The Contenders - 2009 Dodge Challenger RT - 2009 Motor Trend Car Of The Year

2009 Dodge Challenger RT

What They Did Right: Comfortable ride, invigorating acceleration, stupendous styling inside and out.

Room For Improvement: Needs better rear-seat access and the SRT8's ESP-off switch for serious drifting.

This thing is more fun than a renaissance festival. Just to catch a glimpse of it from any angle is to turn the clock back to the happy-go-lucky free-love decade of the 1970s. So faithful is the reinterpretation of nearly every character line and design flourish; even the interior looks period correct-right down to the shiny black plastic dash and door panels (it works, really). The Hemi's rumbly roar and the manual six-speed's pistol-grip shifter (complete with trigger notch) are the best parts. Everything's so familiar, it's just inflated to 8/7ths scale.

Some of that familiarity breeds contempt. Authentic-looking pull-up door handles will have the fingernailed set relearning to open doors with their knuckles. The sound made by closing the doors or trunklid is disconcertingly Nixon-era, and access to the rear compartment is woefully inadequate: Either laboriously motor the power driver's seat forward or grapple with the coupe-world's worst manual seat release on the passenger side. Once back there, the seats are commodious, though cave-like on the visibility front.

Built on full-size LX sedan underpinnings, the Challenger looks, feels, and drives big. If you insist on flailing away at the accurate but lifeless steering, the R/T will hustle around turns, but you'll feel loads of body motion and weight transfer. It really excels at the smoky burnout and the dragstrip hustle. The 0-to-60-mph-sprint takes 5.1 seconds and the quarter flashes by in 13.6 at 104.9 mph, tying the lighter, larger Pontiac G8 GT to 60 and besting it in the quarter mile.

This niche player offers immense emotional appeal to those with fond memories of the original, but its market significance will be minimal. Pricing for the SE V-6 starts at an attractive $21,995, then rises precipitously. But it's the strictly objective superiority category where the Challenger falls shortest by failing to seriously leapfrog the Mustang's performance as the Camaro seems poised to do.
- Frank Markus