(car revving)
- Yee-haw!
It's the Murican' muscle car
that made Dodge the king of the streets.
This legendary ride went from playing catch up
to putting ketchup on cars
because it was eating them for lunch.
(car revving)
You guys have been asking for this one
since we started this dang show and now
(lightening striking)
It's time!
(car revving)
This is everything you need to know to get Up to Speed
on the Dodge Charger, lightening, lightening, lightening.
(upbeat cartoon music)
In August of 1964, the Ford motor company
introduced the Mustang, you ever heard of it?
And Chrysler freaked out.
Why?
Well the Mustang was unique.
It was a cheap car that was also fun as frick
and Chrysler brands like Dodge
had nothing similar that they could offer to customers.
After staying up for weeks just freaking out
and asking each other what the heck they were gonna do.
Some designers at Dodge cooked up a little concept car.
The new design was based on the 1964 Polara.
It had no roof, it had a chop windshield
it had a not really a roll bar, roll bar thingy,
and most importantly it had racing stripes.
Under the hood was Chrysler's brand-new 426 hemi
or least that's what was supposed to be in there.
Chrysler had so few hemis on hand
that when a sponsored race team blew theirs up,
the one in the concept was yanked out and the stock 383
from the Polara went back in, that's crazy.
On the B pillar was a new badge in cursive font,
the fanciest of fonts.
They called the concept, the Charger.
Whew, I just got goose pimples.
Obviously, this wasn't something
Dodge was gonna start producing overnight.
I mean the thing didn't even have a fricken roof.
Although Dodge has been known to make cars
that don't have roofs, first gen Viper.
The concept got people talking, it was provocative.
So Dodge got to building a cheap
but sporty car of their own.
(car revving)
In 1965, Dodge released the Dark GT Charger,
the first production Dodge with the Charger name.
It made a clink.
235 HRSPRS, its 273 in.³ Charger V8.
You could get it in any color you wanted
as long as it was code 811, pale yellow
which is kind of a weird color choice for a sports car
especially when it's the only color that you offer.
Dodge only built 150 of these, making the Dark GT Charger
one of the rarest of early Mopar muscle.
Unsurprisingly, the limited run special edition Dark
did not solve the Ford Mustang problem.
Dodge still needed a car, not just a badge.
So in 1965, Dodge's sister brand, Plymouth,
released the Barracuda which was also built
to compete with the Mustang.
This stressed Dodge dealers out because now
they don't have a sports car to sell against the Mustang
and they also have to compete
against their brother, Plymouth, then freaking out.
So CEO, Lynn Townsend, tells them that Dodges are meant
to compete with higher up brands like Mercury or Pontiac
but the Dodge dealers didn't really buy that
so he told them, if they didn't like his strategy
they could find another brand to sell.
Listen here fellas.
If you don't like my strategy,
maybe you can find another brand to sell.
Oh okay, I guess we will.
Yeah I mean I like working with you guys
but I guess we'll go find another brand, all right dude.
No no no no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait (muttering).
Let's not be hasty fellas.
What if I were able to give you a mid-sized sports car
to sell against the Mustang?
Yeah that's what we (mumbling).
Yeah, that's a great idea I just had.
The Dodge studio got back to work,
this time using the Dodge Coronet as a platform.
They changed the roof, they changed the quarter panels
and finally the rear deck lid and grille.
When it was done, Dodge, had their new new car
with a familiar name, the Charger.
Dodge's new sports car had an epic fastback,
tons of engine options including the 426 hemi
and maybe the coolest option of them all.
(lightening striking)
Remix!
♪ Roll out, up and down headlights ♪
♪ Roll out, up and down headlights uh, ♪
♪ Roll out, up and down headlights ♪
♪ Roll out, up and down headlights uh, ♪
♪ Roll out, up and down headlights uh ♪
The 1966 1/2 Chargers aggressive styling
and available 425 HRSPRS made it one of the baddest cars
Detroit had ever produced.
(car revving)
Yee-Haw!
Styling cues like the aforementioned hidden headlights
and full width tail lights gave the Charger
a very menacing presence.
If you drove one of these,
you were a bad dude, you dangerous.
Even if you were an insurance adjuster from Bixby Knolls.
(car revving)
The Charger's aerodynamic shape helped Dodge win
a lot on NASCAR ovals but that wasn't enough
to make the Charger a winner at the showroom.
From '66 to '67, Dodge only sold about 37,000 Chargers.
For comparison, Ford, sold over
a million Mustangs in the same time, woof.
Clearly something needed to be done.
1968, the Dodge design studio
had something special in store.
Principle of Design, Richard Sias,
envisioned an entirely new look for the Charger.
The new Coke bottle styling was unlike any car ever made.
The new charger did borrow a few elements
from the previous car but crank them up to 11.
