Dodge Virtually Based mostly Subsequent-Gen Challenger, Charger on Alfa Giulia

As you’ve in all probability heard by now, the days are numbered for the Challenger and Charger, Dodge’s muscle automobile duo that has been using on the identical LX-derived bones for roughly a decade and a half. They’ll depart us in 2024 to get replaced by an EV, probably very a lot impressed by the Charger Daytona idea. However issues might have gone very in another way, as model CEO Tim Kuniskis not too long ago recounted to some journalists on Autoline’s After Hours YouTube present.

Credit score to Carscoops, which unearthed the interview that really occurred on September 22. In it, at concerning the 43-minute mark, Kuniskis talks a few scratched plan again in 2013 to develop successors to the Challenger and Charger that might have been primarily based atop Fiat Chrysler’s Giorgio platform — the exact same one which underpins the Alfa Romeo Giulia. Right here’s why that didn’t occur, within the chief government’s phrases:

In 2013, we had a vital choice level. In 2013, we’re preparing for our investor day of 2014, and we needed to decide the place we have been going to go along with the platforms. And at the moment, you keep in mind inside FCA we had the [Giorgio] platform [used by the Giulia.] And we needed to resolve are we going to maneuver the Charger and Challenger on to the Giorgio platform?

On the Giorgio platform, we’d’ve ended up with a automobile that, fairly frankly, would’ve been lighter, would’ve dealt with higher, it could’ve completed loads of the issues that folks stated we have been kind of laggards to the competitors on. However we checked out it and we stated, ‘We are able to do this, but when we do this, we’re going to go and compete head on with the Mustang and the Camaro.’ And fairly frankly, these are nice vehicles. They’re implausible vehicles. Why would we wish to go combat with them of their sandbox? Let’s keep in our sandbox, and be completely totally different from them, and go left after they’re going proper and attempt to personal this area.

Alas, that was the tip of Giorgio-powered Dodge muscle. I can’t assist however giggle on the notion that FCA actively selected to not make its flagship vehicles higher, even although it had the {hardware} to get it completed, as a result of doing so would have created an expectation that the subsequent Challenger and Charger wanted to be pretty much as good as Ford and GM’s pony vehicles on monitor.

However you’ll be able to’t argue with numbers, and automaking is a enterprise, in spite of everything. Final 12 months, Dodge shifted extra Challengers into driveways than its crosstown rivals did of their sports activities vehicles. And it achieved that 13 years into the Challenger’s lifespan, which is exceptional. What number of vehicles that outdated have managed to guide their section in quantity, towards vastly newer equipment? The Challenger and Charger have owned their lane as a result of they’ve by no means been too good. With the transfer to electrification, Dodge gained’t be capable of coast on that old-school allure once more. Finest to reap the earnings when you nonetheless can, which is strictly what the model selected to do.

However, we are able to and can dream about how these Giorgio-based autos may’ve appeared and the way they’d’ve pushed. Dodge is aware of its viewers very effectively, and I believe it is aware of they’d favor to see the sketches. What do you say, Tim?