I was in the parking lot of a motel in my wife's hometown of Ukiah. It was the Sunday morning after a big family gathering and Mrs. TireKicker was in the room putting the finishing touches on her hair and makeup while I was loading the trunk of the 2019 Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack Widebody. Suddenly, there was a voice.
"Ow's yer car?"---in a thick Irish brogue.
I looked to see a man, I suppose in his 50s, slender build, a bit shorter than I, walking toward me.
"Fine. Fast.", I said. It was early-ish and I hadn't had coffee yet.
He pointed to the five silver letters on the black panel between the taillights that read "DODGE".
"'Harry Chapin wrote a song about a Dodge, y'know. "Learned about love in the back of a Dodge", he sang" (the song "Taxi", from 1972, the late Chapin's first hit and perhaps his best-known after "Cat's in the Cradle", contains that lyric).
Further conversation revealed that my newfound friend was named John, that he was on his first visit to the States, just off the plane the day before after landing in San Francisco. Given the brand's non-existent profile in Ireland, he may have thought a Dodge was a Dodge and that Harry and Sue in the song had learned about love in the back of something close to what he was examining, with great fascination, in this parking lot.
I gave him my business card, which has TireKicker's web address on it. John, lad, if you're reading, the Dodge Harry was singing about probably looked something like this (click the link).
Still, the 2019 Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack Widebody manages to provoke cases of mistaken identity even among U.S. natives and especially car buffs.
Publisher's note: Normally, the cars you read about here at TireKicker are loaned to us by the press fleets of the various manufacturers for several days. Seven is typical. Occasionally, we'll get a longer period of time, and sometimes it'll only be three or four days. Our "30 Minutes With" series are cars that we spent half an hour behind the wheel of during the just-concluded Western Automotive Journalists Media Days in Monterey, California.
Day one of Media Days is a driving program, with journalists taking cars from the staging area at Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca via Laureles Grade. Once there, you swap cars with another journalist for the drive back, and then swap cars again once back at the Quail. Apart from an hour's lunch, this is your day from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Each run is about half an hour, and driving 10 to 12 cars back-to-back-to-back gives you interesting points of reference about the next one.
My ninth car of the day was one of the most fearsome...the 2017 Dodge Challenger T/A 392.
When I was getting my learner's permit, one of the most fearsome and desirable beasts roaming the planet was the 1971 Dodge Challenger R/T with a 426 Hemi. 425 horsepower as measured in those days (they measured gross, not net then...works out to about 350 by today's standards) and a 0-60 time of six seconds. It would do the quarter in 14 seconds at 104 miles per hour.
When the 1972 models were introduced a month later, the party was over, Thanks to a double-whammy of emissions regulations and insurance surcharges, the Hemi was dead and the most muscle a Challenger could muster was 240 horsepower from a 340-cubic inch V8.
Instantly, anything prior to that moment was regarded as "The Golden Age of Muscle Cars".
We were right, for a while. Turns out we just had a 45-year intermission. In fact, the 60s and 70s were just a warm-up by comparison.
One second before starting the engine of the 2015 Dodge Challenger R/T, I thought what I'd always thought about the Challenger: Namely that it was a big, dumb, brutish appliance for men in their 60s who missed out on having a muscle car back in the day. An over-the-counter supplement that could be bundled with Centrum Silver, Viagra, Minoxidil, Super Beta Prostate and Osteo Bi-Flex.
Incredibly, it's been five years since our last week in a Dodge Challenger. Walking up to the '15, I was stunned by how great it looks. Like an old friend you haven't seen in a while. And, like many of those old friends of the human variety, the Challenger looks that good after all this time (an eternity in the automotive world) because she's had some work done.
So you want a Dodge Challenger, but can't swing either the price or insurance or gas for the Hemi-powered R/T or SRT-8?
$750 buys you the cosmetics that will make your six-cylinder SE look pretty darn good.
It's called the Rallye Group. 18" aluminum wheels, a bright fuel filler door, dual stripes, a carbon-fiber looking bezel on the instrument panel and a body-colored rear spoiler.
Our tester was just as you see above...bright silver metallic with black stripes. It actually got more admiring looks than the last red Challenger that came through...possibly because those are seen so often.
Best part of the deal is the SE's base price of $22,735. Second best is the gas mileage: 17 city/25 highway.
Brad Davis at Glenn E. Thomas Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep confirms that the dealership did honor the $29,100 auction as Hitman said...but for a different car of arguably higher value.
Jonny Lieberman at Autoblog got it right...Hitman (real first name Alex) went home in a new 2010 Challenger SRT-8 instead of the 2009 with 500 miles on the odometer. Davis tells me the '09 was sold to another client last week while the auction was in dispute.
Hitman was offered his pick of three 2010 Challenger SRT-8s and chose a black one. The '09 was blue.
Hitman also gets $2,000 worth of Mopar accessories of his choosing.
All this leaves his cheering section at the ChallengerTalk Forums wondering why "Hitman"s been so uncommunicative since taking delivery of the car on Saturday. If anything, he won bigger. A poster who says he talked to "Hitman" says he's under legal constraints about what he can discuss...but if so, why was Brad Davis so willing to divulge details?
Dunno. Tirekicker only pawn in game of life.
If you want more, there's still a fair amount of head-scratching going on at the ChallengerTalk forums, where the auction thread, started by "Hitman" on March 13, just had its 400,000th page view today. Pick it up from where we broke the story this afternoon here.