Yeah crank it.
We've only gone to 10 before.
(yelling)
The full width grille and tail lights were enlarged.
The grille itself looked like it would suck you up
like a whale sucking up a bunch of krill.
Without a doubt the Charger looked good.
The standard engine option was a 5.2 L, 318 in.³ V8
but if you wanted something bigger
there was the 383, 426 hemi
all the way up to the 7.2L, 440 in.³ Magnum.
When they name an engine after a gun, a big gun,
a gun that Dirty Harry had, that's when you know.
Really?
Yeah dude, it's a Dodge episode.
Dare I say, Mopar baby?
Mopar baby indeed.
(chanting)
(car revving)
New for that year was the R/T package
which included upgraded brakes and suspension.
The Dodge R/T was about as good a sports car
as a 3600 pound muscle car could be.
Critics and fans agreed the '68
was an awesome, awesome, awesome car.
And as a result, people fricken bought it.
Dodge predicted that the new car would sell about
as well as the first gen, but they were wrong, dead wrong.
Dodge ended up building
nearly hundred thousand of them for 1968.
The new Charger was a huge success.
And because this new car was doing so well
that left Dodge in a bit of a pickle
since they didn't want to ruin
the good thing they had going.
- Dodge fever, it's a beautiful way to go.
- 1969 saw a revised grille
as well as a special edition Charger
built for NASCAR oval domination, the Daytona.
They made the nose all pointy,
put a big ole wing on it for grip.
It worked so well that NASCAR had to ban it two years later.
If you want to know more about the Daytona
and its sister car, the Super Bird
check out this episode on Up to Speed.
But perhaps what the '69 Charger is best known for
is a little show called The Dukes of Hazzard.
(trumpets playing)
In which it played a pivotal role.
The show premiered in 1979 and featured
a bright orange Charger that had a knack
for flying through the air, the General Lee.
General Lee was equipped with a push bar
and 15 inch American racing vector wheels.
From 1979 to 1985 The Dukes of Hazzard
chewed through about 300 Chargers (grunts)
Yee-Haw!
(intense music)
Doing a sick jump every episode is pretty awesome
but it was rare for a car to survive the landing.
I mean when you watch the show, it's pretty obvious
that these cars got totaled.
Just look at those chassis bend.
(car crashing)
I just got the bad kind of goose pimples.
Back in 1970, Dodge rolled out
the last of the second gen Chargers
and honestly not a lot of change since 1968.
The main changes over the years
were the grille and tail lights.
But the truth is, that Richard Sias and his team
did such a good job on the Coke bottle Charger
that they didn't see any reason to change it much
over the three years of production.
In my opinion, the 1970 is the most aggressive of the bunch.
The chrome trim really contrasts with black grille
and makes the mouth look that much bigger.
The Charger got a redesign in 1971
and the designers called it a Fuselage
as opposed to a Coke bottle.
It was softer and shorter too.
The engine options didn't change.
The R/T came with the 440 with an optional 426 hemi.
Or a 440 with a six pack of carburetors sitting on top.
In 1971, the Charger was still a serious sports car
but that started to change as the years went by.
(car revving)
As emission rules got stricter, power would be effective
and the styling got a little less Agro
but surprisingly, that didn't effect sales.
Dodge sold over 122,000 Chargers in 1973
making it the best-selling Charger so far.
But unfortunately, it wasn't all gravy baby.
As the Charger was riding high
that dang old fricken gas crisis hit
and hit the entire Chrysler Corporation hard.
I mean they were hemorrhaging money.
Big cars with big motors using big gas were out
and the Charger died in 1978.
♪ And we'll take with me the memories ♪
♪ To be my sunshine after the rain ♪
- You know when I first took this crazy job
they were ready to bury Chrysler.
- Chrysler needed a solution and they saw one
in a dude named, Lee Iacocca.
He was basically the mastermind behind the Mustang,
the car that inspired the Charger in the first place.
Lee came aboard the Chrysler ship in 1978
and immediately started making changes
'cause that's the kinda guy that Lee Iacocca was.
First, he secured loans from Uncle Sam
that would keep the company afloat
until he could turn things around and second,
he made sure the cars they sold in the meantime were good.
Chrysler had actually started producing smaller,
more efficient front wheel drive cars like the Dodge Omni
and the Plymouth Horizon that year
and they sold pretty well but they didn't scratch
that sporty itch that Lee Iacocca needed to be scratched.
In 1981, Dodge released the Omni 024 Charger,
a sporting economy car.
Got a 2.2L four banger under the hood making 84 HRSPRS.
That wasn't enough for Lee so he hired his buddy,
Carroll Shelby, to tune some of these Chargers
to make more power baby.
Carroll worked his magic
on the cylinder heads and cam timing.
All said and done, the new Dodge Shelby Charger
made a blistering 107 HRSPRS.
