The May 2020 issue of Road & Track had a cool road trip article about Challengers entitled, " The Immortals- America's Unkillable Muscle Cars Take on the West." Here are some notable quotes from the article: "Dodge has been making this Challenger since 2008, a dozen years of production handily tripling the four-year run of the original car. what is it that keeps a model feeling fresh into its teens? What is it that keeps it selling well? After all these years, the Challenger is more than keeping up with the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro in sales. It recently startled industry observers when it outsold both by thousands of units in the last quarter of 2019. Why? It'll take a little driving to find out." The thriftiest of the lot is the V-6 GT, the only all-wheel drive variant. At around $35,000, it's an oddity- a muscle car that begs for snow tires, slush and ice. Lodged in the middle ground is an R/T Scat Pack Widebody, which doesn't do much middling at all. It's a beastly thing, with 485 claimed horsepower. This one has an 8-speed automatic, but perhaps because of the Challenger's advanced age, it's one of the rare cars that still comes with a manual transmission as standard equipment. And then, shimmering under the lights is the Hellcat Redeye Widebody, which is a whole other thing. It's hard not to froth about the Hellcat, For the collected testing staff- all millennials or near enough, all genuine enthusiasts, all sports car nuts- the Hellcat feels like a taste of another era. As if Lockheed stamped out a handful of brand new SR-71s, made them approachable, gave them a warranty, then delivered them into the hands of Cessna pilots. You're promoted from a geek in chinos to a badass in a space suit. The not-shabby 305 hp. V-6 Challenger and the Scat Pack's V-8 combined don't add up to the Redeye's raw output. Which makes the Hellcat a glimpse of what uncompromising looked like to a generation that only ever known CARB standards, intake restrictors, and traction control. Every single editor finds incredulous joy in this Challenger's existence, the lack of restraint, the brutal consumption, the hairy-wicked whine of the supercharger and the tantalizing red key fob that allows access to the prodigious 797 hp. It offers permission to play. To do great dirty burnouts all the way to the horizon. All three Challengers have been faultless companions. It's hard to level criticism at a machine that so ably chews up distance and fuel, turning them into experiences and joy. Just like it's hard to pin down why the Challenger is more likeable now than when it rolled out of the factory in 2008. It's a big, peculiar machine, particularly suited to the big, American West."
