The screech of tires is real enough.
Photographer: Stellantis/Webb BlandCan an EV Ever Really Be a Muscle Car?
The new Dodge Charger has real speed and torque. So what if its growl is fake?
Dodge and drag racing, America’s homegrown automotive pastime, go together like stars and stripes. Souped-up cars from the Dodge stable were winning hot-rod competitions on California’s dry lake beds as far back as the 1930s. By the late ’60s and ’70s, just a few years after C.J. Hart organized the first official drag strip event in Orange County, Challengers and Chargers were dominating drag racing subgenres like super stock and pro stock racing.
Dodge’s roaring machines embodied the intoxicating cacophony of screeching rubber and raw, thunderous speed that lure devotees to this addictive sport. Still, I’m surprised to find myself strapped into Dodge’s latest, the Charger Daytona, for a test on a drag strip outside Phoenix.