I've told everybody throughout my entire life,
if you see me driving an electric car, shoot me in
the head, put it right behind my ear, angle it up
a little bit and pull the trigger so you get a good
shot at it, right?
Meet Alan Meehan.
He is one of what is sometimes called the Mopar
faithful, people who are deeply devoted to all
things Chrysler.
Hope is to retain the magic of its muscle cars
in an EV form.
At first glance, the company could risk losing
some die-hard fans like Meehan, but even some of
them may be coming around.
I read this article the other day and, man, I
really like that car.
I said it out loud, right? I really do like
that car.
While they are a small share of total sales for
Stellantis, leaning into American muscle and
performance has brought Dodge success in many
die-hard fans.
But tightening emissions regulations and a shift
toward SUVs are making it hard to keep producing gas
guzzling sports cars.
Our transition to electrification is really
critical. I mean, this is like really walking a
tightrope for us.
In his airplane hangar outside Minneapolis,
Minnesota, Allan Meehan has several Dodges and
some classic Plymouth's.
Not too far away, Greg Nelsen is another Mopar
believer. He buys, fixes, stores, and sells classic
cars, mostly Plymouths and Dodges.
That one has 19 miles on it.
It's the only car I don't drive.
Because the guy before me didn't drive it.
I said, "You wrecked it now. Now I can't drive
it." But I knew it was one of 20 and I had to
have it.
He calls this place the Mopar Ponderosa.
I built this to have a hangout for my stuff.
And then, of course, other people wanted to
have their car fixed here or find them a car.
And it just keeps going and going and that's it.
This is one of three or four black Challenger
convertibles that has a red interior.
And, you know, it's probably a $125,000 car
today. Would I sell it?
No.
This Cuda is worth $600,000.
This one is more than a million.
1,000,005 would buy it, I guess, but it's the only
one.
For collectors and enthusiasts like Meehan
and Nelsen, Mopars are just different from
everything else, including rivals made by
Ford and General Motors.
They made some of the most daring cars of the
muscle car era.
It is the dust trail from the Road Runner.
Push the horn. [Horn honks].
Factory. It's all it was.
Mopar just did all the wild, crazy stuff.
And so look at today. It's the same thing.
They've been the leader in the crazy cars and
colors. You just gravitate to that
uniqueness.
When I think of Dodge, I think of power and I think
of styling. They're always thinking out of the
box. I just love the stuff they come up with.
Dodge made all kinds of cars over the decades:
pickup trucks, minivans, and full-sized sedans.
Trucks sold today under the Ram Trucks brand were
originally branded as the Dodge Ram.
Dodge revived the Charger name in 2006 and the
Challenger in 2008.
Meehan has an SRT8 Challenger from that first
model year.
We drive this thing all over the place.
It's been to Phenix twice. We just drove it up
to northern Minnesota.
It dug deeper into that brand identity shortly
after Chrysler emerged from bankruptcy in the
financial crisis.
About a decade ago, we decided that we were going
to distill the brand down to its performance essence
. And the brand is all about American muscle and
performance.
Then in 2015, it debuted the Hellcat Challenger.
Meehan has one of those as well.
These cars are second to none for engineering.
They're just great cars to drive.
They're powerful.
They're light-footed.
They stop well.
They handle well.
Dodge is known for its monster engines.
The Hellcat comes with 707 horsepower.
A version called the Hellcat Redeye kicked that
up to 797 horsepower.
So Redeyes, God, you floor that thing, and in 2
seconds you're going 100.
But the most powerful of the bunch was the Dodge
Demon, a very limited version of the Challenger
that came with 840 horsepower.
The Demon was, for a time, the quickest
production car in the world.
It could go 0 to 60 in 2.3 seconds and run the
quarter mile in 9.6 5 seconds.
Meehan and Nelsen each have one.
No car had even been close to that.
Typically it was a drag car to do that.
And this is a street car you could buy and you got
a warranty and everything.
The Demon's ragged power, man, that thing is
something else.
Okay. Yeah, it's crazy.
A list of things you have to sign and initial when
you buy the car to make sure you know what you're
getting, it's really s omething.
The only car in the world to do a wheelie right from
the factory.
The Demon was a limited run vehicle, but the
Hellcat surpassed Dodge's sales expectations.
By the time the car goes out of production, Dodge
expects to sell 80,000 of them.
The Challenger inspires special loyalty.
IHS Markit released a survey of customer loyalty
to various manufacturers and makes.
Mopar vehicles took top honors in several
categories. Among them was the Dodge Challenger
in the sports car category. Even though the
Challenger is built on a full-sized sedan platform
and is much larger than most other sports cars.
Since 2020, Dodge has also topped J.D.
Power's appeal survey, which measures the
emotional connection consumers have with cars
and brands.
While Dodge has become known for supercharged V8
engines, environmental laws are proving them
pricey.
What we said very early on was, "We have two choices.
We can either say, look, we can't make this
transition because we see where the industry is
going. We can shut down the brand.
Or we could look at it and say, is there something
that we can do here to really have the same
playbook that we created about a decade ago?
The challenge is that the auto market, EV or
otherwise, has shifted away from traditional
sedans and sport cars and toward crossovers and
sport utility vehicles.
As for Dodge, the company has long sold the Durango
and recently debuted the Hornet small SUV, but its
muscle cars and sports cars are its identity.
