Review of 2015 Dodge Challengers

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. — As cars age, the market usually ignores them. There’s nothing new, nothing fresh, nothing exciting about a car that looks like one more goose in the flock of off-lease geese that have migrated to the used ponds. Entering its eighth year, the Dodge Challenger should be a dead duck.

But while Dodge sold 17,423 Challengers in 2008 (when the nameplate, famous in the early 1970s, was resurrected), it found homes for 43,119 in 2012 and 51,462 in 2013. Through the end of this August, even amid reports of major updates to come for 2015, Dodge managed to push 34,757 of the coupes out of its coop. For a niche vehicle — the largest two-door car still built in North America — that’s a success.

So, for 2015 Dodge has significantly revised the Challenger line without changing the basic engineering or messing too much with the car’s perfectly proportioned appearance. Except, that is, for one lunatic new version called the SRT Hellcat.

Powered by a new supercharged 6.2-liter version of the Hemi V8 rated at a stupefying 707 horsepower, the Hellcat is antisocial in the way that junior high boys daydream about cars in study hall. It’s ridiculously loud, spectacularly vulgar and decadent in how it turns copious amounts of fuel into crass automotive entertainment.

But let’s start with the basics.

The current Challenger was conceived as an 11/10ths scale homage to the first-generation Challenger introduced as a 1970 model. As such, it cleaved closely to the styling of that car, including a wide-mouth grille and taillights that swept in one red plastic slash across the tail.

The born-again Challenger went seven years without significant changes, and when Dodge decided to make the first notable styling tweaks, it drew on the 1971 Challenger, which was only slightly different from the first model year, for inspiration. The designers divided the grille into two oblong elements bracketed by new LED headlamps, and they split the taillights into separate right and left LED units. Changes don’t come more superficial than that.

But there are more noteworthy improvements under the skin.

First, a new electronically controlled 8-speed automatic transmission is offered on all versions. Based on a design by ZF of Germany and built at a Chrysler plant in Indiana, the gearbox has been named TorqueFlite as if the 1960s never ended. In the base 6-cylinder Challenger SXT, it replaces a 5-speed automatic as the base transmission. Heavy-duty versions of that gearbox are optional on V8 models, whose base gearbox is a 6-speed manual.

Second, a redesigned interior is built around an oversize center console, a redesigned instrument cluster and an 8.4-inch touch screen. The console and instrumentation are easier to use and read than before, and all of the interior materials seem of higher quality. But the touch screen in all three preproduction Challengers that I tested froze up several times and integrated poorly with my iPhone 5S. Let’s hope these gremlins have been chased from regular production cars.

Finally, there are upgrades ranging from electric power steering to newly available technologies like a forward collision warning system, adaptive cruise control and blind spot monitoring — keeping-up-with-the-Benzes stuff.

Based on the same rear-drive vehicle architecture that underpins the Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger four-door sedans, the Challenger has a 116-inch wheelbase — same as behemoths like the new Chevrolet Tahoe S.U.V. and the 1977 Oldsmobile Delta 88. The Challenger is appreciably larger than the Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang with which it’s often compared. It is not, however, much roomier inside.

Sheer bulk defines the Challenger driving experience no matter what engine is under the hood. Even the lightest version weighs over 3,800 pounds, and most are more than two tons. The car’s Mercedes-derived all-independent suspension — an artifact from those brief halcyon days when Chrysler and Mercedes were corporate cousins — is supple, but this isn’t a car for blasting along canyon roads or weekend track days. It’s a comfortable cruiser built to chase horizons.

The best-selling Challenger has been the base SXT. Starting at $27,990 it’s reasonably priced, and the 8-speed is a big improvement. The closely spaced lower gear ratios and overdrive in both seventh and eighth help the unchanged 3.6-liter V6 to operate near peak efficiency all of the time. With 305 horsepower, the SXT is not a particularly quick car, but at highway cruising speeds the engine quietly operates at barely more than idle. Beyond a sweeter driving experience, the new transmission raises the SXT’s ratings to 19 m.p.g. in town and 30 on the highway, up from 18/27 for the 2014 model.

