Dodge Charger and Challenger to be discontinued...

The slower the expansion of mass production that electric cars get, the more convinced I am that the oil industry has taken over way more than the world's wealthiest governments and their military to protect their "strategic interest" in thwarting mass production of electric cars no longer being clandestine, but a massive crime that they will get convicted for!

As time goes by and the majority of all new car buyers wanting all electric and refusing to buy new gasoline powered cars are forced to wait as the doubling of prices of really old used Prius continues, the more clear it is that fossil fools are deliberately sabotaging the ramping up of electric car production.

 

You can only sell SO many police cruisers, and once all of the nooks, crannies, and carve-outs in the hilariously miss-named "inflation reduction act" are fully explored and exploited then most community LEOs and dot.gov drivers are probably going to be voluntold to start driving EVs anyway.
While I'm super proud to live in a country where somebody can purchase a bone-stock off-the-shelf car with 700+BHP....Hellcats have an MSRP of $68,320.
You can almost buy an electric car for that.
(Well, maybe not THIS year....)

Challengers and Chargers, like Mustangs, Corvettes, and Camaros have always been a niche market.

Like a great many other things in life the fact that Hellcats are about to be discontinued is sorta interesting, but it's probably not due to rheams upon rheams of 'nanny-state' inspired CAFE and pollution standards, since those Mopars probably account for a relatively tiny portion of Stellantis' alleged carbon throughput.
Remember: They also make Jeeps and Rams.
In their worst years, they're going to sell one heckuva lot MORE 4x4's and pickups than those evil, jellybean colored urban rockets that show up in all of those police chase videos.
Fact is.....SRTs never really sold all that well to BEGIN with, and they have the approximate social chic value of an autographed copy of "The Art of THE DEAL."

Besides all of the disadvantages of being "imported from Detroit," the SRT's aren't even close to being the big boyz on the block in the 2020's.
The Blue Oval company is boasting a 760BHP 'pony car' and the bow-tie company has not one, but TWO naturally aspirated cars that approximate Hellcat outputs, with optional models that go well beyond it.

So.....
America hasn't been COMPLETELY automotively emasculated.........yet.

 

Saw a bright orange one today next to me in traffic waiting at a red light.

You could hear it idling over the radio. At the corner was a gas station where the price for a gallon of gas is just under $4.

Maybe it is my age but I don't get the logic of owning that vehicle. Windows were so heavily tinted you could not even see the driver to get a feel for his age.

Being curious I looked up the price of that model Challenger I saw on the internet - over $55,000.- before registration taxes etc.

To each his own, but could find a much better use of $55,000.

 

The Charger didn't remain dead for long. Dodge just unveiled a concept BEV version.
https://www.cleanmpg.com/community/index.php?threads/56970/

The quick bits.

• It will out perform the Hellcat version
• It's an 800V system they are calling Banshee
• Has a multispeed transmission
• A fake exhaust sound that can reach 126 decibels
• Looks like it is a hatchback.

 

Worse... The transmission is designed to fake the jerk of shifting in an old muscle car. How stupid can you get?

 

Napkin drawing....
We'll see what it looks like in a showroom.
Since the next Dodge that I buy would be my very first one, I don't really have a dog in the fight.

Speaking of which....

If you neuter a puppy, it never really knows what it's missing, does it?
For anyone who has ever turned a few gallons of high test and maybe a couple of ounces of rubber into smoke, acceleration, and sweet noise - just giving them a car that has eye-watering acceleration isn't always enough.

Someday, coil guns might probably begin to replace the ones we use today, and on paper there is much to like about them.
Negligible recoil.
Somewhat less noise.
No smoke.
Potential for much greater accuracy.
Potentially MUCH cheaper per-shot cost.

Still.....which one would YOU rather take to the range?
Maybe that's why lots of sport shooters use......PAPER targets.

IYKYK.
IYDYD.

 

I once rented a car that tried to impersonate a muscle car by having a transmission that shifted roughly. It was slower than my Gen 1 Prius on everything except a standing start. I never thought that Ford would make a Mustang that was a dog, but it did.

I can live without fake exhaust noise and jerky transmissions.

And in response to the inference that you have to have lived it... Fastest I've been was 132 MPH in a 1968 Dodge Charger. The fastest I've accelerated (on the ground) was probably the 160 foot dash across a 9 lane divided intersection in less than 5 seconds on a Suzuki GT750. That's about 55 MPH as I exited the intersection. I think I shifted once, but probably not. That bike had a bad habit of lifting the front wheel when up-shifting to second gear while accelerating aggressively.

Off the ground, I believe I was told that I was doing nearly 200 MPH and neg 3 G when I was inverted in a dogfight over the Arizona desert. ** I don't know how that equates to ETC's burning a couple gallons of gas to produce smoke and noise, but it was easily the most thrilling ride of my life.

** Air Combat USA will stage a dogfight for you with your friends. You fly the plane with an "instructor pilot" who ready to take over as needed. They used lasers to simulate machine guns.

 

An inference is a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning.
I made no such conclusion but rather was trying to theorize why a billion dollar company would add a sound and simulate gear shifting for what will essentially be a BEV version of an SRT.

Not judging, either....much.

Personally?
I think I KNOW why the folks in Detroit would go through the effort.....but that's MY mileage.
Other folk's mileage will be "different."
The 'neutered' reference might have seemed to be a little judgemental to some (especially in the 2020's) but I was reminded about the first time I saw a Jag E-type electric conversion and some dude even older than me was nearly in tears that somebody would "cut the nutz off of a car like that!"
Yeah.
I know.
E-types were hangar queens, and even when they were running properly they weren't anything to write home about - but there you have it.
"Typical Toxic Masculinity....."

I've driven old mopars (family member restores them) and I've driven sportscars AND two BEVs.
I own two motorcycles, and I'm saying that FOR ME there's just something missing in a BEV.
It's sorta like how some musicians describe digital music.
It sounds....sorta 'artificial' to some of those folks.

So....I have tinnitus, and thus I can't tell the difference between some old school Marantz amp and some of the newer stuff.
Some day, kids will be tuning up BEVs (cause they'll STILL be Human) and whatever after THAT will be newer, and "better" than whatever my grandkids will be playing with when IT reaches obsolescence.

Circle of life thing.