Today’s column is about the surprising success of Fiat Chrysler Automobile’s Dodge Challenger. An auto success, readers may ask? How’s that possible for an automobile that sells an average of 6,000 coupes a month? Let me explain.
The Challenger, in its present configuration, is in its second generation.
Chrysler Corp.’s Dodge Division belatedly introduced generation No. 1 in 1970 model year as a pony car to do battle with the unbelievably successful Ford Mustang, which became a superstar almost immediately following its introduction in April 1964. I say belatedly because by the time Challenger reached Dodge dealers in the fall 1969, the once robust pony car market was showing signs of fatigue.
Pony car sales were slowing down from the triple whammy of high prices, increasing insurance premiums for performance cars and too many choices from domestic automakers, which included Mustan, Chevy Camaro, Plymouth Barracuda, Mercury Cougar, Pontiac Firebird and AMC Javelin.
The low-mileage cars became even less desirable after fuel prices took off during the 1973-74 OPEC oil embargo.
By late winter 1974 Challenger and its twin Plymouth Barracuda saw sales plummet to numbers too small for Chrysler to make money on either, and the nameplates were discontinued.
All the domestic pony cars mentioned, save for Mustang and Camaro, were gone by the end of the 1970s, and only Mustang remained in production to the present. Camaro had robust sales for a number of years in the late ’70s and early ’80s but by 2002 it, too, went to the great auto graveyard.
It can be said the only thing that kept the Ford Mustang in production during those tough times was the lucky move in the fall 1973 by Ford General Manager Lee Iacocca to downsize the Mustang by abandoning the pony car’s Ford Falcon platform and adopting the little Ford Pinto’s chassis just in time for the second major OPEC oil embargo. Lucky for Ford the much smaller 1974 Mustang – initially available with only economical 4 or 6-cylinder engines – was the perfect car for the times and sold almost as well in its first year as the original Mustang in 1964.
So what were the circumstances that brought back the Challenger and the Camaro?
Well, like in 1964, blame it on the Ford folks and Mustang.
In 2005 Ford introduced an all-new Mustang with strong retro-style features, reminiscent of the original 1964 model. The grille had the same “open mouth” look with a figure of a mustang prancing across the grille pattern. The headlight housing and the tail lights both mimicked the original. The nice-looking pony car (now a big pony car, by the way) even had a hint of the side “scoop,” also from 1964. It sold very well with initial sales going way over the 100,000 mark.
The Mustang sales performance garnered GM’s and Chrysler’s attention. In only a manner of months both companies began work on concept cars of the now long-abandoned Camaro and Challenger.
The Challenger concept appeared first, at the Chicago Auto Show in February 2006 It was a retro effort and there was no doubt where the car’s designers got their inspiration. Then GM followed the same retro path and brought out a Camaro concept, also in 2006, that carried many design cues from 1969 Camaro.
Public reaction to both concepts was strong. Very strong. By 2008 the re-incarnation of the Challenger reached dealers’ lots and the revival of the Camaro followed in 2009. The pony car wars, it appeared, had again become a national sport between the Domestic Three automaker.
All this leads me to comment on why I wrote today’s column. As many readers know, over the decades the hierarchy of U.S. automakers always put GM first, then Ford a distance back, and way back was Chrysler. In the pony wars, that hierarchy got jumbled – Ford’s Mustang nearly always outsold the Camaro and totally spanked the Chrysler Corp. twins back in the late ’60s and early ’70s. This sales order with Mustang first and the Chrysler twins lasted almost forever.
Forever, that is until of late.
You can imagine my surprise earlier this month when my Auto News weekly trade journal arrived with the August U.S. sales results, and I saw some quite amazing figures. Not only did the Dodge Challenger outsell Camaro (as it often has in recent years) but it had also outsold perennial sales leader Mustang. That is a big deal to me, and here’s why:
Both Mustang and Camaro have nearly all-new, super stylish bodies and both offer both two-door coupes plus convertibles.
New sales leader Challenger, however, is sold only as a coupe and still is wearing the exact sheet it has since its introduction almost 10 years ago. How is it possible for a sporty car – based on the platform of a 4-door sedan almost a decade old (siblings Dodge Charger and Chrysler 300) – garnering that kind of popularity? It certainly is the automotive story of the month for me.
I posed a question above and will now make a stab at answering it. Dodge’s magic bullet has P-E-R-F-O-R-M-A-N-C-E stamped all over it. With the Challenger, as well as sibling Charger, the Dodge Boys have found in this era of increasingly boring cars (who wants to spin tires driving an electric car?) that there are still a slew of buyers out there who desire a car that makes loud noises when you push the pedal to the metal and who likes to sniff a little gasoline fumes amongst the burning rubber.
It’s obvious Dodge had done its research, and that explains why the division offered as an option the super high performance Hemi SRT V-8 initially at its 2009 introduction and then thrilled performance-loving boys and girls with both the 707-horsepower Hellcat option in 2015 (sold like crazy) and the mind-blowing 808-horsepower SRT Demon model recently announced.
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