A Volkswagen GTI handles well.....you might be happier with that?
Much respect for Dodge having the cajones to keep that brand alive and breathing fire.
Pining for Pontiac...
Dodge - The last and only brand dedicated to thumbing its nose at being conventional and blending in. The question is, will it pay off in the long run and grow, or is Dodge just holding on to a forgotten era only to be ridiculed for their V8's to the point where they will soon find their moniker on a headstone?
If you're expecting an expansion of Hellcat then save maybe a Ram and perhaps an unlikely Jeep, it's not likely.
As far as holding on to a forgotten era, I'm not sure what forgotten era had a street engine that put out over 700hp....Back in the 60s, if you had 420hp (which by today's measuring standards is more like 300), you were near the limits of what was possible on a street car.
Charger and Challenger not only represent a new, modern, in-your-face age of super cars that don't have European names, but also are cars that each one that rolls down the assembly line will find a home.
ZBsZ06: "Chevy SS is a bit more balanced and closer to the 485 hp scat pack version for 39 grand..."
It's funny that you mention that car. I saw the second one I've ever seen on the road this morning. It was black and it was cutting a car off that was to my right and just ahead of me, a real **** move. I saw the SS and didn't recognize it at first from a three-quarter rear view; I saw the bowtie so I thought it was a Cruze or a Malibu until I heard the exhaust. Otherwise, it looked like an economy car from that view. Are these cars selling well? If not, is Chevy offering rebates on the SS? The 2015s have to due out soon.
Chevrolet is selling the SS sedan as "
customer order only" cars........ There are no rebates, no incentives, no cash on the hood, nothing.
The cars are already selling in volume as Holden Commodore Redlines in Australia, New Zealand, and if I'm not mistaken, as Lumina SS in the Middle East.
GM is simply making them available to us here in the US (if we want one), but unlike the GTO and the G8, they aren't pushing sales at all.
Is that including the $15,000 dealer markup..........if you can find one. A friend of mine bought a Challenger Hellcat, and it only had a $20,000 markup. It was the only one that dealer was allotted and he bought it without seeing it first.
The irony of it is that that they have a 2013 Viper in the showroom that has been there for over a year, brand new, with a $40,000 discount, and it's still there. It is a gorgeous car!
When is a "bargain" not a bargain?"bargain"
Always going to be a dealer markup when something is new and on "allocation". All you have to do is go back to the Pontiac GTO nearly 11 years ago to see worse cases of markups, gouging, demands to sign "Intent to Buy" notes, Deposits for test drives, and just all round horrible dealer misbehavior.
A $15,000 markup is nothing on a high interest car like the Hellcat when there's essentially none available yet. The first Mustang new GT I saw in 2004 had a $20K markup, and even the new Corvette when it first came out in many places had that much and even more.
It's all about supply and demand. New hot cars have markups while cars that have been around awhile typically do not.....Your friend willingly and freely paid that extra $20,000 markup because he
WANTED that Hellcat...yet ignored the similar priced "discounted" Viper.........Right there, that says it all!
Entertaining and satisfying as a UFC fight. If nothing else I'm still glad that in 2015 cars like this are available because we all know the doom and gloom forecasts since the oil embargo in the 70's and rising CAFE requirements.
That's why you got to laugh when you read and hear people's
sky-is-falling, apocalyptic predictions of doom and gloom whenever a new regulation comes up. Back when Fiat wound up with Chrysler and GM became a ward of the government, the internet was ablaze (and a lot of these people reside here) that Fiat was going to attach their name to the side of Chrysler, kill off their cars and sell nothing but Fiats, while GM would sell nothing more than electric golf carts. To this day I think most of them wrote from mental wards.
Fact of the matter is that car companies will make what the public wants and what they can make money on. Apparently 99% of the enthusiast world either forgot or in a rush to rewrite history forget that the public turned away from Muscle Cars long before emissions standards and CAFE (emissions kicked in gear in '73, CAFE in '78, yet performance cars fell off a cliff into freefall after 1969's Insurance industry "surcharges".
Since CAFE is based on the entire company's
average of all their sales, and different size classes meet different economy goals (again based on sales averages), Dodge can conceivably make Hellcats right on through 2025's 52mpg as long as they charge a high enough price to keep volume in check, and sell enough small cars to balance it out.