! Those really are some staggeringly bad numbers. I think it may be time to just kill off Dodge and give the Durango to Chrysler. Though I’m a fan of sedans, coupes, and wagons, Dodge doesn’t have competitive segment product. That is, unless the Hurricane really takes off in popularity, which seems unlikely.
Never.
I hate to break this to you, but Chrysler is even deader than Dodge.
Chrysler is in a race with Maserati to see who can stop making vehicles first. The difference is that Maserati could like, sell polo shirts and luxury lifestyle stuff after their automotive division is gone, what’s the Chrysler brand gonna do? A 50s-themed bar & hotel on Woodward with a second location on Route 66?
Chrysler/FCA/Stellantis spent the better part of 20-years of saying “that thang got a Hemi?”
And then was surprised when the eliminated it, without bothering to spend the same effort to get people to talk about the Hurricane?
Ford built the brand awareness with Ecoboost, put it into race cars & trucks, and publicly flogged those vehicles to show it’s capable.
Maybe Chrysler should think about putting in a screaming loud BOV into the Hurricane so new owners can irritate their neighbours as much as they used to with a hemi with straight pipes.
Dodge also lacks anything compelling like the Maverick.
It wasn’t before 2020, but thanks to people like Tim K, they ruined a once great brand, anecdotal evidence “disproving“ that remark notwithstanding.
It’s also round 3 of Europeans not understanding the US market but hey, whatever floats people’s boats, I guess.
“The unloved Hornet is also a pain point, with sales down 52% year-on-year thus far.”
The big problem with the Dodge Horny is it’s only sold in high-priced loaded versions
Where are the lower-spec’d/lower priced FWD versions? Where are the lower-powered versions that don’t need premium unleaded fuel?
It’s one thing to offer only high powered AWD versions that require premium unleaded for the Alfa.
But for the Dodge, it’s idiotic. Even the goddamn plug-in hybrid version requires premium unleaded ffs.
Well that and also the fact that their hot garbage in terms of reliability.
…”which promised to combine muscle car panache with an electric drivetrain. However, the Daytona has failed to connect with customers.”
What you did there, I see – Yoda
I can see Stellantis selling Chrysler,Dodge,Jeep and Ram piecemeal to the highest bidder very soon…..It’s around that time again…..Just wonder how the UAW will make out?…..Was the corruption scandals of a few years ago worth it all in the end?….The UAW brass sold out its membership for a box of chocolates.
“Ultimately, Dodge might be turning into a Harley-Davidson story at this point. It was treading water with aging product, while failing to attract new blood to the brand.”
Ouch, but true. My In-Laws, who seem to exclusively shop for clothing at the Harley Davidson store, have traded in their Harleys in the last year for Can Am Spyders.
I know Mercedes has defended them several times but the Can Am Spyder still just seems to incredibly cringe to me
I just can’t imagine driving around corners at any speed on something you straddle but doesn’t lean. Staying put on the saddle would be the limiting factor of performance.
There are cambering three wheelers.
GM even has a patent.
I’ve seen videos of a few, and they look interesting. But the Spyder just looks like a nightmare.
If I went for three wheels, it would be a rear mid engine with irs and massive wide rear tires.
Traditonal looking in the front.
Rear braking bias would make up for any lack in front.
I spent a bit of time in a T-Rex and it was a hoot!
They look better than many options out there.
I can’t get over the limited uses, like ATVs.
There is a naked ultra light four wheeler that is trackable and can be street legal.
I live near the surface of the sun and even when I had only roadsters I had to keep the sun off me.
I live in a northern climate, so I will soak up the sun whenever possible. The Can Ams, for sure, look better than ugly stick victims like the Slingshot. The T-Rex isn’t terrible, but it isn’t great either.
I have an ND Miata, and neither trike offers any benefit, while each has huge downsides. Especially when you consider the poor reputation Polaris and Can-Am have for quality.
Willing to trade sunshine for snow
I think part of it is that a lot of us only see them driven (ridden?) by A. tourists who rented them or B. someone blasting awful music at an unacceptable volume. Or both.
