2009 Dodge Challenger SRT8 Review

2009 Dodge Challenger SRT8 Review I’ll be the first to admit it. Going back to the early 70’s, not always a good idea but let's check out one of the more successful ventures back to then. 2009 Dodge Challenger SRT8, can you dig? Some toys you wouldn’t have had in 1971 are right here. The head unit on this car is really good with navigation, Bluetooth and our media. The nav screen as you can see is really colorful, nicely rendered, nice big touch screen buttons. There are your single slots, CD/DVD deck and you're not going to miss the fact that you only have one slot because to go with it, you have 30 GB of hard drive space. A little under 7,000 typical songs can fit on there. iPod connectivity, that’s over here. Standard aux jack is right there. Above that is a USB jack for getting media loaded onto this guy. In terms of getting sound out, we've got a base system here with Bose and acoustic speakers all around but the option is called the SRT package. It gives you 13 speakers around the cabin, Kicker branded, 320 watts of main power, plus another 200 watts going dedicated to a sub. This I don’t get. There is no voice command button on the steering wheel. You have to reach way the hell across the screen to get the card to listen to you. When I first saw this car on the show circuit when it was in a prototype fashion, I thought, “Wow! They nailed it.” Starting at the back, you’ve got these kicked hips, this kind of single lens rear taillight they just don’t do anymore and of course, a real coupe look here, long doors, a frowny face sucker mouth up here is very challengeresque. This is a true coupe but not as big a car as it looks. The SRT8 has the 6.1 liter Hemi. Wow! 425 horsepower, 420 foot-pounds of torque. Mileage is EPA rated at -- oh my god! That’s awful city and how I'm going to pay for that highway? Unfortunately, you get a gas guzzler tax as a result, $1,700.00. You're going to get under 5.5 seconds, 0-60 squirts out of this car, probably very close to five seconds flat if you know how to work that gearbox properly. The first thing you notice about this car that isn't retro is the handling and the ride. Great handling, comfortable ride, they didn’t do that in the early 70s. Part of what makes that go is -- oh my gosh! 20-inch wheels on this SRT8, big enough to put on a large SUV and not look funny. If you buy an SRT8, it comes stuck with a five-speed automatic that has been decried as just not a great transmission. Luckily, there's an extra cost option for a few $100.00 more for this guy, six-speed manual with our old buddy, the pistol-grip. It’s a nice gearbox. The shifts are nice and clean. The throw is about right. I do find that our clutch is a little bit odd. Take up happens at about 90% out of travel. This manual gearbox is a manly handful. It requires some brute force and it’s a little bulky from gear to gear. If you're not paying attention also, it will guide you naturally from first to fourth. This car has the torque to handle it but it’s not real elegant. The torque band feels so broad and fat. You're always in the right gear whether you are or not. Tremendous exhaust note just ballsy and hard and you’ve got this sort of ready to rip RPM friendliness. They’ve done a great job on this motor. Now, in addition to our normal and very excellent head unit, check this out, the EVIC, the Electronic Vehicle Information Center. When you get into that, you’ve got a whole bunch of what they call performance features. Here's a zero to 60 timer, eighth mile and quarter mile trap times, ranking distance from speed to zero, G Force compass, check that guy out and a G Force record. All right, let's see what it costs to go back into time fast. Challenger SRT is about 40 grand. On top of that, you're going to spend $1,000.00 for the upgraded audio system, $1,200.00 or so gets you the Uconnect high-end head unit with all the great nav, Bluetooth and media with the hard drive and interestingly, $700.00 for the manual transmission. What do you think I would do?