The Dodge Durango Just Declared Its Immortality

In the uncertain year of 2025, sometimes the best thing to do is wait. Wait until tariffs threats are paused; wait to push out a new electrified model since nobody knows what EV credits will look like in the near future; wait to buy a used car because if what you’re driving ain’t broke, you might as well hang onto it. While automakers themselves waiting on future plans will leave us with older new cars than we may be used to, that strategy is getting us at least another year of being able to buy a brand new 710-horsepower Dodge Durango Hellcat, and that feels like something worth celebrating.

Meanwhile, Tesla probably hasn’t been given the amount of CEO time it deserves, and because of slipping sales and profits, it could start to look like a bit of a meme stock. I mean, it’s always had a difficult-to-justify sky-high market cap, but what’s actually stopping the mask of fundamentals from coming off?

At the same time, the next hiccup in the silly trade war could relate to magnets. No big deal, until you realize they’re in your wheel speed sensors, transmission, throttle body, and dozens of other places. Oh, and Ford’s built another unhinged Mach-E.

All this coming up on today’s edition of The Morning Dump.

America’s Last Hemi Muscle Car Is An SUV

In the aftermath of former Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares’ gross misreading of the North American market, things aren’t looking too rosy at Dodge. The Challenger is dead, the Charger is currently an electric vehicle with a six-cylinder model coming later, the Hornet is an Alfa Romeo, but the Durango? It’s the last torchbearer of the Hemi that isn’t a heavy duty truck, and we were all wrong when we predicted that 2024 would be its last model year.

Not only is the Dodge Durango rolling into 2026 firing on all eight cylinders, Dodge is actually giving it some new wheel options and expanding availability of the 5.7-liter Hemi V8. Beneath the Tow & Go package that bundles a bunch of SRT styling and chassis goodies with the R/T’s 5.7-liter V8 sits a new Durango R/T Blacktop Redline package that fills an appearance and price niche. With SRT-style spoilers, 20-inch wheels, and enough black-and-red accenting to make that one scene kid you went to middle school with jealous, and the Blacktop Redline package is also available on the V6 Durango for angsty frugal types.

More interestingly, the Durango SRT Hellcat is still on. Like Kenny from “South Park,” Dodge has repeatedly tried to kill it off, first by making it a one-model-year-only proposition, then with “Last Call” editions, but it’s sticking around for 2026, more than a decade after this 700-plus-horsepower monster of a V8 debuted in the Challenger and Charger.

Of course, details on the top trim are sparse for now, but we can tell you that the V8 Durango will cost $51,990 for the 2026 model year, and that actually seems like a fair deal. It’s nice three-row crossover money, but isn’t the power of a V8 Durango a luxury all its own?

Could Tesla Become A Meme Stock?

Throughout talk of Tesla’s 2025 sales slide and what’s next for the company, there’s one thought that isn’t leaving my head. Even if Elon Musk sticks around forever as CEO, and even if hypothetically no new retail product comes down the pipeline, so long as the company doesn’t declare insolvency it’s going to be sticking around in a considerable capacity, even with cooling consumer sentiment especially strong internationally.

Up in Canada, J.D. Power reports that only 13 percent of EV shoppers would consider a Tesla, compared to 29 percent last year as per Automotive News. Given Musk’s involvement with the Trump administration, which has threatened to annex Canada, it’s not exactly surprising that Canadians aren’t incredibly warm toward the brand.

Of course, price hikes certainly don’t help, but changing public sentiment has opened doors for other manufacturers. The big winner on brand perception according to the study is Hyundai, but we’ll have to see how that’s reflected in sales reports once more recent figures drop.

At the same time, there’s a good chance that Tesla will continue to be beaten out in China. The brand sold roughly 58,000 EVs over there in April according to registration data, and while we don’t have an official figure for May yet, BYD just posted 204,369 EVs sold domestically that month. That’s quite a delta to close. Moving on to a smaller market, Reuters reports that Tesla’s sales last month in Sweden fell 53.7 percent year-over-year. Granted, Sweden’s not a massive market (and in some countries Tesla sales are up), but Sweden isn’t exactly a one-off.

