It’s safe to say that the new Dodge Charger wasn’t exactly born smoothly. An EV-first launch generated considerable backlash among a fray of V8-loving enthusiasts, and it didn’t help that the most potent electric model won’t do a burnout. So what happens when you yank out the batteries and drop in a 550-horsepower twin-turbocharged straight-six? You get the Charger Sixpack Scat Pack, a new-age Dodge aimed at people who have 93-octane coursing through their veins.
Our first outing in the new twin-turbocharged straight-six-powered Dodge Charger was a bit unusual. With snowy Vermont as the backdrop, my colleague Mercedes hooned it so hard that the powertrain went into heat protection mode. Promising muscle car stuff, but an infotainment glitch didn’t instill huge confidence, and winter driving isn’t always the best representation of other conditions. The initial impression was that of a fun but flawed machine, so what happens when Mother Nature thaws the landscape? I booked a summer week in the Charger Sixpack Scat Pack to find out.
[Full disclosure: Dodge Canada let me borrow this Charger Six Pack Scat Pack so long as I kept the shiny side up, returned it clean with a full tank of premium fuel, and reviewed it.]
The Basics
Engine: Three-liter twin-cam 24-valve twin-turbocharged water-to-air intercooled inline-six.
Transmission: Eight-speed conventional torque converter automatic.
Drive: Full-time all-wheel-drive with selectable rear-wheel-drive, limited-slip rear differential.
Output: 550 horsepower at 6,200 RPM, 531 lb.-ft. at 3,500 RPM.
Fuel Economy: 16 MPG city, 23 MPG highway, 19 MPG combined (14.5 L/100km city, 10 L/100km highway, 12.5 L/100km combined).
Curb Weight: 4,816 pounds (2,185 kg).
Base Price: $57,685 including freight ($72,390 in Canada).
Price As-Tested: $67,965 ($86,665 in Canada).
Why Does It Exist?
For the past 20 years, the Charger nameplate has been a cornerstone of the Dodge lineup. Initially revived for the 21st-century in four-door form, it spawned a range of brawny V8 variants, including the inimitable Hellcat, becoming an icon in its own right. However, that doesn’t quite explain why this new Charger exists. It’s a replacement for the old model, and it initially launched as an EV as a measure to meet emissions standards. Not only did that go poorly, but rollbacks of federal measures to support EVs mean that this version here is Dodge’s great hope: the Charger Sixpack, featuring the twin-turbocharged straight-six from a Ram 1500.
How Does It Look?
Revamping a beloved car is tricky because it’s always possible to get the styling wrong. However, if you have a wealth of heritage to pull from, there’s nothing wrong with dialling in a little old-school cool. When designing the new Charger, Dodge dipped its cup into its cauldron of history and pulled out surfacing from the ’60s. That plunging crease down the flank, those wide haunches, and that single-frame headlight surround are pure muscle car in the best way possible. However, while the surfacing is great, the proportions lead this full-sizer into the uncanny valley.
The base of the windscreen on the new Charger sits at the same height as in several subcompact crossovers, there’s an enormous amount of metal down each flank, there’s enough wheel gap to house families of opossums, and even the standard 20-inch wheels look a tad undersized. Add in the cheap-looking and thankfully optional light bar, and the new Charger just doesn’t look as handsome as it probably should. Strange, that.
What About The Interior?
Slide inside the new Charger and you’ll be greeted by a surprisingly nice interior. Loads of stitched surfaces, lovely materials, solid build quality … it’s a world apart from the more price-conscious cockpit of the old Charger. As pleasing as some of the sculptural elements are, however, many of the things you interact with on a regular basis are rather strange. The steering wheel’s genuinely uncomfortable as the cross-section of the rim comes to a point where palms naturally rest, the shifter isn’t the most ergonomically astute design, and real buttons are rather scarce. Sure, the seats themselves are quite comfortable, but there’s a more fundamental issue with the Charger that mitigates those supportive cushions: something’s gone terribly wrong with laying out the seating position.
