Riding the Elephant: 2009 Dodge Challenger 426

"TheElephant" (426cubicinches) 08/29/2014 at 23:36 • Filed to: User Reviews, Challenger, Road Test

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The Dodge Challenger didn't debut until 2009, at the bottom of the Great Recession. And because Chrysler is Chrysler, it's bland interior and iffy build quality quickly put it at the back of field in most comparison test. It always seemed to be the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of the "pony car" fleet. I think that's mostly because people misunderstand the Challenger.

This was never intended to be some flashy, light weight pony car with !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! or oddly placed !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . It has too many little quirks to be a true daily driver. It's big, and it does a poor job of hiding it's heft. It's pitch-black interior is a little simple. And it makes a bunch of wild concessions in order to ensure it's existence. But because of these flaws it has what so many other cars sitting in showrooms lack: character.

The Challenger is just trying to cover the basics with it's shape, interior and fit-an-finish. It wants you to know it has the fundamentals down, but the main focus is really being a bit... insane where it counts. This car is a lot like dating a stripper: you have to learn to make certain allowances for strange quirks, but you quickly forgive all the flaws when you hop into bed press the loud pedal and turn premium fuel into noise and tire smoke.

( Full Disclosure: Dodge wanted me to write this review so badly that they sold this car in 2009 to some guy who dropped lightly-used-Miata money on a 426 crate motor and then offloaded it to me five years later after only 13k miles. I didn't actually build this thing but if I were to spec a Challenger, I would probably wind up with something... identical.)

Let's get the technical stuff out of the way: this thing has a 426 stroker motor mated to the 5 speed auto and puts about 500 horsepower to the ground through skinny-enough-to-be-wagon-wheels 245/45 Goodyears. It's got traction control, but it's pretty much useless.

Exterior: 9/10

The Challenger is basically a large rectangle that kinks up over the rear wheels. The roof looks like a hockey stick. Both ends of it are mostly square, broken up by large lighting elements composed of basic shapes. This is a something you could have scribbled in the margins of a high school math book.

It's big, but it's proportioned perfectly. Dodge stuck 20" wheels in the comically large wells. The rear roof line melts into a quarter panel that is nearly four feet high . Think about that: the roof of a Miata is only 6" taller than this thing's hips.

The flat expanse of the front and rear decks beg for stripes, and this one has two, foot-wide flat black stripes on top of the stock "black pearl" - which is a seriously heavy metallic paint.

It's the simplicity and scale that make this damn near perfect.

Interior and Toys: 10/20

It's got Bluetooth and UConnect. You can plug in a phone using USB or AUX cables. There's a so-so nav system with a really cool "guide me home" feature.

And that's about it.

Oh, wait, there's also a handle on the passenger seat to access the rear bench. When you use this handle to move the seat, it forgets its position and immediately locks in place alllllll the way forward by the dash. That's a neat feature.

Acceleration: 9/10

This thing moves like it has no right to. Remember: this is a 4,200 pound car, but it hits 60 is about 4 seconds, 100 MPH in 10 and clears the quarter mile at 119 MPH. That, my friends, is faster than a Ferrari 360 on paper, and - in the real world where you actually drive these things - it is fast enough to keep up with most anything.

This thing also gets points for burnouts. Huge, smokey, noisy, wonderful burnouts.

Braking: 6/10

Braking is... a thing that this car does. It has a brake pedal, you push it with varying degrees of urgency and the speed is reduced in line with the requested urgency. You certainly get the impression that this car is using all of its braking ability.

It doesn't come off as over-stressed.. but it you're going to want to be aware of your surroundings.

In the near future, I'll be upgrading to a set of Brembo's. And I suppose if you have to have something like that on the list of "Shit of To-Do" - right next to an oil change and tire rotation, as if it were a routine thing to think about - you should probably not call this particular aspect of the car anything more than "adequate".

Ride: 8/10

Around town and on the highway, the Challenger rides like a big, cushy sedan. It's soft enough to soak up imperfections, but stiff enough to avoid wallowing. Big holes or poorly maintained bridge joints send some minor crash through the body structure.

It's unobtrusive, which is probably the best thing you can say about it...

Handling: 7/10

Look, you don't put a 4,200 pound car on a technical track - or any track. In the real world, this thing handles fine. Get into some tight mountain roads? Just use the throttle to rotate the rear end. Going really, really fast in a straight line? No issues thanks to the long wheels base.

Should you go chasing Boxsters through the canyon? No. But try to take four adults to dinner in a Boxster... Oh, wait.

Gearbox:7/10

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an auto. It's only got five speeds. It's got Chrysler's auto-upshift "autostick". But you know what? It's got so much torque that doesn't matter. It'll rev to 6,500 before grabbing the next cog, and if you're running around the B roads, you can leave it in Third and it'll pull just fine from about 35 MPH to 90. That's tremendously flexible.

And when it does upshift, it's firm and quick. Even the auto downshifts when merging onto the highway are just the right amount of kick in the backside. And they're accompanied with a nice bark from the motor.

The auto, it seems, is easier to tune than a manual. Which is important when you're running a piggy back ECU to manage the motor. And you can just hand it over to the DD at the end of the night and not worry about making it home. It's that easy.

Audio: 8/10

The stereo is great. It's loud enough to overcome wind-roar on the highway with the windows down. There's Sirius and the ability to stream from your phone. The controls are simple and intuitive.

Value: 10/10

This is a monster. It'll out run a new (and nearly $50-large) SRT8. It'll hang with Corvette's in a straight line. It can lay down re-god-damned-diculous power slides and burnouts. It cost less than $30,000 - after putting on new tires and stripes.

And, because it is an R/T and not an SRT, the insurance is dirt cheap.

You simply can't compete with it in this price range.

TOTAL: 77/100

Engine : 426 Hemi
Power : 600 HP
Transmission : 5-Speed Auto ("autostick")
0-60 : 4.1 seconds
Quarter Mile: 12.5 @ 119
Top Speed : 160+
MPG : 15 Highway / <10 When-Driven-Properly

CRider > TheElephant 12/29/2014 at 22:50

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Needs more SR20 on the swap.

TheElephant > CRider 12/29/2014 at 22:58

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I don't know what this is?

CRider > TheElephant 12/29/2014 at 23:56

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SR20 mean pictures. I want pictures.