- It's no secret that Dodge is a bit
(Hemi-powered everything tearing up some tires)
performance obsessed.
Hell, they're so obsessed,
they build engines they can't legally put in cars yet.
(1000 horses of Hellephant)
But outside of the drag strip and Trans Am
Dodge has largely been absent from motor sport
since pulling out of NASCAR back in 2012.
Since it's very beginning,
racing has been used to sell cars.
Win on Sunday, sell on Monday.
Dodge has a severe lack of next gen tech and they're stable.
And racing is the perfect place to develop
and test new innovations.
And with the recently announced demise,
of the SRT performance division
there's a major hole in Dodge's image
with respect to it being America's first choice
in muscle in sports cars.
If Dodge truly wants to renew interest in the company,
future proof themselves against the approaching EVs future,
and solidify themselves as America's sports car brand,
they got to do something drastic.
I think Dodge should enter F1.
And by the end of this video, you will too.
- Thanks to Keeps for sponsoring today's video.
- Oh Hey,
(car breaks grinding)
Wow! Ice on the road Dave
would you not get your bird license or something?
(bird chirping)
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So after doing some research, I found out everyone
on spring break goes to this place called Cabo.
Booked Dave and me little off town for the week
printed out map quest directions.
And we hit the open road.
(bird chirping)
Dave loves the windows down just like me when I had thick
luscious locks blowing in the wind.
But now it's a little chilly ever
since I became one of the two out of three guys
to experience some sort of male pattern baldness,
by the time I was 35.
(bird chipping)
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Looks like we're here. Dave.
Well hello, Cabo.
This is beautiful.
- The timing has never been better
for a company like Dodge to get into F1.
First of all, recent rule changes have been implemented to
make the racing more competitive than ever before.
Formula one sanctioning body, the FiA mandated aerodynamic
allowances that reduced overall down force by 10%.
This might sound like a step back, but the move is
intended to level the playing field between the top teams
and the rest of the competition by making the cars easier to
follow in high-speed corners and not allowing the front
runners to rocket ahead to an untouchable lead.
That should make the waters a little more inviting
for a new team to dive in.
Plus now there's a $175 million cost cap.
So Dodge won't have to worry about being outspent.
And before you comment that 175 million is a lot of money,
which it is, car companies have wasted far more money
on far less worthy endeavors.
To put it in perspective,
In 2019, FCA spent over $2 billion in domestic marketing.
0.0005 percent of that went to giving James his Dodge tattoo
money well spent if you ask me.
The 175 million it would cost to have their own F1 team,
represents less than 10% of their typical advertising budget
and would send ripples throughout the automotive world.
That would more than make up for the investment.
In advertising there's a term called earned media.
Which is basically getting promotion that you
didn't have to pay for.
And a shocking announcement like Dodge joining F1
would probably generate millions in free advertising.
Don Draper, would s*** himself.
On top of that F1 is unique in the world of racing
where it's not so much the drivers
as the engineers that win races.
If you're not familiar, I'll break it down for you.
F1 operates under a set of rules.
The formula that dictates everything
from engine design and capacity,
to overall vehicle weight down-force,
blah, blah, blah everything else.
Winning F1 has always been about finding loopholes
and bending or breaking those rules
to gaining advantage over the competition.
And breaking rules is very simply a huge part of Dodge's DNA
Dodge is disruptive and I can think of nothing
more disruptive than Dodge dominating F1.
But there was one major asterisk attached
to my otherwise brilliant idea.
The problem is, today's F1 cars are hybrids,
1.6 liter turbo v6 hybrids to be exact, that's right.
Formula 1 cars are currently powered by an engine
with the same capacity as a Nissan versa,
but in an F1 car that engine is spinning up to 15,000 RPM
and develops around a 1000 horsepower
while maintaining 50% thermal efficiency.
That's nearly double the thermal efficiency
of a combustion engine you'd find in your typical road car.
So why is this a problem?
Well, Dodge isn't really known for their hybrids.
In fact, Dodge's only hybrid offerings are
in the 8 tour mile hybrid systems
they use with their 5.7 liter
v8 hemi and their 3.6 liter pentastar V6.
That's not going to get the job done,
but I see this challenge as an opportunity for Dodge.
And I think it's actually the biggest reason why
they should actually do this.
The automotive landscape is changing
with increasingly stringent regulations, putting Dodge's
big beefy and very inefficient V8's squarely
in the cross hairs.
Dodge may find themselves sitting on their hands
in just a few years.
Manufacturers like Jaguar have stated
that there'll be fully electric by 2025,
with GM following soon by 2035.
Hell, Great Britain has banned gasoline combustion engines
post 2030, and California has done the same.
We'll see if that works out.
But still that's nine years away.
And as so often turns out to be true, as goes California,
so goes the nation.
This is happening people,
and quite frankly Dodge is not ready.
F1 is the perfect playground to help Dodge get it's feet wet
and get familiar with the tech,
and start developing their own advanced hybrid drive trends.
