Base models of the Nixon-era Dodge Challengers took the phrase entry level to pejorative new depths. 2800 of your 1970 dollars bought a Challenger coupe with manual steering and unassisted drum brakes that had 14-inch steel wheels bolted to them. Gauges included a speedometer and a big, black plate where the tach — or even the optional clock — should be. The rear quarter windows could move up and down, had their regulators not been removed and their tracks bolted in the up position. The cigarette lighter was an option, as was the dual-tone horn and day/night rearview mirror.
It flies in the face of countless Mopar magazines, but fewer than a quarter of vintage Challengers were the performance R/T models. The majority of them were motivated by a 110-horsepower "slant six" or a 190-horsepower small-block V-8. Most of those had hubcaps. Many of them had vinyl roofs. There were eighteen colors available, but those included four shades of beige, three light blues, and three muted greens. So when Dodge decided to introduce the 2008 Challenger as a fully loaded fire-breather with a 425-horsepower V-8, we had to wonder just what model's heritage it was celebrating.
All that has changed with Dodge's release of the full Challenger lineup for 2009. The new model year sees the introduction of an entry-level SE model with a V-6 — the same 3.5-liter SOHC plucked from passenger duty in Charger and 300 models — and an R/T model with a revised 5.7-liter Hemi V-8. The V-6 produces 250 horsepower and 250 pound-feet of torque, a gain of 40 horsepower and 10 pound-feet over its closest competitor (for now, anyway), the V-6 Ford Mustang. The engine may not seem monumental in a 3720-pound machine, but in a four-door Charger cop car it's faster than the V-8 Crown Victoria Interceptor.
Drop the shifter into Drive and the transmission will let you brake-torque it without pitching a fit. The V-6 hooks up gingerly — traction control, stability control, and ABS are optional on the SE, but you won't really need them to get the car out of the hole unless you're witless. Chrysler says to expect 60 mph to roll up in 7.8 seconds and the quarter-mile to pass in sixteen flat at a leisurely 90 mph, figures that sync with our finely calibrated butt dynos. Once it gets rolling, though, the automatic will bang off quick downshifts and the V-6 has enough juice to thread the big coupe through traffic without breathing heavily. But before you go wailing on it, be sure to turn up the radio — with a single, tipless exhaust and an intake system designed to hush its way down the road, the 3.5-liter mill sounds as burly as Clay Aiken on estrogen supplements.
Unfortunately, the high points stop there. To ensure the V-6 model wasn't too much of a performer, Dodge fit it with low-end P215/65R17 Goodyear Integrity all-season tires, which squidge their way around corners when asked to bite in and bray like a steer in a rut when pushed further. They're mounted up to steel wheels with bolt-on covers (there's that heritage!), which cover a quartet of single-piston calipers and 12.6-inch rotors — vented up front and solid out back. We'd love to tell you that the Challenger SE is actually a standout performer despite it all, but Dodge wouldn't let us flog the V-6 models they had on hand. Parse that however you like.
Philosophers will love the Challenger SE's interior, because it's a great exercise in duality: It's simultaneously everything that is right and wrong with Chrysler. Designers spec'd materials that are better than anything else Chrysler currently offers; parts that drivers' arms come into contact with are padded with a soft vinyl overlay, and the switchgear moves with the tactile pleasure of an expensive computer keyboard. Those bits are great, and they're shared across the entire Challenger lineup. When you get to the parts that are specific to the base model, you feel like the car is sniggering at you for being a cheap-ass. The center stack is a single piece of shiny silver plastic surrounding a black corporate brick of a radio. The steering wheel is the headless stickman that's fitted across the Dodge lineup — NASCAR–big and molded in rubber. The gearshift lacks a manumatic feature, instead using a gated shifter that shunts from third gear directly to Low, just like a pickup truck.
Prissy dashstroker complaints aside, the V-6 Challenger SE starts at an attractive $21,995, which is $1200 cheaper than the four-door Charger. For that kind of cheddar, buyers get a car that stays true to the Challenger's roots. And by that, we mean a car without ABS, without traction control, and without stability control even available until you step up to an equipment package. It does, however, buy you one of the most badass-looking cars on the market.
Chrysler expects that a majority of buyers will step up to the $29,995 commanded by the Challenger R/T, the other new model introduced for 2009. The mama bear in the lineup, the R/T bridges the gap between the SE's hair-shirt penance and the SRT8's largesse.
