I really want SRT to do well. I had Viper pictures on my walls, Viper wallpaper on my computer, and Viper die-cast figures on my dresser as a child. I played racing games with Viper themes on every platform I could find. I even watched Viper, a terrible TV show. Of course, it was terrible. I quickly figured out that the first episode came out when I was ten years old. It’s safe to say that trickle-down marketing had a big effect on my young, open mind. R/T immediately caught my attention. Neons? Durangos? That’s cool, but not for me. I also paid close attention when R/T was turned into SRT, and reports spread that the Hemi V8 would be brought back to life. In New York that year, Dodge showed off the new Charger. I still have publications with the news in a bin in the basement. On the surface, it looked like Dodge could sell more than just Chryslers with bright red paint jobs. But it was more than that. It was big. It wasn’t very good. It wasn’t the same. The 6.1-liter Charger’s big nostrils gave it a hellish look, like the Viper, in a showroom full of big pickup trucks and four-door sedans. This week, Stellantis announced that SRT would be coming back. This should make me very happy. But I’m not; in fact, I’m having a hard time feeling anything at all. Please understand that I see similarities with the early 2000s. Back then, when Chrysler was part of DaimlerChrysler, things were not going well. Things are not going well now either. The “Merger of Equals” with Daimler was already failing, and the two companies were growing in very different ways. The Dodge/Chrysler LX platform was made possible by this combination. It is a chassis that Chrysler modified to accommodate many key Mercedes-Benz components, including the front and rear suspension and a five-speed automatic transmission. Even though it had new European backers, Chrysler was still bankrupt. Even compared to cars that cost a third less, the Charger, 300, and Magnum all had subpar cabins, despite their attractive exteriors. These price cuts also applied to other important parts. Not all SRT-8s from the first model had a mechanical limited-slip differential. For the record, the first one didn’t come out until 2009, which was the second year that the dodge challenger SRT-8 was made. The Charger had to wait until 2011 to get a new look. Instead, the 300’s performance version was taken away, and by the time things got interesting, the Magnum was gone for good. The big Mopars weren’t very good, but their vintage charm more than made up for it. Additionally, the time could not have been better. Baby boomer yearning was felt everywhere. The idea is that everyone over the age of 50 who owns a 1960s fast car should trade it in for a down payment on a house for retirement. Other factors that helped were the fact that gas was still pretty cheap and the truck boom got American engineers excited about what else they could do with big engines. What does it mean? History doesn’t repeat itself, but often it rhymes. Although there are many similar themes, there is no thrill. This may be because Dodge has a current idea that is neither new nor different. For the most part, the opposite is true. A new frame was assembled using old-school parts to make the 2006 Dodge Charger stand out in the showroom. There’s no doubt that they are desperate to have anything in the store right now. I would want to follow Mopar’s lead if I had achieved as much success with the Hemi as he did with the last generation of SRTs. There won’t be as much left for me as SRT had planned. A brand-new V8 Charger was too expensive for me to buy in 2006, so I had to wait ten years to buy a Hemi. My 2013 SRT8 Plum Crazy 392 had a six-speed manual transmission with a pistol-grip shifter that had barely been used. It was huge, pointless, loud, and strangely hard for police to hear—exactly what I had hoped for. Overall, it was a great car, but my excitement quickly faded once the novelty wore off. When COVID was at its peak, I sold it to Carvana for almost nothing. For the four and a half years I owned it, I only had to pay about $1,500 out of pocket. This was less than what I would have spent on insurance and repairs otherwise. It was nice, but I don’t want to go through it again. I can see why Stellantis is interested in this plan; to sum it up, it was the last thing that worked, and some workers can still remember how it was done. Many people want it to work, just as I do. So why not? They shouldn’t be able to copy the ramp-up of the first SRT line, which was mistakenly perfect. At the time, it was the right thing to do, and the conviction was strong enough to withstand all the negative consequences that followed.