It starts with a floor that’s simply too high because the platform also has to accept a battery pack. Despite sitting tall compared to many traditional large sedans, even with the seat dropped to its lowest height, it feels like your knees are near your ears. It’s tolerable with the squab Carolina-squatted by tilting the leading edge up all the way, but I’m only 5’10” with a 30-ish-inch inseam. The longer-legged will find getting comfortable challenging, especially if they’re not long of arm. Despite the presence of a moderately long dash-to-axle ratio and a telescoping steering column, the wheel never comes as close as most would like. For something that’s supposed to be a blue-collar grand tourer, the basic ergonomics of the Charger feel like a huge miss. The floor’s also high in the rear seat, and once you factor in how the trunk’s shaped like a Toblerone laid on its side, it’s genuinely astonishing that Stellantis has eked such poor space efficiency out of a vehicle with a larger footprint than a Toyota Sienna.
How Does It Drive?
Thankfully, the firepower under the hood of the new Charger Sixpack Scat Pack is almost enough to make you forget about the platform’s packaging. It’s a twin-turbocharged three-liter straight-six making 550 horsepower. That’s more than a BMW M3 CS despite a lower redline, and it comes attached to a rather sensational drivetrain. The ZF 8HP is still considered the gold standard of automatic transmissions, and the Torqueflite 880RE is a licence-built version of that very family of transmissions. Downstream of that, you get full-time all-wheel-drive and a limited-slip rear differential, which work as a team to give the Charger Sixpack Scat Pack a trait no gas-burning high-output Charger’s enjoyed before: This thing can actually put its power down.
Dial up launch control, let the revs build to 3,000, release the brake, and this thing rips to 60 MPH in well under four seconds with nary a hint of wheelspin. However, that doesn’t paint the most accurate picture of the engine’s character. There’s solid mid-range torque for remarkably drama-free overtaking and shove up top when you push the skinny pedal to the carpet, all accompanied by a wonderfully real straight-six buzzsaw soundtrack that settles down nicely on the freeway. Sure, the 3,500 RPM torque peak means you get some turbo lag down low, but that just means the Charger doesn’t run out of breath up top, and you can easily drive it out of boost to get reasonably acceptable fuel economy.
The long-legged overdrive ratios pair nicely with the Charger Sixpack Scat Pack’s suspension, which comes into its own at higher speeds. There’s a slight softness here that irons out expansion joints and freeway potholes fairly well, making Dodge’s only current passenger car a faithful continent-crusher. Well, faithful on big, divided highways. Present it with a corner, and you’ll find a limitation. It’s not so much the standard Goodyear Eagle Sport all-season tires that hold this coupe back when the mood for fun arises, but instead sheer weight. Even after ditching the Daytona’s battery pack, this thing weighs in at 4,816 pounds before options. As such, the hard-wearing tires only accentuate the platform’s drawbacks. Steady-state understeer arrives so severely that it’s tricky to dial back with a slight lift of the throttle, hard acceleration from a roll feels curiously inert, and the massive heft combines with a spongy brake pedal to make stopping feel a little bit sketchy.
However, there is a way to dial up the fun here: If you select sport mode while perfectly stopped, a virtual tile will appear for a proper rear-wheel-drive mode. Tap that, and the Charger Sixpack Scat Pack indulges in all your worst impulses, eagerly engaging in outrageous powersliding tomfoolery. The steering may be numb, but its accuracy makes winding on the right amount of opposite lock easy. The 121-inch wheelbase gives you loads of time to correct twinges of the rear axle, and those high-treadwear tires serve up progressive breakaway. Despite all the compromises made by people in suits, the calibration engineers have worked hard to make this a proper Charger.
Does It Have The Electronic Crap I Want?
If you spec it up, absolutely. My test car came with two big screens, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a surround-view camera system, adaptive cruise control, heated and ventilated front seats, heated rear seats, a heated steering wheel, wireless phone charging, a power hatch, and a HUD. However, just because the Charger Sixpack Scat Pack can be optioned with the stuff you want doesn’t make all of it excellent. The haptics on either side of the screen don’t respond with feedback; the 18-speaker Alpine sound system isn’t particularly crisp; the electronic door latches sometimes have latency; and then there’s the layout of the gauge cluster.