Harley is a lifestyle brand that sells motorcycles. Dodge doesn’t even have that big licensing and merchandising business going on. This feels even worse for them.
Also, it does not surprise me that they decided to move from Harleys to Spyders. I think that is a natural transition.
It surprised me, but only because they were so into the Harley lifestyle brand. But he also had a Harley trike because he couldn’t really ride a motorcycle anymore, so the transition to reverse trike makes sense. It just surprises me how much they cost. The one they bought last night was well into the $30,000’s. I’ve spent far less that that on (2) Miatae combined.
FWIW, In the US during “Peak Car” 2016, Dodge had…
Viper – 626 sales
Challenger/Charger – 64k/95k sales
Durango (midsize three row) – 68k sales
Journey (cheaper midsize three row) – 106k sales
Caravan – 125k sales
Considering they axed the two cheap, volume sales models back in 2020 with no planned replacement, seems like they should bring back those two segments.
They should repurpose the pacifica platform and create a fwd based midsize 3 row suv with the same powertrains as pacifica, but the kicker needs to be a basement bargain starting MSRP. We’re talking $29k for a fwd 3 row. I think a PHEV variant would sell like hotcakes compared to GC 4xe ($45k base?)
Dodge needs a Voyager at an even cheaper starting point of $32k.
BY GAWD THAT’S THE DODGE JOURNEY’S MUSIC
That shows so clearly where they failed. People liked the Challenger/Charger and they reflected the image Dodge wanted to cultivate but the market for those cars was always going to be limited.
The Durango, Journey, and Caravan were all at the bottom of their respective categories, but they sold well because they were affordable and widely available. The issue for Dodge is that they also didn’t make much money on them, while the Challenger and Charger were profit machines. Stellantis, like every automaker, was far more interested in margin and was happy to give up sales numbers to focus on profits, just like how GM and Ford stopped selling sedans
The issue with Stellantis giving Dodge another version of the Durango, Journey, or Caravan is that they have no platforms to use and a limited parts bid. All of which is of terrible quality.
Also, use the Opel Mokka B as a basis for the cheap subcompact CUV the Hornet should’ve been. After all, the Mokka A was a sleeper hit for GM as the Buick Encore.
I doubt they will introduce anything that is primarily made overseas. Changing production lines isn’t quick, and they have no guarantee that the tariff issues will remain or get worse, which makes knowing where to invest tricky. They also might have union and other agreements with current production facilities that restrain them to some degree. The current chaos could well be the final straw for Nissan and Stellantis.
Hold your horses on the ICE Charger-apparently they’re having so many issues with the Hurricane in testing that it’s either going to be delayed again or even canceled altogether. It’s THAT bad.
Anyway this is just more of the standard Americans and American manufactures being very silly schtick. Everyone told Dodge 5+ years ago that they’d need products that could compete into the future. Dodge said FUCK YOU YOU STUPID LITTLE WEAKLING BITCH BOY V8 GO BRRRRR!
Predictably, time ran out on that shit, Dodge had absolutely nothing, and they had to steal a mediocre CUV from Alfa Romeo and shit out the most hilariously half baked product of this decade so far in the Charger EV. In a surprise to absolutely no one with a functioning frontal lobe, that shit didn’t work…although I’m not sure anyone would’ve predicted the sheer scope of the failure.
But guess what? The political pendulum swung again and now we have an administration that openly, gleefully hates the environment. RAM is already happily cashing in on the moment with some of the cringiest ads I’ve ever seen, MOAR V8S, and “BaDgEs Of PrOtEsT”.
Will Doge do the smart thing and cook up products that are competitive, work reasonably well, and be viable into the future? Lmao. I don’t know why I even asked that. They’re going to tell everyone to eat a bag of dicks, shove Hemis in products that are like 30 years old again, and ride the wave for the next 3 years.
And they’ll be in the same goddamn place they were in whenever the pendulum inevitably swings back the other way. But that’s not what matters. Right now line will go up, V8 will go brr, and everyone who gets off on this sort of thing will be happy for a little while.
