Remember the early days of the new-generation Charger, its 2006 launch, and how much grumping people did over the idea that it wasn’t a coupe? Today, the modern four-door Charger has lasted longer than the original B-body coupes it shares a name with. It’s such a quaint argument today, in the face of its imminent demise.
The Widebody-equipped Charger Scat Pack, its 485-hp 6.4-liter naturally aspirated V-8, and its 3.5-inch-wider body have been around for a few years now. It’s changed little: 0-60 times in 4.3 seconds, 12.4-second quarter miles, an eye-opening .98 g on the skidpad. The extra width allows 305/35ZR20 Pirelli tires and 20 x 11-inch forged-aluminum wheels on all corners, along with six-piston Brembo front brakes (with two-piece front rotors) and suspension upgrades like Bilstein three-mode adaptive damping. The power is more than enough to put traffic in your mirror when the light goes green — even a gentle toe on the throttle will send you hurtling forth — and cornering is sharp enough to get around Grandma Ciera and her timid attempt at merging onto an on-ramp. The mandatory eight-speed automatic, left to its own devices, is happy to hold gears under WOT — but will spring through the first half of its gearset in seconds under gentler conditions.
Photo by Jeff Koch
It’s everything you’ve come to expect from a Charger. Comfy seats designed for large American frames. Brembo brakes that stop you dead from freeway speeds while behaving themselves around town. An exhaust note that’s actually pretty mellow at idle — unless you’re standing outside the car, like your neighbors who have suddenly stopped talking to you. The 121-inch wheelbase allows a near-limo-like ride over all but the most truck-rutted pavement (hello, SR95 South between Baghdad, Arizona, and Kingman, Arizona), and while you never don’t feel its heft in the corners, the notion that a car so big can feel so nimble remains a pleasure — and not a little astonishing.
It hasn’t changed much, maybe in part because it hasn’t had to. What’s here is terrific fun. Also, there are no other competitive domestic sedans to speak of: Ford stopped spitting out Crown Vics for grandpa in 2009 (and for the police in 2011), and the Holden-built Chevrolet SS split town half a decade ago. Dodge’s Charger — any Charger, from the basest V-6 to the hairiest Hellcat Redeye — is very much the last of its breed. Whether it’s any good or not is almost beside the point; luckily for the car-buying public, it is. The Dodge Charger Scat Pack Widebody Hemi Orange edition is a fun piece of four-wheeled hooliganism, backed by a payment plan and a warranty booklet.
Photo by Jeff Koch
Our Scat Pack Charger started at $47,385 — less than $100 per horsepower — but was optioned up to $64,635 including the $1,595 delivery charge. How? The Scat Pack Widebody package is $5,995 (pricing unchanged since the package launched on Challengers in 2018, so… bargain?) and seems worth it; other Chargers look base and naked and narrow and tall without the flares. Pirelli tires are included in the package, but our test car’s three-season P-Zero 305/35ZR20 rubber is an additional $695 — they felt great when the sun was out, but we felt slightly adrift driving in the rain as we hydroplaned our way out of town. The worthwhile Plus Group gathers a bunch of interior-convenience options, from ventilated seats to a tilt-and-telescoping steering column, for $2,095. Adding $1,595 for the Carbon/ Suede interior package (just a suede headliner and a handful of “Real Carbon Fiber interior accents”) remains a less convincing way to spend your cash. The $890 Driver Convenience group, complementing the HID headlamps with a set of locking lug nuts, just sounds silly. For $995, the Navigation and Travel Package also includes five years of Sirius/XM, and we’d have to have a car without the 19-speaker Harmon Kardon Audio Group to determine whether it’s worth the $1,795 asking price. Battleship grey paint — sorry, “Smoke Show” — was $95. (Really?) A bunch of the spiffs listed in the Hemi Orange package already came in the Plus Group: ventilated power front chairs with two-way lumbar for the passenger, heated rear seats, and rear-seat armrests with illuminated cupholders from the Plus group. You’re essentially paying $1,500 for orange stitching and accents, plus the over-the-top stripe. It’s not numbered — the big 392 on the instrument panel and front fenders doesn’t count. Will Dodge build few enough that it’s worth it, either now, or 30 years down the road through the Hemmings classifieds?
Photo by Jeff Koch
It may not be a bad play. I’ve gotten more thumbs-up in this pavement-grey Charger than I did in either of the two poppin’ blue Hellcat-powered Chargers I had previously. All of those thumbs were attached to 50-plus-year-old hands, save for one 12-year-old boy who called this Dodge his dream car. Are they aware it’s going away? Are they responding to some sort of a statement that, in the face of imminent automotive electrification, I’m throwing my weight behind good old-fashioned dino-juice power? Do they know? Do they care? Or did the old duffs throwing thumbs-up simply like the orange stripe and badges?
The shame of it all is that the Charger isn’t disappearing because it’s not selling well. Rather, as Stellantis (Dodge’s latest international conglomerate of an owner) keeps its eye on 2030 — just seven years away now — when new internal-combustion cars will stop selling in Europe, it needs to develop electric-powered vehicles and get them ready for prime-time. Presumably the assembly process isn’t flexible enough to handle both electric and internal-combustion cars on the same line, or else surely these cash cows would continue until they were legislated out of existence.
Regardless, all of the angry message-board posts and hand-wringing over the Charger being a sedan is suddenly a little beside the point when 1) there’s a Challenger to suit the two-door need, 2) Dodge somehow did just fine with a Charger sedan, and 3) they’re both going away at the end of the model year. Shame it took killing the platform to do it.
