Gadgetory

what you're looking at here is the first major refresh of the seventh generation charger which shares a platform with the 300 this is the new charger if you will with a new look that dodge says they derive by going back and lifting liberally from the 69 charger I say that indicates that marijuana must be legal in Michigan now because I don't really see it maybe in this new strip of a taillight back here they did carry over that big body indentation on the side from sort of a 69 look although that had to this had one but this one with it's all new revisions that touch almost all the sheet metal no longer rings rental car when you first see one on the road now when you get into charge or any charger but especially our r/t you're greeted by what I would call a curvaceously macho cabin I'll give them a big kudos for the matching look and feel of that instrument panel in front of the driver and this head unit over here between driver and passenger doesn't hurt that they've got a red black and grey theme going on that in this particular car is echoed by the seat under your but the two-tone thing I can always live without but that's just me in between those two conventional analog gauges and the - you've got a whole plethora of automotive instrumentation now back in the Haig unit this guy's generally very good 8.4 inch UConnect it's very square in its aspect ratio as you can see kind of a dead opposite of what BMW does the big wide ribbon using it is extremely easy especially for nab because it's Garmin power you should have almost no ambiguity about what you're supposed to do next when you want to enter a destination you've got just about every media choice in here including SD card and Hawks and USB HD radio comes optionally with navigation by the way and behind all of this we have the optional Beats Audio which is 10 speakers around the car including one very obvious sub back in the trunk at about 550 watts backing it all up under apps you've got a pretty good array on these Chrysler's now a lot of the usual suspects like AHA I Heart Radio Pandora and slacker you do have a hotspot technology you can get in this vehicle I'm not real big on the concept but it's here if you want it now drive controls your shifter is this very cool-looking kind of offset t-handle for the one choice only 8-speed automatic paddles are these very small but metal upright little horns behind the wheel here two buttons here are key as the driver goes sport mode puts you in a sport mode which will dial in in a minute but the one to the right is interesting the super track pack hit that and you load up a whole different set of screens first of all you've got the launch control screen because this vehicle has that you can activate launch control mode but most importantly down here is where you set your rpm lock point for that you can say what sport mode means on your car including three levels of steering tightness and weight that's an electric power steering by the way traction control can be normal or barely there you can turn your paddles off and on for shifting i've ever seen that in the car before and if you want to dial in the engine and transmission personality those are coupled so how the shift points are handled and how power comes on under the throttle is all one basket that's unusual to normally those routines doubt separately the other thing you've got up here are the performance pages and then two separate panels of discrete gauges that you can bring up similar to what you can show on the instrument panel but you can get them all up at once the expected g-force indication as well and then you've got this sort of master engine gauge you can bring up that I thought was fascinating you have horsepower on a ring around the outside you can get a lot of stuff going on for eye candy for the driver okay here's the part you wanted me to get to in the first place the 5.7 liter Hemi we had 70 horsepower they do it the old-fashioned way no turbos no superchargers no direct injection no overhead cam this is a pushrod v8 this is as old school as you can get the year 2015 but boy does it work 395 pound-feet of torque goes out rear wheel drive base we're all-wheel drive hello snowy climes with an interesting system that completely decouples the front drive apparatus when you don't need it to supposedly get you down to zero drag but definitely more weight oh and speaking of weight this car brings a lot of it over 4,200 on the whole that's heavy by today's standards and trend toward light weighting you feel it in the MGP 16:25 is your EPA rating that's just about right we saw it dead on 19 average over the last few days okay first thing I'm getting the Chargers I notice there's a little bit of a lack of headroom now I'm six-two I've got the seat all the way bottom now people always ask me how's the Headroom in some of these cars that have this kind of low greenhouse and this one I'm just touching I do have the optional sunroof bear that in mind let's get on the road now in standard drive mode this car is too much in love with its own eighth gear but put it into sport mode with that button I showed you and now it's appropriately lively it comes up and stays out of those top gears at least much of the time so the power that nice exhaust note are not going to surprise you what surprised me however was my first day with this car I took it out on a nice country Drive with a bunch of European import folks I thought I'd be driving the big lunk right and they'd all have the sharp easily possible Italian rides well you know what I did just fine a nice testimony to this car is underpinnings that are well done now of course an RT does have a much better tuned sports suspension but it's still dead steel this is not an adaptive rig underneath in any way shape or form okay a Charger r/t done up bar way is going to throw about 34,000 bass that includes the 5-7 Hemi then we're gonna add a few things to get it seen that style of course including Beats Audio for about a gram the tech group brings you all of the driver assist and the nav group brings you navigation and HD radio all in we end up a little under 39,000 so in all I came away more impressed by the charger than I thought I was going to be now we do have a high trim high powered RT here but that engines brawny american-ness with a very finessed handling I wasn't expecting we're a beautiful balance I had to get used to being a little tight inside however and having to coax the power out of a car of this type I found to be odd I wish it was more responsive on every snap of the throttle in every all in all it's a big sedan that does a lot of things well and does them in a uniquely American idiom