(But there is a very juvenile part of me that’s happy V8s will live on, even though the planet will be uninhabitable)
Yep, they needed a successor to the LX platform, and needed to shop one.
tell me more…I have not heard of these issues
It’s coming from this site, who got it from a moderately reputable MOPAR YouTuber
https://www.hotcars.com/dodge-charger-six-pack-delayed-canceled/
Remember when the next charger and challenger were going to be LWB Alfa Romeo Guilas? I member. Would have been a good transition to the EV offering, but they just didn’t do it. Dodge being the Harley of cars is spot on
They had options. For all the wailing, the new Charger is a handsome beast. They have a single platform that can handle ICE and full EV in one platform. All they had to do was create a full set of mix-and-match, from a Hellcat to I6 to PHEV to full EV, all in 2 door or 4. If they were going for versatility, then be versatile. The only thing stopping them was Stellantis, but to be fair, Stellantis has proven an anchor that could drag down a cruise ship.
But they didn’t design the new Charger for a V8. They released it EV only, because apparently they despise the very concept of brand cachet. They released it 2 door only to start, because they hate money. There’s no other possible explanation. They must hold money in contempt, like a collective of Communist Buddhist monks. I can respect that. I wouldn’t invest in their stock, but I can respect it.
The new Charger looks great. I’d be in the market for an inline 6 sedan soon-ish if they weren’t vaporware.
I honestly think the staggered launch screwed them.
If they launched all at once… people would have bought ICE ones, and dug them. Maybe a few try the EV and like it, maybe not. But they’d have sales and some positive feeling about the car.
Instead, they have an EV that nobody likes, and a huge negative perception to overcome when/if the ICE version actually lands. That’s going to be brutal.
Isn’t the hurricane 6 already launched over at Ram?
Yup, and it’s been a disaster. Which is a shame, it’s a very cool engine on paper.
They still sell the Hornet?!
Yes, but apparently not often.
I’ve, shockingly, seen 3 or 4 of them recently…so I’d guesstimate that I’ve encountered roughly 50% of the Hornets on the road. It’s an…honor, I guess?
I can confirm there was one in Milwaukee last week, but it was probably just a rental passing through town.
I’ve seen more Vinfasts (up to 2 now!!!) than I’ve seen Hornets (once.)
A year ago we bought a hybrid SUV as a family car. I put together a list of options with pros and cons. The Hornet made the list. Pros? Uh idk, looks cool and is technically an option. Cons? Has the same fuel economy as a non-hybrid. Features Dodge/Chrysler/Fiat levels of reliability. Is new car with unknown track record.
Anyway, we bought a RAV4.
This is the thing about the stinky Stellantis PHEV technology that really gets to me. How do you engineer a PHEV system that has absolutely 0 fuel economy benefits when operating as a hybrid? Like…you have to TRY to manage to fuck that up.
Even just using the batteries like a mild hybrid to aid in stop start and move the car at parking lot speeds would eke out another couple MPG. But no. Their PHEVs get equal or worse fuel economy than their comparable ICE vehicles.
It’s just shockingly bad, lazy engineering. I’m not expecting them to instantly have shit that’s Toyota PHEV level and returns nearly the same MPG as their traditional hybrids…but holy shit, my dad’s 5,000 pound X5 50e manages to eek out high 20s/low 30s when operating as a hybrid….
It feels like an intentional attempt to push ICE vehicles, combined with a little bit of the Toyota pickup strategy of making the hybrid for power, rather than efficiency.
Fair, although I will point out that the hybrid for power in the Toyota trucks does seem to have some small fuel economy benefits
True, but it’s a very small gain in city fuel economy for a pretty significant extra cost. And, given Toyota’s other hybrids, it’s clear that they changed focus for the pickups.
We have a GC 4xe. It’s not the most graceful system, but it does get significantly better fuel economy than the Pentastar-powered WK2 we’ve still got in the fleet. The ten year gap between the two is pretty obvious in complexity and structural rigidity.
