I am Frank Markus of motor trend and I am sitting in the newest Dodge Challenger to hit the roads, the V6 automatic car. 21,995 buys you 250 Horse power, 250 pound feet of torque. How does it compare with the V8?
Best way to find out is a drag rate. Of course these cars are not all about acceleration. There is also handling and braking to be considered so we are a taking spin on the Motor Trend figure 8 course to assess the transitional behavior and maximum lateral grip and the acceleration and braking into and out of turns.
This is a big car for 250 horse power and 250 pound feet of torque. So accelerating out of the terms is a lot less dramatic, than we going to find in the V8 I believe. Churn up, you can smoke the tyres with the R/T saves about a second half of the figure 8 time but the ESP system can't be turned off completely. Of course, the SRT 8 does a lot you to turn ESP off completely and smoke the tyres like a drift king. If you stick to the program, now you could save another second off on the R/Ts already great figure 8 time.
So basically you were finding that you do get what you pay for, saving about 8 grand or so for the base car over the R/T, you get a car that it doesn't handle nearly as sharply and crisply. We have driven all three challengers. What have we learnt?
Well for 22 grand the Base car buys you all the retro styling, the stares on the road best fuel economy of the bunch, but kind of poor performance. We have to pay twenty thousand more almost for this SR/T 8 and you do get tremendous sound, the best tyre smoking but you pay a lot at the top. Therefore, we think that the best bet is the R/T. For only eight thousand over the Base car, you get terrific performance all that great sound and only one MVG on the city down on that performance. So that our favorite the Dodge Challenger R/T.
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