Farewell to muscle car renaissance: Dodge to discontinue Charger and Challenger in '23
I wasn’t there, but I suppose a century ago, a generation of former horse devotees lamented the onset of the automobile, noting that teens would never know the joy of connecting with a fast, attentive, well-bred animal.
You would race your horses in the streets, grooming and caring for them as if they were porcelain. These new contraptions — fah — unlike a horse, you had limited range and had to plan your route around refueling stations. But what really must have frosted them is that these motorcars were even faster than the best horse in the stable.
If you grew up in the muscle-car era, you know the feeling.
This week the Amsterdam company that owns the Dodge Challenger and Charger brands announced it was terminating the iconic muscle cars to make room for more advanced, cleaner and (gulp) faster electrics.
This is hard to take. If you’re driving a souped up Charger, you don’t want some young, sprouts-eating greennik on your bumper yelling “Get your turtle out of the road, I’ve got places to be!”
I never owned a true muscle car, but I came close twice. It was love at first sight with a c. 1971 canary yellow Plymouth Road Runner, and I would have paid full asking price for a ’69 Pontiac GTO hardtop coupe. But when I went to buy them, neither would start. Well, the Plymouth started eventually, but when it did, it threw out so much smoke that pilots in three neighboring states had to fly on instruments.
That was the dirty secret about muscle cars. Their owners tended to use them hard, and after a few years they were shot. Still, when they were running, there was nothing like them. When you popped the hood, the engine would be there snarling and gurgling and hopping around in the bay as if at any moment it might jump out and run away.
Only when you opened the throttle would they smooth out and send the sheetmetal flying down the strip with that beautiful exhaust note bellowing to all the girls on the side of the road to come with, if they dared.
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It could get dumb, as all things involving youth have a tendency to do. Along with screwing with the timing and bolting on superchargers, we would also “jack up” the vehicle’s rear end, for some reason. Looked cool, I guess.
And, I am not kidding, in 1969 you could buy a model of the GTO called “The Judge” based on a Sammy Davis Jr. character on a television comedy show where he would dress up in a white wig and a black robe running around yelling “Here come da judge.” (As popular catchphrases go, “here come da judge” was second only to “sock it to me.” What can I tell you? It was a stupid time.)
Because of all the drama, these cars seemed faster than they really were, I suppose. Today, a Honda Accord would be just as quick off the line. But “laying rubber” in a front-wheel-drive Camry just doesn’t have the same cache, you know?
The popular press is treating the discontinuation of the Challenger/Charger as the end of an era, but it’s really not. It was over in the 1970s when clean-air standards mandated all sorts of pollution-control equipment, which killed performance.
Today, there’s not a lot of difference between a BMW and a Toyota, and unless you opt for expensive track models, “muscle cars” are basically family sedans in retro skins.
Still, it will be a symbolic loss, at least politically. What are they going to call the replacement model, the Dodge Woke?
It’s sad in a way. No one has a clue how to work on their own engine anymore. And I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone waxing a car. Grease under the fingernails has been replaced by mouse-arm syndrome.
It’s times like this that I feel I’ve outlived my usefulness.
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Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Dodge parent company to end muscle cars in favor of electric vehicles