I definitely don't want to see Dodge go away,
but if they want to stay viable
they need to start exploring electric territory.
Currently Dodge is staying afloat
by buying a ton of carbon credits from Tesla,
allowing them to get around some of the regulations,
for now.
But that loophole isn't going to last forever.
So Dodge needs to start making some moves right now.
If they've really wanted to go crazy,
and when doesn't Dodge want to go crazy,
they can even spread out in a Formula E
in all electric championship started in 2014.
I think Dodge can really make some waves there.
If you think electric motors are boring
you need to watch Formula E.
Check out this episode abut Formula E.
Now you might be thinking,
Nolan how the hell do you expect Dodge
to develop a whole new racing team
all by it's lonesome in such a short amount of time?
Well, they've done it before.
Back in 2001,
when Dodge reentered NASCAR,
for the first time since the 70s,
they had to develop a chassis and engine from the ground up
and they needed to do it fast.
It's a feat that most said would take years,
but Dodge accomplished it in just 500 days.
See it's disruptive.
They did it at the Chrysler world headquarters
and technology center, a 504 acre, 5.2 million
square foot complex located 30 miles North of Detroit.
It's the largest building in the world.
Seriously, bigger than the Pentagon.
It features a design office,
scientific and environmental labs
and manufacturing pilot plant operation
for a prototype production line,
and a 1.8 mile test track.
And the best news is Dodge doesn't even need to
design an engine from the ground up,
which often takes the most time.
As the two biggest engine suppliers for Formula 1,
Mercedes and Ferrari already have peripheral relationships
with Dodge and FCA.
Sure. The Daimler Chrysler relationship
that was started way back in the waning years
of the 20th century ended in 2007.
But the echoes can still be heard here in 2021.
The charger and challenger platform was designed
with help from Mercedes engineers back in Germany.
And in fact, every car in Dodge is stable can be traced
back in some way or another to that nine-year merger
back in the early 2000s.
So perhaps enough time has passed
since the failed Daimler Chrysler experiment,
that Dodge could send a late night text
and booty call their way into buying an engine.
You know, for old time's sake.
As for the Ferrari connection,
up until 2014, Stellantis,
which was called FCA before January 16th of this year.
Owned a 90% stake in Ferrari
and they still own Alpha Romeo, the original home
of Ferrari for the first decade of it's existence.
They've got enough of a kissing cousins relationship
to warrant getting an engine from Ferrari,
and still keeping it in the family, so to speak.
This is a no-brainer in my opinion.
So with the engine out of the way,
let's talk about the team, specifically the car.
Since I know nothing about Photoshop or making renders.
I called up one of my buddies who does.
One of my favorite Brits, Tom McCluskey, AKA Tommo.
He just got done doing a series
redesigning every F1 car on the grid for 2021.
If you haven't checked out his channel,
I'll leave a link down in the description.
This is always the starting point.
I'll do the color,
then I'll do kind of face shapes
and I'll think about what kind of logos
and brands I want on the car.
As we're going to make this Dodge look sweet today, mate
it's not going to be a dodgy Dodge.
It's going to be a quality Dodge.
Go get that joke out of here.
- Of course we can't forget the color,
and that's always been a place where Dodge likes to play.
Obviously disruption is the name of the game here.
So we're not going to keep things understated at all.
After all, with names like plum crazy purple,
grabber lime, hell raisin and cinnamon stick.
We're not exactly in sleeper territory,
I think any of these will look awesome.
- Let's just not make it blue.
There's far too many blue cars at F1.
- Should we go with a plum crazy purple or a lime green?
- There's nothing close to purple, really on the grid
is there, I feel like the purple will stand out a bit more
and that purple purple sectors, you know?
Oh, Yes.
- Oh, that's pretty purple. Yeah.
- You know what?
No word of a lie Nolan.
Just before we started filming I was collecting some assets.
I literally had almost this exact shade of purple
just by like, you know, accidents are,
trying something different.
You're happy with that?
- It might feel a little too purple if you know what I mean.
Okay try this, #8634a0
_ This is a bit more red, this one?
- Yeah. I think that's it.
With the base color done.
It was time to actually start delivery.
We wanted to do something simple, but undeniably Dodge,
the choice is obvious.
- You know this on the the old Challenger, the mat strap,
that kind of ends at the end of the back window.
That could, you could try and maybe replicate that.
- Oh, hell yeah.
- Okay. Yeah. It needs a bit, little bit of refining,
but I'd say for the, yeah, that's looking pretty cool.
- Next is time for the accent touches.
I don't know if it would be too much
in terms of like the look, but if we go
with different color with the halo.
- Try black.
- Try black, or even like, I think lime green
would look awful, but maybe it'll..
(laughing)
- Who are you? The Ferrari designer.
- Yeah.
(laughing)
- We can include another little nod to Dodge history
by incorporating the flookerang.
Yup. It's called the flookarang.
