PHOENIX—Dodge gave its development team a relatively simple brief for the new Charger: It had to look, drive, and sound like a traditional Dodge muscle car. “If we don’t make people uncomfortable, where are we going,” asked Matt McAleer, Dodge and SRT’s CEO. And you can see what he means: customers will have a choice of battery-electric or, from next year, an inline-six gasoline engine. For now, there is no throbbing V8 version, and those options will surely make some Dodge muscle car purists a little uncomfortable.
But the new car certainly looks the part. According to Scott Krueger, vice president for exterior design at Dodge, the stylists’ aimed for “heritage, not retro,” and they achieved that with a sedan shape that certainly evokes the classic 1968 Charger without directly copying any of its lines. It’s a car that looks great in the metal, and features like the LED strip of daylight running lights and the so-called “R-wing” at the front ensure that the design feels thoroughly modern and not a pastiche.
The Charger Daytona name is just for the BEV variant—when the straight-six Charger debuts next year it won’t be a Daytona.
Credit:
Jonathan Gitlin
It’s not exactly compact, though—at 206.9 inches (5,248 mm) long, 78.1 inches (2,028 mm) wide, and 58.9 inches (1,497 mm) tall, the Charger was built with American roads (and parking spaces) in mind, and is in fact 2 inches (50 mm) wider than the outgoing Charger Hellcat widebody.
The payoff is a huge amount of interior space and, thanks to a 121-inch (3,074 mm) wheelbase, room for two full-size adults in the back seat. This shouldn’t be a surprise: Next year, Dodge introduces a four-door version of the Charger, which keeps the same dimensions as the two-door you see here.
The interior looks as good as the outside. The doors and dash are backlit via LEDs (that allow you to pick your own preferred hue from a choice of 64), which amplifies the sense of the interior space. And yet, from the driver’s seat, you feel happily cosseted in place. As already mentioned, four adults really can fit in comfort inside the Charger, and its practicality is further enhanced by the hatchback that gives you access to the cargo area.