(quirky music)
Look, I know that that doesn't sound like a lot
but in those post gas crisis times,
people took what they could get.
It was a whole new world.
Chrysler engineers developed a turbocharged version
of the 2.2 L engine and threw it in the 1984 Omni.
They called it, the Omni GLH which stood for
goes like hell, because it did.
The next year, they put the same engine into the Charger
and beefed up the bodywork.
It might be one of the most sinister looking,
front wheel drive cars, ever built.
It's on my bucket list, I'm gonna get one.
This turbocharged, two door, was one of fastest cars
for sale in the US at the time.
Iacocca had accomplished his mission,
to make Dodge America's performance brand, heck ya.
(car revving)
The Charger went away again in 1987
and would lay dormant for more than a decade.
Then in the early 2000's, Chrysler was hard at work
on a new rear wheel drive platform
that will be shared across the entire Chrysler family.
It was called, the LX but in 2006,
it was time for the return of an old friend.
- Ladies and gentlemen, the Dodge Charger is back.
- And the Charger was back baby.
Like the original, the new one was a muscle-y family car
that could specked for any driver.
The base Charger came equipped
with a humble but bulletproof 3.5L V6.
The R/T package was back as well,
powered by 5.7 L hemi.
They even made a Daytona package
to commemorate the original Daytona pointy boy.
Dodge went all in connecting this new Charger to its past
and they had something in the works
for even more bite for big time Charger fans.
(car revving)
The Charger SRT8 made other four-door sedans run for cover.
It was powered by 6.1 L hemi V8 leaving 428 HRSPRS
good for zero to 60 in five seconds.
It was the most powerful V8 Chrysler
had ever put in a production car.
(car revving)
Dodge didn't make any huge changes
to the Charger through the mid-2000's
because customers liked the Charger a lot.
Between 2005 and 2010, Dodge sold over half a million
of these burly boy sedans.
The Charger got a complete redesign for the 2011 model year
which improved on pretty much everything, okay?
The body was sleeker and lower profile than the previous gen
featuring scalloped bodywork on the hood and doors
and a return to the full width tail light in the back.
Just like the good old days.
And all the performance packs were back as well.
You had the R/T, the SRT8, a Super Bee.
In 2012, Dodge even teased a Viper V10
powered six speed manual Charger at Sema
called the Charger Juiced.
Unfortunately, it never went into production
but was a hint that an even more powerful,
maybe more evil, Charger was coming.
(car revving)
In 2014, Dodge unveiled a new Charger
for the 2015 model year.
It was completely refreshed, sporting a totally new look
but this Charger had a 707 horsepower secret
living under the hood.
Dodge called it the SRT Charger Hellcat.
This was a sedan that could do a quarter-mile in 11 seconds
and Dodge claimed it had a top speed of 204 miles an hour.
The Charger was both the fastest
and meanest looking sedan in the world.
Dodge let us borrow one last year
and it's probably the best road trip car ever
and the Charger's still going strong today
with no signs of letting up.
(car revving)
There's a ton of them.
There's literally a Charger for every driver.
You got the Charger SXT with a 3.6 L Pentastar V6
available with advanced all wheel drive
with front axle disconnect.
There's a Charger GT with performance body work
and a more powerful 300 horsepower V6.
(car revving)
Don't forget the 2020 Charger R/T
with it's 370 HRSPR hemi V8,
it's got electronically controlled exhaust, performance hood
and fascias and those great performance seats.
That performance steering wheel,
it's in there and it's got them power shifters.
(car revving)
The Charger R/T scat pack is equipped with
a dual inlet, performance grille,
feeding a 485 horsepower, 6.4 L hemi engine
equipped with electronically controlled exhaust Brembo,
four piston brakes, slow the car down,
which you're gonna need because this is the most horsepower,
you can get for under $40,000.
(car revving)
And of course, the big daddy of them all,
the Charger SRT Hellcat is returning for 2020.
It now comes standard with the wide-body package,
complete with the mail slot opening performance grille,
that delicious 707 HRSPR, 6.2 L supercharged Hellcat V8
capable of 196 miles per and it's got six piston Brembos.
(car revving)
(clapping)
Bravo, bravo.
So many features, so little time.
You know, I heard he got struck by lightning
and then he just knew everything about every car.
From big bruiser Coke bottle muscle cars
to turbocharged Econoboxs to the current four-door,
196 mph sedan, there really is a Charger for everybody
and that's why it's been around for so long
in so many different forms.
The name means something.
It can be any car for any person.
This episode was powered by Dodge, thanks Dodge.
We love you, but I love you more.
Remix!
♪ Roll out, up and down headlights ♪
♪ Roll out, up and down headlights uh, ♪
♪ Roll out, up and down headlights ♪
I love you.