This was the logo for fame Dodge designer
Virgil Exner is a forward look design program
that cemented Dodge as an automotive taste-maker
way back in the early 60s.
For me, this is where Dodge really came into their own,
and started developing that bad boy image
that defines it today.
- I'll just change the dark bits on white maybe.
- Yeah. Oh, yeah that's tight.
With the halo settled, we tried to figure out
how to make the car look pointier using only colors.
It's actually a little more difficult than I thought.
- What do you think in those ways.
- I mean that really like makes it look
like it's pointier than it is.
As for the rear wing, I think we paid a little bit
of homage to the Dodge brothers themselves,
Horace Elgin and John Francis,
by putting their initials on either side of the wing.
And between them, what else,
but the only word that would pay tribute to
one of the best Dodge vehicles
while simultaneously announcing
that Dodge has arrived to disrupt, that's right,
we're going to slap challenger in fancy type
right across the rear wing.
That'd be actually really f***** sick.
Let's see how much the other drivers
like staring at that for an entire race.
That's right. They're gonna be in front.
that really works for me.
Oh yeah. There you go.
(laughing)
That's sick.
So now that the car is definitely a Dodge,
Tom and I moved on to getting sponsors involved,
arguably one of the most important steps
in making an F1 car.
For the car's title sponsor we decided on
oil company, Pennzoil.
Dodge and Pennzoil have been partners for a while now.
They sponsor NHRA events,
and drag cars,
and the two companies work together on some pretty cool ads.
So of course, Pennzoil would sponsor an F1 team.
Yeah. It's not bad, especially on the side part
because it's already like an oval shape like that.
- I think the yellow and the purple
actually contrast quite nicely.
- Personally. I think there's no better way to give a car
the importance and gravitas it needs
than by giving it a name.
Most F1 teams have very boring names to their cars,
like mcl35M,
sf21,
and RB16b.
But Dodge ain't doing that.
I can't think of a better name than old Betsy.
That's the name the Dodge brothers
gave their first production car
when it rolled off the production line way back in 1914.
Old Betsy, it's got a real nice ring to it, doesn't it.
- Maybe here somewhere or
just as a little signature somewhere.
Sebastian Vettel likes to name all of his cars.
- So without further ado, I present the
2022 Dodge Challenger F1.
(uplifting music)
This just makes you appreciate like how,
even if some teams really mess up their liveries,
one person asked to like design it,
and then it's got to be signed off
by so many other people in the organization.
And it's just amazing that when a good livery comes out
that's so much more of an accomplishment.
Do I really expect Dodge to show up in the next F1 season.
No, but it's still a hell of a good idea.
And I'd love to see it come to fruition.
And maybe, just maybe, if we make enough noise
the right people will hear about our little fantasy
and make it a reality.
After all, Dodge has a 100 year legacy of doing things
everyone told them they couldn't,
and that's how you win races.
- Turbos are awesome,
but they don't even have a mascot,
which is downright not awesome.
So we decided to take matters into our own hands,
and give turbos the representation that they deserve.
Introducing Spinney Boy the official unofficial mascots
of turbos and the people who love them.
♪ He'll speed fast and he'll go ♪
♪ Watch it Turbo, go, go, go ♪
♪ Here to help and bring you joy ♪
♪ Watch out world it's Spinney Boy ♪
- Spinney Boy is a sentience turbocharger,
100% dedicated to providing power to anyone who needs him.
He's cute,
but he's dangerous just like us.
Oh, that's where I put this thing.
To commemorate the birth
of our beautiful new friend,
we put them on a shirt.
It's stu, stu, stupid, soft
and stu, stu, stupid comfortable.
Congratulations, little guy.
It took Nolan two years to get his own shirt.
Right now Spinney Boy is the official unofficial mascot
of turbos and the people who loved them.
But I honestly believe, if we work together
we can make him the official official mascot
of turbos and turbo enthusiasts.
We've done this before guys, remember about forces,
that didn't mean anything before, we can do it again.
Let's ride.
If you can, get a shirt to show your support
and your love for Spinney Boy,
and if you don't buy a shirt, I don't really care.
Post a picture of your own turbo
with hashtag Spinney boy.
I want to make him a star.
I love this little guy.
If you want a shirt you can get him at donutmedia.com
I love you.
Now back to the show.
♪ He'll spin fast and he'll go ♪
♪ Watch it turbo, go, go, go ♪
♪ Here to help and bring you joy ♪
♪ Watch out world it's Spinny Boy ♪
- A huge, huge, thank you
to Tommo for helping me out on this one.
Please go give him some love on his channel.
I'll link it right here or in the description.
I think we nailed it.
I want to hear your opinion.
Did we actually nail it?
What did we miss?
What are some sponsors that might've made more sense
than the ones we chose?
If you want to drive this car in a settle core site
you can do that by downloading the skin in the link below
drive it, take pictures of the car, tag me in them.
Tag Dodge.
I think they should see this thing.
Let's get this going.
Be kind, take care of each other.
See you next time.