Anyway, Tesla’s stock is up 20 percent over the past month despite flagging international sales and sentiment, and an aging lineup. So what gives? Well, news of Musk stepping away from DOGE and early robotaxi regulatory approval likely play a role, but as much as Wall Street analysts like to go on about fundamentals, at some point, certain stocks are vibe-based. Think GameStop and Bed Bath and Beyond for extreme examples. Over roughly the past decade-and-a-half, Tesla built so much hype that just about everyone bought in. Pension funds, ETFs, normal people with Fidelity accounts — we’re talking more than 3.2 billion outstanding shares. That’s serious circulation, which means a lot of people have a lot to lose. Common sense dictates that the earlier shareholders sell, the less they lose, as the balance of supply and demand tips quickly during a sell-off, but nobody wants to fold yet because the stock itself has become uncomfortably load-bearing.

Thus, we’ve ended up in this position where Tesla’s market cap is divorced from what an automaker Tesla’s size with an aging lineup typically boasts, but nobody bats an eye. At this point, it’s pretty obvious Tesla is the closest thing Musk has to his own memecoin, valued not for what it actually stands for, but the dream it represents. Of course, I could be wrong and the Robotaxi gamble might actually work, but consumer demand for privately owned autonomous vehicles is generally untested, so nobody really knows how that will shake out if the tech comes to fruition. 

Magnets. How Do They Work?

We are, what, three months? Five months? One hundred and eleventy months into this trade war, and when it comes to how impulsive salvos might affect the automotive industry, we may want to keep an eye out for a new potential issue. See, there’s a small chance the next hiccup in new car supply might not be falling vehicle exports or hyperinflation, but magnets. Yes, magnets.

As Reuters reports, China processes more than 90 percent rare earth magnets on, um, Earth, and now that the country’s administration has placed vastly strengthened export restrictions on minerals as part of the ongoing trade war, Western companies that build car parts that use these magnets could be up a certain type of creek without means of propulsion.

“Without reliable access to these elements and magnets, automotive suppliers will be unable to produce critical automotive components, including automatic transmissions, throttle bodies, alternators, various motors, sensors, seat belts, speakers, lights, motors, power steering, and cameras,” the Alliance for Automotive Innovation wrote the Trump administration.

Both Alliance CEO John Bozzella and MEMA CEO Bill Long told Reuters the situation was not resolved and remained a concern. They expressed gratitude for the Trump administration’s high-level engagement to prevent disruption to U.S. auto production and the supply chain.

The dissonance of that last paragraph might be amusing, but it seems like it may be working. On Friday, China agreed to lift mineral export restrictions to U.S. companies, although we still don’t quite know how fast that will happen or if it’s already too late to avoid interruptions at American suppliers and assembly plants. Bosch already stated that its suppliers are bogged down, but that’s only one example, and total impact on new vehicle production is unclear.

Even The Race Cars Are Crossovers Now

Alright, that’s enough doom and gloom, time to pivot toward something lighter. For the past four years, Ford has sold an electric crossover called the Mustang Mach-E and it’s good. Sure, it might not be class-leading on specs, but it’s overall an excellent car. The one pictured above isn’t quite like any Mach-E you’ll find on a showroom floor though. It’s made for one thing and one thing only: The mountain.

The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb in Colorado is one of the all-time greats, stretching 12.42 miles over a 4,720-foot climb. It’s a mesmerizing, restrictions-lax place for automakers to test prototype technologies and racers to soar, and as you’d expect from the elevation change, fast EVs excel here. Thus, Ford’s built a fully race car Mach-E that only bears a passing resemblance to the crossover you and I could buy, instead following in the footsteps of mental one-offs like the SuperVan 4.2 and F-150 Lightning SuperTruck. While the camouflage isn’t off yet, expect to see more soon, as racing legend Romain Dumas takes it up the mountain later this month. Doesn’t it just look cool?

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

Today, I’m not listening to a song, but rather, a collection of unhinged producer tags courtesy of DJ Smokey.

The Big Question

With news of the Durango sticking around in its current form for another model year, what’s another car you reckon probably doesn’t need replacing just yet?

Top graphic credit: Dodge