Well, last night at 9:47PM PDT, "Hitman" surfaced on the forum, acknowledging, but not answering any of the questions:
A lot of questions and rumors definitely coming to light after this whole experience from different sources that are making claims. Many requests to post pictures and give an explanation of how it went down in the end.
Plan of posting pics and all that good stuff after I work on getting a couple of coats of wax and the right shine. It's only been a few days of driving it around and trying to do the proper break period as it has been suggested.
Been on the board every night reading everyone's posts in this thread and jumping around the ChallengerTalk.com board, learning more about the SRT8 and looking at what the proud owners have done to personalize theirs. This board has a lot to offer and maybe I will learn a few things along the way as well.
But now, as we reported, a lot of them are beginning to doubt the whole story...whether "Hitman" got the car in the auction....whether he got it for $29,100....whether he got a different car (fueled by a Jonny Lieberman piece on Autoblog which reported that the delership "did better than the right thing, selling Alex a 2010 Challenger SRT8 rather than the 250-mile car he won in the auction"---Jonny got the mileage wrong, it had 500)....whether he got any car, or whether "Hitman" is in fact the person who won that auction (eBay generates anonymous bidder IDs).
And there are questions raised by the eBay bidding record for the auction, which shows the winning bid was $9,000 higher than the leading bid at the time...several hours before the end of the auction.
Does "Hitman's" post last night make ChallengerTalk members happy now? Not a chance. Just one response:
Sorry, I am really on the edge of calling BS here. (And I know I am an outsider, but still...)
You can take the time to post this dribble, but can not take the time to tell us what went down and what exactly you ended up buying? Also, a brand new car does not need to be waxed to shine. Forget the pics, just tell the story.
One more post, three hours later...saying he was going to take it easy, read the owner's manual...and since then...silence. At least from "Hitman". No more posts, no more photos.
March 12, a single bidder made 10 bids, ranging from $22,000 to $29,000, with no competing bids in between, in a four and a half hour period. These appear to be automatic bids.
And then comes "Hitman" (or so we're told, since eBay keeps actual bidder IDs confidential by assigning an anonymous bidder name)...who makes his one and only bid of $29,100.
But unless there's a glitch with eBay time stamps, that's weird, too...because the $29,100 bid is shown as having been made at 08:54:13 PST...and the 10-bid streak described above didn't start until 11:00:25 PST...more than two hours later. Which means "Hitman" chose $29,100 as his bid when the standing high bid was $20,100.
A last-moment hail-mary to shut out the competition? Maybe. Except "Hitman"'s winning bid was more than five hours before the auction closed. And eBay says automatic bidders' maximum bids are kept confidential from other bidders.
Open up "Hitman"'s bidding history and you'll find he's no power bidder. He's been involved in exactly four eBay auctions...and the Challenger SRT-8 is the only one where he had the winning bid.
Hey, it could be that "Hitman" is just out enjoying the SRT-8...but his friends in the Challenger community are beginning to wonder if they've been had.
The mailman got out of his truck, put our mail in the box by the sidewalk, turned, stared, did a double take and went back to his truck. He came out seconds later with his cellphone, snapping shot after shot.
The power crew came to replace the transformer buried in the next-door neighbor's backyard. They got out of the truck, on the way to the front door to tell me how long the power would be off. They never got there. I found all three of them, five minutes after I heard the truck doors close, in the driveway. Their question had changed from how soon they could cut the power without inconveniencing me too badly to:
The six year old girl, dressed in pink, leaving my daughter's ballet school, holding her daddy's hand as they walked to their minivan, stopped cold and said: "Whoa, Daddy! AWESOME car!".
God only knows what adolescent boys must be saying and thinking (though my son, who's 14, the age I was when the first Challenger hit the market, tells me it's "a reasonable alternative to the Viper").
Bright red (Dodge calls it "TorRed"), with 20" aluminum chrome wheels and a profile worthy of inclusion on Mt. Rushmore...and yes, it's got a Hemi.
5.7 liters, 376 horsepower and 410 pounds per foot of torque, to be precise. And though it comes with an automatic, this one had the optional TrackPak 6-speed manual.
Yes, it's way bigger than the original 1970 Challenger. That's what happens when you use the Chrysler 300/Dodge Charger platform. But it looks great, it's scary fast, it's got way more trunk room than the old one, and once you get inside, just reprogram your spatial orientation to "Road Runner" instead of "Challenger" and you'll be fine.
It's also something of a bargain for what you get: $29,320 base price...our tester bottom-lined at $35,965.
Love the shape but need still more of a bargain? The SE starts at $21,995, and comes with a 250-horsepower V6 and 18-inch wheels...which would have been a dream come true not too long ago. In fact, Dodge expects most Challengers sold will be SEs.
Here's a nice video about the development and production of what was then the not-yet-released Challenger SRT-8, the hottest of the Challengers:
UPDATE:More than a year after the above was written, Chrysler sent us a second Challenger...again an R/T with the Hemi, the 6-speed manual, the Track Pack...and again, an '09 (though the '10s should be out there now).
This one had a bump in the base price...now $30,220 and with more options on the sticker, the bottom line rings in at $38,170.
Oh, and this one was silver.
Not covered the first time we covered this...five-star crash ratings all around, four for rollover. EPA estimates 16 city/25 highway.