The presence of a digital gauge cluster on the new Charger sounds fairly standard for the industry on paper, but it feels like nobody on the UX team has ever driven a performance car before. Even in the Charger’s most performance-oriented drive mode, its digital cluster hides parts of the tachometer and speedometer until the virtual needles spin close to them. This isn’t a huge problem when it comes to the speedometer because there’s a nice big digital readout, but not having the entire tachometer visible in paddle-shift mode is annoying because you will miss a shift and hit the limiter.
[Mercedes Note: Since Thomas beat me to the punch in writing a full review, I’ll explain what happened to the infotainment system in my tester, which was a prototype. Dodge’s kind reps thought ahead, started up the Charger Sixpacks, and set their heaters on high before our press drive was set to depart on that wintry morning.
When I got into my car, the interior was about as hot as it would be on a blazing summer day under the sun. That meant everything felt like it would burn my hand. I ended up turning the heat off and opening the window to cool things down. As I waited, I noticed that the infotainment display had apparently overheated, and its function degraded to the point where any command, from turning the volume up one notch to opening the keyboard to punch in an address, took a full three minutes to actually go through.
The screen was like this for about 30 minutes, and at its worst, it locked up entirely. For a moment, any control that went through the screen was entirely unavailable, even if it had a physical button. I only regained control of the screen by sitting in the shade with cold air blowing in the cabin.
To be fair to Dodge, none of the other journalists complained of this issue. Also, this was a prototype car. Still, it was weird.]
Three Things To Know About The 2026 Dodge Charger Six Pack Scat Pack
- Rear-wheel-drive mode serves up all the dumb fun you could possibly want.
- It weighs 455 pounds more than the old V8-powered Charger Scat Pack, and you can feel it.
- It’s weirdly cramped inside for such an enormous car.
Does The Dodge Charger Sixpack Scat Pack Fulfil Its Purpose?
Sort of. If you can get comfortable in the driver’s seat, it’s a wonderful long-distance freeway cruiser with plenty of power, a reasonably compliant ride, and it’ll let you do all the antisocial stuff you’d buy a Dodge Charger for in the first place. However, the Charger Sixpack Scat Pack is also so incredibly compromised. From the high floor to the hefty curb weight to the mildly infuriating tech interface to the weirdly uncomfortable steering wheel, you’ll have to live with some serious downsides if you want a straight-six Charger in your driveway.
Then there’s the matter of price. In America, it starts at $57,985, but my test car came with roughly $10,000 in options. The Plus group is the big one, adding an enormous list of equipment including ventilated seats, wireless phone charging, a power hatch, a 360-degree camera system, and a whole bunch of nice interior plastics. The carbon trim and suede highback seats run an extra $2,095, the glass roof an additional $1,395, the Alpine sound system an extra $1,395, and the Bludicrous paint an extra $695. It’s hard to recommend this experience optioned up to nearly $68,000, but closer to the $57,985 base price, there’s an argument to be made here for a big family-friendly hatchback that isn’t a crossover.
In Canada, where the Charger is built, things are different. The Sixpack Scat Pack starts at $72,390, and simply ticking the Plus group box makes the Charger Sixpack Scat Pack more expensive than a BMW M340i, which is a better car in almost every regard. You lose the hatch and some rear seat legroom by going German in this instance, but you gain a vastly more comfortable driving position, better fuel economy, better handling, a more legible gauge cluster, normal door handles, and more confident braking, all while maintaining the same off-the-mark punch and gaining an inch of rear headroom.
Really, the biggest problem with the Charger Sixpack Scat Pack is design. If it had a meaningfully lower floor than the electric model and a lower false floor in the trunk, it would be markedly more practical and thus far easier to justify. Likewise, if the steering wheel’s rim were made out of round stock and the steering column extended closer to the driver, it would be more comfortable. I don’t envy the jobs of the engineers who made this thing fun to throw around because that must’ve been a herculean task. Unfortunately, a bit of slidey turbocharged fun can’t quite make up for the Charger’s daily limitations at this sort of asking price.
What’s The Punctum Of The Dodge Charger Sixpack Scat Pack?
A reasonably strong powertrain only goes so far.
Top graphic image: Thomas Hundal
This strikes me as the result of clumsily just doing more instead of doing things well.