The gas-only WLs drive much, much lighter on their feet compared to the hybrd, and feel a lot like the WK2 but better.
I suspect the PUG Pentastar and 8 speed returns better fuel economy than our early Pentastar and NAG1.
But their hybrid does work. And in EV mode, it’s real nice. When the GME fires up it’s like a gravel mill is nearby.
I liked mine when it worked right, and when I was in a job that let me commute during the week on EV only power (assuming it wasn’t under recall at the time and unable to be plugged in). The last gas only rental version I had I liked a lot better.
Asked a woman at a car wash if she liked hers -she did, but this is my second one. The first got totaled.
Imagine getting the opportunity to dodge the bullet and willingly jumping back in front of it.
They need to sell the Panda over here. Dodge Panda.
Pandas are notoriously slow and not that graceful. Easily dodged.
Oy vey
Their cuteness draws you in for the kill.
Dodge drivers would insist the name is changed to “Manda” to assuage fears of low T.
Somehow I missed the original Badassador article, for anyone curious they are still taking applicants. I actually considered applying just to see if you would get a chance to drive some press cars or something like that, but I don’t have any social media presence which is required.
Their lineup before included cars like the Neon, Stratus, Caravan, Grand Caravan, Durango, Ram trucks, Dakota truck, Intrepid, Charger, Challenger. Dodge used to be what Chevy is doing today. How are they going to sell cars if they dont even have a lineup?
I wish they bring back some nameplates, at least the Neon.
Why the Dart wasn’t a Neon is completely baffling. And how they f’d up the launch of that car soooo badly.
That was crazy. It’s amazing to think that whatever marketing hack came up with that is likely paid good money. Dart? The only people who had an association with them remembered them as bottom barrel economy cars (they may have had some cooler ones, but those were the exception and nearly the last of the sportier cars of that era to blow up in those Boomer auction TV days) and those potential customers weren’t looking for a Neon type vehicle at their advanced age. Younger people didn’t care. It also didn’t come in a hatch and had poor reliability ratings in a class where less affluent buyers need their car to just work with minimal BS and it didn’t have enough style or personality for people to compromise on that. They even styled it to look like a Neon! All this from some of the same clowns always harping on the importance of name recognition and brand identity (giving us alpha-numeric names nobody remembers because “it’s about remembering the brand” and Matryoshka doll styling of all models regardless of proportion or purpose). It was like Dodge saw Ford getting criticized for the failure of ditching “Taurus” for “Five Hundred” before nodding with a grin and saying, “Please, a little respect, for I am Dodge, Lord of the idiots. Now, watch this.”
There may even have been a “hold my beer” involved, LOL.
The Neon wasn’t a great car, but it was a FUN car for what it was. And the Dart was as well (I liked the rental I had). Are they actually unreliable though? The Fiat platform that they are based on is fine. They are not Corollas for sure, but they are certainly more than adequate.
I agree about the hatch. All small cars should be hatches, trunks make no sense in cars smaller than battlecruiser size.
The Neon was a decent driver and I liked the styling.
I never knew anyone with a Dart (rarely even saw them), I only read that they had issues and there was a CA suit over the Tigershark engine (what a waste of the name). I think the 1.4T, oddly, was decent? A guy I worked with had a 500 Abarth with some cheap tuner device and he didn’t manage to blow it up, so I figure it had to be at least halfway decent!
I had a ’13 500 Abarth. Zero issues in the time I had it, and it was a laugh riot.
But same, that one rental was the only experience I have with the Dart, and I don’t know anybody who had one either. Given how few were built, not terribly surprising.
I Hooned a few Hertz Darts between Newark Liberty, and Manhattan. Dodged slow cars pretty well.
Dodge should find a way to bring the muscle cars back. But they also should bring over some of the citroen/ peguot / DS/ Opel cars from overseas and sell them with a dodge or chrysler logo. Americans are gobbling up hybrids and plug in hybrids and that seems to be DS cars’ specialty!
