I thought a few parting words were in order…
Bought it new / custom ordered 3 years ago. At the time, we were getting ready to move further south where snow driving capability wouldn’t be a requirement so I could drive it year round. Alas, those those plans never materialized, so the car spent a lot of time just sitting in the garage during our long Michigan winters and I was still using my old BMW as a winter beater. And then due to pandemic I started driving even less. All in all, I only put on 4,500 miles on it in 3 years. Finally decided that it made no sense for it to just sit in the garage 99.5% of the time and continue taking up space and depreciating while I had to clean snow and ice off my winter beater sitting outside every time I actually did need to drive somewhere.
Why did I buy it in the first place? I had an itch to scratch fueled by some midlife crisis and a secret desire to once own a big honking NA V8 in its pure unrefined unpolished rough-around-the-edges American muscle car glory. This car was an “out of character” purchase for me, but I intentionally wanted to try something very different.
The Good:
- Engine / Exhaust – loved the sound and power – primary reason why I bought it
- Brakes – those Brembos stop the car extremely well, despite the car’s heavy weight
- Suspension – adjustable suspension on the SRT is pretty nice – you can set it to comfort if you just want to go get groceries or drive with family or set it to a more sporty mode for a more spirited run. The track mode makes it even stiffer, but our roads aren’t smooth enough for this.
- Room – good amount of passenger space and cargo space to make it a practical daily driver in warm weather, alas fuel economy is obviously awful, so not ideal for long distances
- Seats – great seats, comfy, good amount of bolstering, pretty good leather quality
The Bad:
- Transmission - I found FCA's implementation of this ZF8 architecture somewhat sloppy, even in sport mode. I’m always comparing it to the programming in wife’s Q5 which has another version of this ZF8 trans and it’s night and day how nicely buttoned up, crisp and precise it is in the Q5. Maybe it’s the use of torque converter that makes it feel that way? The Q5 programming doesn’t seem to use the torque converter at all. And shifting from D to R and vice versa seems to take ages in the Charger.
- Throttle hesitation – not really sure what this was, but when rolling, when I hit the gas hard, there was always just a tiny bit of hesitation before it would take off. Like it would get choked up/startled a bit at first, even in manual mode. Weird. I’m sure 9 out of 10 service advisors would just roll their eyes and dismiss it as normal/not-there/nit picking, so I didn’t even bother mentioning it to them.
- Weight/size – it’s much bigger and heavier than any other car I’ve owned in the past. Again, one of those things that may be a personal preference. I guess I learned that I prefer something smaller, lighter, and more nimble next time.
- Interior – it’s in dire need of a refresh. I’ll leave it at that.
- Paint – I posted about this after taking delivery – the paint had a ton of dirt/blemishes embedded in it. A local detailer was able to get most of it out with some wet sanding and buffing, but some larger chunks that sit way under the paint were not able to be removed. I wasn’t expecting stellar paint quality from FCA, but this was rather pathetic.
Overall, did I like it? Yes. Did I love it? No. If I did, I’d probably keep it longer. But I’m glad I got a chance to experience it and have some fun with it. I think my son is more sad than me to see it go because he found it cool and he picked out the color.