Visually, it shares nearly all of its cues with the SRT8 save a body-color spoiler, 18-inch wheels instead of forged 20s, and the elimination of the SRT's fakey-doo "carbon fiber" hood decal. Fog lights, the polished aluminum filler cap, and the integrated twin exhaust ports all carry over from the R/T's big brother.
Under its twin-snorkel hood, the Challenger R/T's 5.7-liter Hemi V-8 receives variable valve timing courtesy of British design house Mechadyne, which pioneered the VVT system on the Viper SRT10's 8.4-liter V-10. The setup is inscrutably slick, overcoming the major obstacle of overhead-valve engines — namely that an OHV camshaft, by its nature, has the lobes locked in relation to each other.
Collaboration between Chrysler's powertrain team and Mechadyne resulted in a multiple-piece camshaft that consists of two concentric shafts, one inside the other. The hollow outer tube holds the exhaust lobes while an inner shaft drives the intake lobes. A phaser mounted to the nose of the camshaft is able to change the position of the lobes in relation to each other, dynamically changing valve timing according to the needs of the engine at different loads and speeds.
Mated to a Mercedes-designed five-speed automatic, the new Hemi is rated at 372 hp and 401 lb-ft of torque, 32 hp and 11 lb-ft more than the engine made last year. We liked this transmission in the last Charger we tested, and it continues to impress here, with a slick console-shift manumatic that lands under drivers' right hands and is quick to respond — snick it left for a downshift, right to grab a higher gear.
The same engine makes 376 hp and 410 lb-ft, though, when bolted up to the big news for 2009: the Tremec TR6060 six-speed manual. Pilfered from the Viper as well, the gearbox retains all the parts — the triple-cone synchronizers on first and second, and the dual-cone on third through sixth — that make the unit such a brute, with gear ratios tweaked for the slightly heavier Challenger. The Challenger also makes use of a different shift linkage and hydraulic setup for its dual-disc clutch, so the Viper's Massey Ferguson demeanor is nearly eliminated. The same transmission is also available behind the 6.1-liter powerhouse in the SRT8, and in both models the gearbox comes standard with a 9.0-inch limited-slip differential that replaces the weepy brake-torque LSD on the 2008s.
We caned the 5.7-liter Challenger R/T around Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey, and were surprised at the car's balance and general neutrality, even when transitioning from a banked turn to a hard downhill sweeper. When pressed, the Challenger plowed harder than a serf with a solid work ethic, thanks mostly to stability control that couldn't be switched off. So intrusive was the system that Chrysler went back to the drawing board just this past week, adding a full ESP defeat on the R/T.
Challenger R/Ts get 13.6-inch vented front rotors with two-piston calipers, while the rears use the same single-pistons from the SE with vented 12.6-inch discs, the same combination used on the Charger R/T sedan, and the combination feels terrific. Nicely linear in their motion, the two-pot fronts allowed riding the edge of lockup all day, even after filling the car with the boiled-spinach reek of baking pads on more than one occasion.
Throughout, the Challenger's suspension kept an iron grip on stray body motions. The firmer "performance" dampers virtually eliminated dive and squat when going hot into a corner. In fact, during a sprint out of the Garden State and back through the Holland Tunnel, the R/T's composure and ability to mitigate impacts made us wonder why the softer "touring" suspension on the Challenger SE even exists.
The R/T is almost a compelling argument against the SRT8 as well. For ten grand less, the R/T delivers most of the SRT8's thrills in a package that's more tractable. The R/T has better weight distribution (54.7/45.3) than the SRT8 (55.6/44.4), returns better mileage (16/23 versus 13/18), and weighs 130 fewer pounds. The 5.7-liter engine is more playful and willing to rev than the 6.1, and its exhaust more frenetic than dulcet; more Aretha Franklin than the SRT's Etta James. In real-world driving the big-money items that the SRT8 brings to the table — 20-inch wheels, Brembo brakes, bigger bolsters on the seats, and 50 extra horsepower — never get used to their full potential.
In that sense, Dodge has recreated the 1970 Challenger lineup exactly — the low-end cars existed to sell a price point, and the hairy-chested road beasts for those who needed it all, while the best cars to actually drive were the midlevel, sporty V-8s. Has Dodge created a lineup of sports cars? No. They're too much an embodiment of Woodward culture to be anyone's track rat. Are they true to the spirit of the original Challengers? Absolutely.