More power, more styling, more marketing, more curb weight, more MORE MOAR MACHO, and not enough basic engineering and platform planning.
The name is stupid. In my lexicon, “scat” is animal shit. It just is. I don’t even need to read into an acronym, the word is there in full and has an established dictionary meaning.
And sixpack? Abs or beer, you may ask. “Dude, that’s the whole joke! Ain’t it AWESOME!”. Yeah, yeah, yeah, two kinds of puerile masculinity rolled into one. Nice work, Dodge, you know your market. Except maybe they don’t. We’ll see if a turbo six and the joke of a seating position can get the dude-bros to sign on the line.
Thank you for using the correct opossum (for North America). I also would have accepted ‘possum with ‘ standing in for the o. The opossum may also correctly be used in a comparison with the Charger’s looks (or lack there of).
possums without the ‘possum apostrophe are so apocryphal they might cause a ‘possum apocalypse with their apostrophe-less possum apostasy.
I didn’t drive it but I was checking out an R/T with zero options at a dealer. I don’t need power seats or leather but this car had neither at $50,000. At that price I flipping expect them. I’m 6 feet tall and couldn’t find a comfortable position. You described the ergonomics perfectly.
Other than early-onset understeer, it seems like the powertrain and suspension engineers did a better job than the interior decorators. I feel a certain empathy for what they had to do with a compromised platform and probably a compressed timeline.
I drove the Daytona and it was well-balanced, moving the powertrain’s mass from the floor to the nose certainly spawned major handling challenges with mostly-unchanged geometry.
Holy Fat Bastard! This thing is 1,000 pounds heavier than a new Mustang GT.
It’s 1000 pounds heavier than a Crown Vic.
Holy Fat Bastard! it weighs the same as a 4Runner TRD-Offroad!!!
Fun facts based around the current 787bb content. The Charger is 1.6x longer, 1.45x wider, 1.3x taller and 3x heavier than an AZ-1
Just came to say I saw my first new Charger yesterday!
I live in a major metro area.
I don’t think they’re selling well.
I’ve seen more Zs than new Chargers and, though the Z has been on sale longer, the Charger should be selling far greater volumes.
I still don’t think i’ve seen a new Z. I have definitely seen more id.buzzs than I have seen new chargers and z’s combined. (That’s still less than four.)
I’ve only just started seeing id.Buzzs in fair numbers (like, maybe a 1/2 dozen). Probably double that of Zs (including in winter in VT). I’ve seen around 4 Chargers. I actually saw a Tesla Cybercab yesterday. I didn’t even know they were operating in MA or for sale here or whatever is going on there. I think it’s one of those rare cars that look better in photos.
I don’t get that close to Boston, and stick to the coastal roads on my commute from my far northern suburb to a less northern coastal suburb.
I still see many expensive cars on my route and (more Panameras than I care to count, a few 911s, close to half dozen Grenadiers and usually at least two Ferraris when it’s nice out.)
If a car is new and interesting (and especially if it’s cheap so the blueblood neighbors don’t talk shyte about them for showing money), it’s odd that it doesn’t turn up on my regular routes.
I don’t go to Boston anymore, but I drive around New England for work.
I saw my first one as well, 2 days ago, in this fetching blue. It was parked, like a beached whale.
Paint that bad boy in Busch Light livery and watch them fly off the lot!
About the Price.
Everyone bitches about Dodge’s prices, without realizing it’s a feature, not a bug.
Let’s say your credit card debt is out of control a bit and you are upside-down on a car that is getting a bit long in the tooth.
You can do one of 3 things:
Looking at a local dealership, they are offering new cars for $5k+ less than MSRP. The bank will finance a car all the way to MSRP at a fairly low interest rate. So, trade in your upside-down car, pay off your credit card and get a new car with a warranty with a payment that is less than what your current car payment and min on the credit card.
I’ve seen people do that for Chrysler products for my entire adult life. It’s a “nearly broke middle class” way to consolidate debt and get a car out of it.
If you look at the prices of new Mopars after the rebates, factory to dealer incentives and the like, the pricing makes sense. Like a local place wants $44k for a new 2026 Scat Pack EV ($62k MSRP). $62k is insane for that car. $44k? Seems like a good price.
