challenger

If you follow automotive news and new car designs like I do, then you know that it's really a great time to be a muscle car or pony car fan right now -- it's like a rebirth of the classic American iron block era. Vintage muscle cars are fetching some amazing prices at the auto collector auction houses, and American auto manufacturers have taken notice and quickly moved to introduce new but highly-retro designs. Credit has to go to Ford, who with their 1960s-era inspired 5th generation Mustang redesign in 2005 launched a movement they refer to as "retro-futurism." Classic car style but with modern technology, safety, and reliability. Chevy soon followed suit in a move that echoes the pony car wars of the '60s and '70s, developing their Camaro concept in 2006. But despite appearing in the Transformers movie and showing up at various auto shows in different guises, it has yet to enter production. Chrysler/Dodge came to the party with the Charger, resurrecting an old muscle-car name and some styling cues from the classic car, but ultimately bringing to market a kind of frumpy looking car. Don't get me wrong, it looked positively badass as an evil police cruiser/Decepticon in Transformers, but it's not the kind of car that resonates with me.

Well maybe lots of other car guys and the product design teams at Dodge agreed with me, because they went back to the drawing board, and the old muscle car archives, and came back with the new Challenger which was recently unveiled at this year's Chicago Auto Show. And this time, I feel they really got it right. For their performance SRT8 model, which is the only trim the Charger is available in at launch, they even eschewed the homely Dodge "crosshairs" grille that adorns the rest of the Dodge family right now, including the Charger and the Ram line of trucks. The styling harkens straight back to 1970.

Maybe it's because I spent way too many hours as a kid watching The Dukes of Hazzard on TV, but the sight of that bright orange show car just spoke to me. Die hard Dukes fans will point out that the Duke boys drove a Charger, not a Challenger, but apparently I'm not the only one who would dismiss that discrepancy -- right there on the Dodge site you'll see plenty of photos of this gorgeous car in bright orange, and there's even a few shots of the car flying high in an obvious throwback to the ridiculous jumps and stunts of the '70s and '80s TV shows that we so loved.

In the early '90s my family soured on all American cars as a result of some bad experiences with a Chrysler New Yorker we had. "Never buy an American car again", was the sentiment we all seemed to share. Well there was a time that I didn't think I would ever even consider it, but the Challenger just might be the American car to um, challenge and overcome that prejudice for me. I'll take mine in black, please!