We've really built this brand on the backs of some
of those extreme performance vehicles:
Hellcats, Redeyes, Demons, the Scat Pack
really is our biggest seller. All of them are
very aggressive performance vehicles.
Muscle cars are not supposed to look like a
melted jellybeans, it's supposed to look like a
big, blocky American performance vehicle.
There are other obstacles to electrifying Dodge.
Fans adore the unmistakable rumble of a
V8 engine.
To get consumers involved and excited, you really
need to connect to that emotional level.
And it goes beyond the fact that Tesla or Lucid
or fill in the blank can go 0 to 60 in 2 seconds.
Dodge built the Charger EV with this driving
experience in mind.
The vehicle has a shiftable transmission and
a simulated engine note Dodge has said will be
above 100 decibels.
Both of these innovations are controversial.
I have heard some pushback from some folks who say
that it's akin to turn of the century in the 1900s
when cars had fake horse heads attached to the
front of it so folks could more easily switch
away from horse driven carriages and it wouldn't
spook horses.
Certainly some people are saying, "How?
That's fake noise. And how can that be real and how
can that be useful? We don't know everything
about it yet. Dodge just said that it's real noise,
it's air going through baffles and it's not a
piped in MP3 file that's pushed into your computer.
To be fair, a lot of cars already come with
manipulated sound, even fuel burning ones.
An electric motor makes a very high, whiny, pitchy
noise. And the challenge that Dodge is trying to
work through is that sound is definitely a part
of that experience.
It's a part of a visceral sports car experience.
And so what does that look like in the future?
And what is the right sound?
I'd have to hear it again.
But what I heard was, well that's interesting, I
don't know. Nothing sounds like these cars.
I love the way these things sound.
The shiftable transmission is a slightly different
issue. Transmissions are needed to manage the power
from a gas burning engine.
Electric vehicles work differently, so multiple
gears aren't needed.
The vast majority of EVs have only one gear,
including high performance ones like
Teslas. There are exceptions.
The Porsche Taycan has a two-speed transmission and
Formula E race cars have multiple gears.
I think a step in the right direction for them
is, it's got to shift.
I don't want to just get in the car and push down
on the accelerator and have the power be linear.
I don't want that at all. I want like this.
I want to be able to shift it and have some fun
with it.
I'm really excited that engineers are looking at
these solutions. I think that that's something that
we haven't been looking at as closely in general
as the industry, because the transition to electric
vehicles is so complicated and there are
so many things to deal with.
A vehicle inspired by the SRT Charger EV concept
will enter production in 2024, the year after
production of the current Challenger and Charger
ends.
I'm not going to say I didn't get my fair share
of hate mail from some enthusiasts.
I absolutely did.
And we looked at what the negative sentiment was out
in our customer base on this transition, and it
was high. It was very high.
We knew that our customer base, 13 million strong,
are going to need soak time.
They're going to need time to make this
transition in their mind to electrification.
We didn't ask for the rules to change.
We didn't want them to change, but they did.
And we can try to outrun them, but that would be a
nine second pass straight into extinction.
Dodge launched a two year business plan with
scheduled quarterly updates to keep customers
informed. That includes the Speed Week event in
August 2022, where it unveiled both the Hornet
and the Charger EV.
There were about 20 million people watching
the three day event.
Tracking social media posts and mentions, Dodge
found negative sentiment about the Charger EV was
initially high, but it dropped over the course of
three days, eventually settling below 50%.
What was interesting to me was not the fact that we
were over 50% positive.
It was the fact that it got better and better and
better each day as they learned more and more and
more.
Nelsen and Meehan are at least open to trying out
the new car.
I think it's a cool looking car, and I want
one because I want to have the first, you know,
one of the first ones, but I don't know.
You've got to drive it and test it out and see if you
like it. But I guess if electricity stays super
cheap, then maybe I drive one.
But this is more fun.
It just is.
Makes noise, it scares you.
Some analysts wonder if Dodge wouldn't be better
off trying to attract a new audience of core EV
buyers.
This brand in Stellantis is stable, is the most
exposed to the millennial audience, and millennials
are the customer segment that wants EVs the most.
And so this is an opportunity to make a true
EV, kind of what the Ford Mach-E did.
That's more EV than it is a Mustang.
And it's done exceptionally well and
targeted a new audience.
Of total Stellantis vehicles sold, RBC
estimates Ram makes up 10% and Jeep makes up 19%.
Dodge only contributes about 6%.
Stellantis is kind of late to the game, especially
compared to probably its most often compared peers,
Volkswagen and Renault.
And so it's going to be a really expensive
undertaking to electrify.
Battery costs are actually going up.
While EVs get more expensive near term,
Stellantis has to support all these disparate
brands. There really isn't a cohesive strategy
of why you need all of these brands.
In the meantime, fans of what might be the last era
of the V8-powered performance car are making
their peace with its end.
They're going to discontinue the
gas-powered V8 engines, is the way I understand
it. And being a Mopar and HEMI guy, I'm sad to see
that. I'm sad to see him go.
I don't know. I still think these will be more
fun than an electric car, but that's what they're
going to build, I guess.
It's always better to have things greener and
better, but you've got to be practical about it.
In the meantime, I'll drive this stuff.
Even at ten bucks a gallon, I'm still going by
gas. Oh, I'm crazy I guess about cars somewhat,
but I'm not crazy.
Living the dream.
Or your dream. I don't know.
I just, I got more cars to buy, and we're not done
yet, I don't think.