BURN OUT FADE AWAY?

By Switching from V8 to electric with fake noise, has Dodge missed the point of a muscle car completely?

- TOM FORD

Is that one of those new soy Chargers? The one that’s all electric?” says Devon, a man in his silver years who drives a truck, but also has a V8 petrol powered Dodge Challenger back home, implying that electricity is feeble and... somehow left wing. A case not supported should he investigate the woke electricity that powers his home and drop a live toaster in his bath. I simply switch on Dodge’s new electric Charger Daytona and start to rev it. He flinches at the startup – it’s got the kind of exhaust fireup flare you get when someone lops the exhaust off a V8 with an angle grinder – and his face unfurls in wonder. “Well, I’ll be damned...” he exclaims, calling his buddies over. “Maybe it’s not so bad after all.”

Amazing how a bit of theatre can change people’s minds, and before they left, this slice of grey dollar was suddenly a lot keener on the idea of an electric muscle car. But that’s the issue Dodge is facing right there, born, lived and buried in one 10-minute conversation. Nominative determinism has bitten, and this EV Charger is pure electric heresy according to the Church of V8. And the Church is puritanical: anything short of a procharged 7.3-litre Hemi on open headers with the fuel efficiency of an Iowa class battleship would cause coarse frown lines in the foreheads of the faithful. So it’s a tricky spot for a company that has built a modern reputation on Hellcats adept at turning unleaded into tyre smoke at will. You’ve got the muscle car faithful and those interested in EVs, and in the Venn diagram of ownership, the crossover is micron thick. Dodge reckons this is the “world’s first electric muscle car”. But that might be because no one’s really thought it necessary to build one.