Auto Car | Dodge Challenger R/T 2009 | We're cranking along I-80 West on our way from suburban New York to Detroit — to Woodward Avenue, in fact. We're hauling up on the dudes in Hyundais and swerving around RSXs. These people are looking at us like we've got lobsters crawling out of our eye sockets. This isn't the Challenger's bag, man.This modern-day muscle/pony car might be constructed in a plant near Toronto, but it will always be "from Detroit." And no location in Detroit will ever be quite as friendly to the Challenger as Woodward Avenue — particularly during the traditional Dream Cruise in mid-August. This unwieldy, non-organized, traffic-snarled, oldies-blaring orgy of angry exhaust and gasoline stench is the Challenger's turf. Here, fart-can-exhaust Civic owners meet flat-black retro-rod rockabilly dudes, who meet hyperaggressive Camaro-driving burnouts, who meet fat old men with their poodle-skirt-wearing wives, who meet non-automotive-related standard-issue freak shows in aluminum foil hats and carrying half-full trash bags. It's a mess.
Even more than the retro-inflected Mustang and the upcoming retro-modern Camaro, the 2009 Dodge Challenger R/T traffics in nostalgia. The R/T is slightly more faithful to the original 1970 Challenger than the SRT8, with its "carbon fiber" stripes and fancy Italian brakes. The R/T's got the period-correct rectangular exhaust tips, chrome fuel filler door with "FUEL" helpfully printed on it and the same inset full-width grille and quad headlamps.What we have here is the Chrysler 300/Dodge Charger platform, the chassis derived from old Mercedes E-Class bits. Chop out 4 inches of that fat boy's wheelbase and you have, well, a still-massive thing. With 116 inches between the center caps of the front and rear wheels, you end up with a car that's not totally outside the realm of being a Mustang/Camaro fighter.But we couldn't help but feel that the lenses in our eyeballs had been replaced with wide-angle panoramic units as stretching those familiar 1970 proportions over such broad dimensions has made the Challenger a Matchbox car in a Penny Racers world.
The Challenger SRT8 remains the standard bearer of the Challenger line, but now for '09 Dodge has to convert all the attention the limited-production SRT8 has garnered and sell a bunch of less-powerful V8 R/Ts and much-less-powerful V6 SE models to make some money on the whole proposition. We have serious doubts about the viability/desirability of the SE model, especially since this V6-powered car will make up more than 50 percent of Challenger sales. But the 2009 Dodge Challenger R/T, now this is an intriguing combination of parts.Check the specs: 376 horsepower from Dodge's reworked 5.7-liter Hemi V8, now with variable valve timing. Further, it cranks out a pants-twisting 410 pound-feet of torque. These numbers apply only to the particular R/Ts equipped with the optional ($995) six-speed manual transmission. These 5.7s get a unique free-flowing exhaust and a thirst for premium fuel to bump power. When mated with the five-speed automatic, the 5.7-liter R/T motor makes a paltry 372 hp and 401 lb-ft. It will be quieter and likes to run on 89 octane fuel.
An R/T with the manual will return 15 mpg city/23 mpg highway according to the EPA. We got just over 20 mpg on a couple of tanks of expressway driving with a few burnouts and other assorted idiotic full-throttle applications thrown in.Combine this with the Dodge's estimated curb weight of 4,041 pounds and you get our 0-60-mph run of 5.9 seconds (5.5 seconds using a 1-foot rollout like at a drag strip). The quarter-mile is dispatched in 14.1 seconds at 100.8 mph. We tested the R/T (as well as the V6-powered SE and the SRT8 with its newly available manual tranny) at the well-known Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey.If these numbers seem pretty close to those you might expect from an SRT8, give yourself a cookie. The 425-hp, 6.1-liter SRT8 fitted with the new Tremec TR6060 six-speed manual transmission cranks out a 0-60-mph run of 5.5 seconds (or 5.2 seconds using a 1-foot rollout like at a drag strip). The higher-revving but heavier SRT8 will get through the quarter in 13.8 seconds at 103 mph. Good numbers, but not much better than the R/T. And as our test driver noted, the SRT8 could break 60 mph at the top of 2nd gear thanks to the Hemi's 6,400-rpm redline. The R/T's 5.7-liter Hemi V8 redlines at 5,800 rpm and had to be shifted into 3rd instead, and the time spent on the gearchange accounts for almost all of the time difference to 60 mph between the two cars.
