Muscle Memory: The New Dodge Charger is a 550-HP Experiment in Controlled Excess

4 min readThere are cars that transport you, cars that entertain you, cars that coddle you, cars that entice you, and cars that seem determined to engage your every sensibility. The gas-powered Dodge Charger belongs firmly in the final category. With a focus on cutting-edge technology, unrelenting performance, and striking modern design, it’s been built to push every sensory button.When you first approach it, the Charger immediately exhibits the core visual aggression of a muscle car, with its low and wide stance with long hood and short deck proportions. But, even at first glance, it immediately offers a distinctly modern interpretation of the category.Clever, Brawny BodiesYou’ll notice that the Charger is available as either a two-door or a four-door—though neither choice is accompanied by the compromises you might typically associate with these body styles. The car’s performance, handsome menace, flair, and all-around usability remain, regardless of how many handles you see on the exterior. You just need to decide if you desire the additional drama offered by the coupe, or the extra practicality of the sedan.The Charger’s cleverest piece of packaging may also be its least obvious. Regardless of which body style you choose, at the rear, you won’t find a traditional trunk, but a hidden hatch. Engineered to blend invisibly into the Charger’s profile, when closed, it maintains the car’s sleek visual continuity. But when it’s opened, it swings wide and high, creating easy access to the huge cargo area, one that expands to near SUV proportions when you flip down the rear seats.At the other end, under the hood, Dodge has installed a formidable 3.0-liter inline-six engine, the SIXPACK. This sophisticated, twin-turbocharged, 24-valve, double-overhead-cam engine distinguishes the Charger from simply being an exercise in thumping V8 nostalgia. It’s more like a thrilling, innovative experiment in controlled excess.Next to the Super Bee at the top of the gas-powered range, the Charger Scat Pack is motivated by the SIXPACK HO, producing a muscular 550 horsepower and a thrusty 531 lb-ft of torque—well more than Dodge’s 392-cu-in V8. The Charger R/T is powered by the entry level SIXPACK SO engine, but it’s no slouch, churning out a rowdy 420 horsepower and 468 lb-ft of torque. Those numbers translate into the kind of acceleration that innately stimulates your limbic system, forcing out a giggle, or a gurgle, every time you put your foot into it. The HO can launch from 0 to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds, while the SO completes that sprint in 4.6. Both blast through the ¼ mile in the 12s, with the HO crossing the line at 12.2 seconds, the SO at 12.9.AWD to RWDRest assured this isn’t a one-trick pony car, only running flat out on flat surfaces. Instead, the Charger deploys its potency deliberately. All-wheel drive is standard on every model, providing the traction necessary to not only put all that power to the pavement, but to supply enhanced grip in all weather conditions and terrains. Still, Dodge knows that you sometimes like to let loose, so it has also built in some (optional) mischief: the freedom to switch into rear-wheel drive at the touch of a button.This small gesture has enormous implications. AWD is about maintaining confidence and composure regardless of circumstance. RWD is about loosening the reins, releasing the grip, letting your back-end slide, and remembering that driving can occasionally be less about function and more about wooooo-hoooooo! The Charger provides you with endless opportunities to do both, without judgment.DodgePaint It Black (Or Bludicrous)The new Charger also makes it easy to turn up the drama, visually speaking. Whether you choose Purple Haze, Red Oxide, Green Machine, Bludicrous, White Knuckle, or any of the other tantalizing paint options, you can further personalize your exterior. Fresh customization options include an available satin-black hood, a scoop-enhancing hood patch, dual stripes embedded with Dodge’s historic three-pointed “Fratzog” pattern, or high contrast brake calipers in a haunting black and orange.Inside, the Charger gets even more theatrical. Dodge's signature Attitude Adjustment Lighting offers up ambient door- and instrument-panel-illumination in a range of 64 colors. The lighting transforms the mood in the cabin, particularly after dark, making it more striking, more soothing, or more joyous, or whatever aligns with your current state of mind—or the one you’d like to be in.The seating surfaces extend that personal sensory bond. Many contemporary car cabins have the bland appearance of a hospital waiting room or the grim sobriety of a mortuary. The Charger breaks from the dominion of beiges and blacks, providing premium seating options in highly expressive hues including Demonic Red and Petrol Blue, which bring with them a hotter, or cooler, attitude, elevating the atmosphere and ambience.Engineered for SensationThis is what will ultimately enthrall you about the new Charger: Its performance is not just predicated on how it moves down the road, but on how it moves you.The seductive bodywork tangibly demonstrates the car’s performance capabilities before the engine ever fires. The SIXPACK engine provides both propulsion and soundtrack. The AWD-to-RWD button gives the driver control over how that power is delivered, and how it’s expressed—buttoned down or ripped loose. The option of two or four doors, combined with the hidden hatch, quietly insists that practicality doesn't have to be the enemy of style. The myriad customization options inside and out lets owners turn the visual volume up or down to match, or project, their personalities and feelings.DodgeThe new Charger is a machine engineered around sensation. This matters because contemporary performance cars must increasingly live, and achieve, in two worlds. One is defined by metrics: horsepower, torque, acceleration, traction. The other is defined by experience: what you feel as you walk toward your car, what delights you when you climb inside, how the cabin envelops and sustains you, and how you can transform its character to match your needs.The Charger speaks all of these languages fluently. The result is a performance car that doesn't simply ask how quickly you can get somewhere. It asks how you want the journey to make you feel.