Yes please! I want a DS3 convertible badly! But I do not think it could be sold as a Dodge. It would possibly work as a Chrysler, but not likely under Dodge.
Saw the EV Charger at the PA auto show, NO ONE was looking at it. they missed the mark on so many levels with it.
Cheap, reasonably practical muscle sells?
Next think you’re going to tell me is that milkshakes go great with a burger and fries.
— ———
The thing that still gets me is Dodge managed to successfully turn the Charger and Challenger into an every man’s Porsche 911 in terms of product line. No, seriously, they did, which is an amazing achievement. Hear me out.
Right now if you look at the Porsche 911 product line in the US, there are 23 models. In pricing, you have steps in the base price of…
$132,300, $143,700, $146,000, $151,700, $157,400, $159,800, $165,300, $173,400, $175,200, $175,900, $184,000, $189,600, $197,700 (twice), $204,300, $217,600, $230,500 (twice), $238,700, $248,600, $250,000, $252,000, and $270,500.
You have hard-top coupes, targas, cabriolets, rear wheel drive, all wheel drive, turbocharged, normally aspirated, manuals and dual-clutch automatics. In that lineup there is something there for everyone that goes from $160K OTD to $500K OTD.
— ———
Now look back at the Charger and Challenger. Yep. For model year 2023, the Charger had EIGHT models and the Challenger had ELEVEN. That’s 19 options to choose from. And the Challenger had steps in the base price of…
$32,800, $36,100, $41,640, $49,265, $57,260, $74,290, $82,690, $82,895, $91,295 and $91,300. Then you had the Demon 170 at $96,666.
You had 4-door and 2-door. RWD and AWD, six cylinder, and then you had…
370HP N.A. V8, 485HP N.A. V8, then 717, 797, 807HP and 1025HP SC V8.
They did it. They had no price umbrella in there. The more you wanted to spend, and depending on what you wanted, Dodge had a muscle car to meet your needs.
Sadly that had no succession plan. They ACTUALLY pulled it off, and who would’ve expected Dodge of all brands to do it? They had it, and they threw it all away.
I firmly believe that car journalists ruined the muscle car. When they were affordable cars with big engines they often got compared to much more expensive European cars which led to them trashing the muscle cars for refinement and feeling cheap. Automakers responded by making them more refined and into proper sports cars, but they also got more expensive, less practical and thus sold in smaller volumes the market isn’t there. It is wild to me that when launched the Mustang was the fastest selling car knowing how much cars in that category sell today.
The S197 refresh Boss 302 I think is one of the best modern Mustangs.
”It’s not a flat-plane crank tho.”
Right, it SOUNDS like you’d expect it to sound. Still revs to 8000 though. Also unlike the Voodoo, that “Roadrunner” Coyote V8 is reliable.
”But it’s live axle rear hurr durr”
And the S197 refresh made it… fine. I remember driving them, and when a mid-corner bump didn’t upset one, I was impressed. It was working!
— ———
What kills me is they were mostly babied and they’re still $40K all day long.
You can put kids in the back. It’s a liftback coupe so you can very genuinely put stuff in it. The handling is quite agreeable. The manual is easy to use. The diffs have long proven to hold up with no issues. They’re reliable. They don’t depreciate a penny. They sound great, and you can really throw them around. People, buy them!
Fords also went from all custom parts to modify to bolt on power and handling, no matter what you wanted, and in a very short time.
The Boss 302 is my favorite modern Mustang and it’s not particularly close
Blaming Media is always right. /s
When I was a kid and who I am now likes smaller cars. I read Hot Rod and went to the drags. All mfrs make the most cost models, regardless or origin
They made an impact on kids.
Friends grandkids asked for a Hellcat!
They won’t be driving for years.
I told him how much power it has, then how much it costs.
I gotta be honest, a milkshake is great as a dessert but way too heavy for me to eat with burgers and fries.
Agree with everything else tho.
oh my god, same. Cola is my usual beverage of choice in that regard. acid cuts through the fat, beautiful.