Even more than the retro-inflected Mustang and the upcoming retro-modern Camaro, the 2009 Dodge Challenger R/T traffics in nostalgia. The R/T is slightly more faithful to the original 1970 Challenger than the SRT8, with its "carbon fiber" stripes and fancy Italian brakes. The R/T's got the period-correct rectangular exhaust tips, chrome fuel filler door with "FUEL" helpfully printed on it and the same inset full-width grille and quad headlamps.What we have here is the Chrysler 300/Dodge Charger platform, the chassis derived from old Mercedes E-Class bits. Chop out 4 inches of that fat boy's wheelbase and you have, well, a still-massive thing. With 116 inches between the center caps of the front and rear wheels, you end up with a car that's not totally outside the realm of being a Mustang/Camaro fighter.But we couldn't help but feel that the lenses in our eyeballs had been replaced with wide-angle panoramic units as stretching those familiar 1970 proportions over such broad dimensions has made the Challenger a Matchbox car in a Penny Racers world.
The Challenger SRT8 remains the standard bearer of the Challenger line, but now for '09 Dodge has to convert all the attention the limited-production SRT8 has garnered and sell a bunch of less-powerful V8 R/Ts and much-less-powerful V6 SE models to make some money on the whole proposition. We have serious doubts about the viability/desirability of the SE model, especially since this V6-powered car will make up more than 50 percent of Challenger sales. But the 2009 Dodge Challenger R/T, now this is an intriguing combination of parts.Check the specs: 376 horsepower from Dodge's reworked 5.7-liter Hemi V8, now with variable valve timing. Further, it cranks out a pants-twisting 410 pound-feet of torque. These numbers apply only to the particular R/Ts equipped with the optional ($995) six-speed manual transmission. These 5.7s get a unique free-flowing exhaust and a thirst for premium fuel to bump power. When mated with the five-speed automatic, the 5.7-liter R/T motor makes a paltry 372 hp and 401 lb-ft. It will be quieter and likes to run on 89 octane fuel.
An R/T with the manual will return 15 mpg city/23 mpg highway according to the EPA. We got just over 20 mpg on a couple of tanks of expressway driving with a few burnouts and other assorted idiotic full-throttle applications thrown in.Combine this with the Dodge's estimated curb weight of 4,041 pounds and you get our 0-60-mph run of 5.9 seconds (5.5 seconds using a 1-foot rollout like at a drag strip). The quarter-mile is dispatched in 14.1 seconds at 100.8 mph. We tested the R/T (as well as the V6-powered SE and the SRT8 with its newly available manual tranny) at the well-known Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey.If these numbers seem pretty close to those you might expect from an SRT8, give yourself a cookie. The 425-hp, 6.1-liter SRT8 fitted with the new Tremec TR6060 six-speed manual transmission cranks out a 0-60-mph run of 5.5 seconds (or 5.2 seconds using a 1-foot rollout like at a drag strip). The higher-revving but heavier SRT8 will get through the quarter in 13.8 seconds at 103 mph. Good numbers, but not much better than the R/T. And as our test driver noted, the SRT8 could break 60 mph at the top of 2nd gear thanks to the Hemi's 6,400-rpm redline. The R/T's 5.7-liter Hemi V8 redlines at 5,800 rpm and had to be shifted into 3rd instead, and the time spent on the gearchange accounts for almost all of the time difference to 60 mph between the two cars.
Source : www.insideline.com
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