This is just a weird note about lending because I was thinking about this the other day. I bought my Miata in 07 before everything fell apart. My wife did not say no, but she also had not said yes.
To avoid flagging the transaction to her attention by taking the money out of our account, I got an online car loan. I found an online lender that I had no prior relationship with and the money was in my account in a day or two. It was ~10k (16k today) at 1.5%, no prepayment penalty and entirely unsecured. I got the clear title in my name from the start with no recorded lien.
I paid it off after the dust settled.
In case anyone is wondering how irresponsible lending had become before the crash, that is where we were. That doesn’t even mention that the credit cards in my wallet could have been combined to purchase a new Ferrari on four cards or a new S Class on two cards. I am not saying I could have paid those balances off, but the limits were there.
The worse I’ve seen was in the buildup to 2008. I was house shopping a couple years before and went to the bank for a pre-approval. I was approved for a no money down loan for something like 5+ times my income. I had no real credit history. A couple credit cards I wasn’t behind with regularly and a recent car loan.
My wife and I looked at the payments on and there was no way in the world we could have swung payments on a house of that price. When we went house shopping, nobody understood why we weren’t shopping for a house right on the limit of what we could get a loan for. Our real estate agent told us that she knew people in a bank and could get us a bigger loan without any problems if we found a house we loved. We got a house that was about 1/3 what we were approved for based on what we thought we could afford and not what the bank felt we could.
When the collapse happened in 2008, the biggest shock was that it took so long to occur.
I bought in 2004, and I was shopping for either a townhouse with a garage or a single family with a decent driveway. The projects were really the reason for the house shopping.
I figured out what we could afford (even allowing for an employment interruption) and looked for the cheapest thing around which wasn’t that cheap at the time (~$300k was a busted house with at least one major issue like a roof or foundation).
The mortgage guy I was dealing with was actually upset because I wasn’t interested in a larger loan. He was very much pushing the 5/1 interest-only ARMs, insisting I would build equity very quickly and refinancing would be no problem and would gladly approve me for a multiple of my budget on that type of loan.
I wish I had known how to bet against the housing market at that point, because my zero down 80/20 loan meant I had my down payment money available.
It feels like a conspiracy theory, but FCA being a financing house that produces what are nominally valuable cars as part of the process is weirdly believable and explains a lot about their lineup.
If you do that, just make sure you get GAP
That thing is fugly.
They’re better in person. Still not great, just… better.
Can we get it optioned with a muffler that almost gets rid of the sound entirely so that we can add back in the Fratzonic exhaust? Asking for a friend….
Calling a 2-door muscle car a “big family-friendly hatchback” is a bit of a stretch. I haven’t seen many Chargers with kid car seats in the back.
You must be a younger gen than me. Two door family cars were all the rage in the 70’s. Monte Carlo, Thunderbird, Cordoba, Grand Prix, Cougar, Charger, among others. All carried kids in the back. We were flexible. No stupid car seats needed.
I have only seen one charger and I just saw it yesterday.
Also, I think Charger owners still go by 80’s rules and the kids just roll around in the hatch playing with Hotwheels. There will be no child seats.
Do they make a four-door version of this? Not that I would want it.
Yes the charger is available as both a 2 and 4 door hatchback these days. No challengers available.
If I wanted to spend 70k on a American turbo 6 car, I think I’d get a Ct4 Blackwing
That MPG is the same as my 2010 RX-8.
This car is knocking on the door of being a a whole RX7 heavier than an RX8.
I propose that, from here on out, we weigh things in numbers of RX-7s. 🙂
But are we going to be generous and weigh them in fully-optioned FC cabriolets, or are we going to be ruthless and weigh them in early FB’s?
There is no reason on earth a two door car should break 5000lbs with only one person in the driver seat. I want to be disappointed in dodge for this, but I think I don’t’ have any expectations for anything from them anymore. This is what is supposed to be worth what I’m assuming will be $1000 a month?
Especially one without an EV battery. My CTS-V is 3800 lbs with proper airbags, crash ratings, and a V8.
My Colorado ZR2 diesel is ~4715 lbs, so this thing is still 100 lbs heavier.