What the SXT doesn’t deliver is much excitement. And that’s what the V8 versions deliver best.

While the Challenger R/T has a 375-horsepower 5.7-liter V8, I drove the R/T Scat Pack with a 485-horse 6.4-liter V8. With resonators in the dual exhaust system adding a growling vibrato, the Scat Pack Challenger (starting at $39,490) is always making amazing sounds.

With my 13-year-old daughter beside me one Saturday afternoon, I revved the 6.4-liter Hemi while crawling through downtown Santa Barbara as a pack of Harley-Davidson motorcycles passed in the opposite direction. Their revving response resulted in a symphonic explosion of internal combustion; a wallop of sound that practically shook the cups off the shelves at Handlebar Coffee Roasters.

For a moment, my daughter thought I was almost tolerable.

The Scat Pack’s horsepower rating seems modest only in comparison with the outrageous Hellcat. With a relatively light clutch, easy gear changes from the 6-speed manual and a slick, easily modulated throttle, the Scat Pack instinctively nudges toward absurd velocities. There’s nothing socially responsible about the Scat Pack — it can manage only 14 m.p.g. in town and 23 on the highway, and does much worse when taunting Harleys — but there’s an intoxicating, juvenile spirit to it.

Dodge claims that using the onboard electronic launch control program, a Challenger Scat Pack with the 8-speed automatic can rocket from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in just over 4 seconds and reach 182 m.p.h. That top speed is pointless, of course, but you don’t have to go fast to be entertained.

The Hellcat, which starts at $60,990 including a $2,100 guzzler tax, adds the whine of its screw-type supercharger and another 222 horsepower beyond the Scat Pack. Needing more air than other Challengers, the Hellcat does without the ornamental grille nostrils; instead, the center of the left inner headlight is hollowed to send cold air into the engine. The Hellcat also gets its own hood with a single air scoop and vents alongside to let heat escape. There are no badges or feline graphics to announce that this is the Hellcat. Instead, the word Supercharged appears in low-key block letters on each front fender.

Vastly less expensive than other cars with so much power, the Hellcat also lacks some of their sophistication. The 700-horsepower Lamborghini Aventador, for example, has all-wheel drive and huge rear tires that are 335 millimeters (13.2 inches) wide. In contrast, the Hellcat is rear-drive, with tires just 275 millimeters (10.8 inches) wide. Keep the traction control on and the Hellcat is manageable, but if you turn it off you’re more likely to vaporize the tires than launch the car.

Car and Driver tested a 4,488-pound Challenger Hellcat with the automatic transmission. Using its race-style launch control, the car rocketed to 60 m.p.h. in just 3.6 seconds and completed the quarter-mile in 11.7 seconds at 126 m.p.h. That is supercar-level performance.

But I drove the Hellcat with the blunderbuss 6-speed stick shift and its accompanying heavy clutch. Unpleasant and hard to shift, this is the version that Edmunds.com tested at 4.8 seconds to 60 m.p.h., with a quarter-mile run in 12.8 seconds at 118.4 m.p.h. Still quick, but short of epic.

As spectacular as its horsepower number may be, the Hellcat ultimately feels like a stunt. It’s a big stick for people who care about big sticks, and not whether they can be used for anything. The car may be terrific fun for a while, but the novelty wears off. While I had the car, rolling up more than 400 easy freeway miles along with the occasional irresistible burnout, it returned a miserable 13.2 m.p.g.

The biggest problem for the Hellcat — besides its need for bigger tires — is that the R/T Scat Pack is a better, less expensive car. It looks virtually the same, is tremendously quick, is just as accommodating of minor middle-age misbehavior and is much easier to live with. It’s the Challenger I enjoyed driving the most.

The appeal of the Challenger remains nostalgic and adolescent. It looks like, and is louder than, an old muscle car; it has the same big gaps between body panels. And even in V6 form it’s faster than virtually all the old classic muscle cars. It isn’t so much a car as a prop for its owners’ daydreams of outrunning every Rosco P. Coltrane and Buford T. Justice in the South. That fantasy never made much sense, but there has always been a market for it.