This could have been easily solved by never splintering off RAM from Dodge. Maybe it’s time to merge the two brands back together. Besides, everyone still calls them Dodge Ram trucks.
divorcing ram from dodge was the smartest move that they ever did. it made the auto group seem immensely more valuable because you had a super strong RAM brand a very successful JEEP brand. and then an ‘eh’ chrysler and a dumpster fire dodge. if you thew ram in the mix with dodge maybe it wouldnt be a dumpster fire financially but the brand as a whole would be mediocre at best. It made the Ram and jeep brand something super desirable to the automakers they were courting for a buyout and then dodge and Chrysler just came with the deal.
Hemi all the things! Direct injection ought to solve emissions woes. Game the EPA test just enough to evade the fuel guzzler tax. Then AWD Hellcat Grand Caravan. All the pieces are there. Just do it, Dodge. You know you want to.
It is now the policy of the United States to actively oppose those things. Carburet all the things. And add velocity stacks.
I can’t wait for my coal powered truck so I can literally roll coal!
They should go back to using captive imports from Mitsubishi. Imagine a Hellcat Mirage.
Pfft. Hellcat Colt.
… Hellcolt?
The gas guzzler tax is no longer, remember. At least until 2028
Actual question: will Dodge shoppers buy an inline six? In enough quantity to make a difference?
More than will buy an EV. As much attention as the V8s all get, the old models sold far more V6 models than 8s, so I think it will be similar here, but they need to get the V8 back in there to make people happy.
Rental cars were probably 75% of those v6 cars
Not in my experience, I worked with a lot of young kids who bought them, and it was always a V6 Challenger they would come to work in. Chargers were common rentals, I don’t think the Challenger was, but I could be wrong on that one.
Hertz had tons of both models, and LOTS of them were V8s.
Insurance may drive some 6 cylinder buys.
The price difference and other costs of ownership is what drives a lot of 6 cylinder buys.
That’s a tough question. They’re going to have an uphill climb converting diehard Hemi V8 loyalists.
Yes, Dodge has a history with great inline six power in the form of the Slant Six. But they would have needed more advance marketing rollup to create the association than they’ve done, as far as I know.
Right now, I’m getting flashbacks to when they were trying to market turbo 4’s in K-car and Omni derivatives as the performance choice in the 80s. Sure, they weren’t bad in thier day, especially with the Shelby GLH cars — but the larger market was still just tacitly coming to terms with V-6 power and FWD pushing out V-8s and RWD in other cars of the day. Overcoming entrenched customer expectations is a high bar to clear on a good day, with plenty of well-timed marketing rolled out over time to ramp-up before the car is introduced. I don’t think Stellantis thought quite that much about it all.
I think the new Charger is pretty good looking, it has a real liftback (yay!), and the Hurricane, while its reliability is yet to be proven, could be a tuner gem. If it doesn’t attract the type of person whose first mods are a tattered American flag decal on the back window and a thin blue line plate frame, maybe it could attract a different type of buyer. Dodge has put themselves in between a rock and a hard place. Not offering a car for their current fanbase, but still leaning so hard into that Mr. Macho ‘Murica Badass Burnout Machine shtick that it could turn off people not in their core demo.
Edit: one that’s made in…Mexico?
My theory is that they need the V8 to be good and desirable for aspirational reasons. They will sell a ton of I6 cars to those that just can’t quite afford the next step up.
If the V8 comes out and doesn’t live up to expectations or just isn’t very good then the I6 doesn’t sell. Of course they really need to get the kinks worked out of the Hemi and get it out in the first place so…
only if its at an angle in the engine bay
Not for 25 years!
Fold RAM back into Dodge. Problem solved.
Was going to say the same thing. Put the trucks back under the Dodge brand.
Also, ageing or not, slap a Dodge Grand Caravan badge on the Pacifica minivan.
With no leading muscle cars, and no boy-racer compacts/subcompacts, then the only thing that Dodge has to play on is their history with trucks and minivans.
At this point, they probably ought to consider a captive import hot hatch to market as a neo-Neon.