This was the car I was gunning to see at SEMA. Not so much the high-dollar builds, not so much the parade of metal outside of the convention center that would leave me constantly desiring more…this Destroyer Gray and Header Orange bit of evil sitting in Mopar’s display area had me entranced. The Dodge Challenger GT-AWD is like the perfect marriage of tuner thinking and american muscle tradition: take the neoclassical shape of the Challenger and the tried and true 5.7L Hemi V8, bring in the Charger’s transfer case and all-wheel-drive system, and end up with a rear-drive biased all-wheel drive muscle car. Forget how it goes in the snow, imagine how it can go, period. Sure, the SRT’s 392 Hemi would be a riot and we have a suspicious feeling that the Hellcat 6.2L would turn the internals of the transfer case to dust on the first hard launch, but the 5.7 is no slouch.
Then the devil’s advocate spoke up: would be too expensive, too complex, nobody would ever buy it, so I should just enjoy FCA having a little fun for SEMA and move on. And that makes me feel sick to say, but seriously: would anybody pay for an all-wheel-drive performance coupe like the GT-AWD? Sure, there are the sick puppies like myself who would if they could, but that’s a rather small amount compared to the number of R/Ts and SRT 392s they sell now. The only other car that approached this Challenger’s numbers would be the late-model Taurus SHO, and it didn’t quite sell on it’s performance merits either. What do you think: would you buy or is this too far?
Either way, FCA, we need to see some footage of this thing hooning with all four wheels lit up. I volunteer to drive…
I would be curious how this thing would drive on a road course since all the mags trashed it for handling.
“Forget how it goes in the snow” – I was wondering more how it goes balls to the walls on gravel.
It’s cool but I don’t think it would sell. A) How much extra power could the driveline take before busting? B) How much extra would it tack to the price? The Challenger already gets pegged for being the most expensive of the three. C) People want to be able to do burnouts with their musclecars and this wouldn’t be that easy to to that with. Plus, AWD musclecars just feels fundamentally wrong
I like the idea myself, but there’s no way I could afford one.
X2 on Nick D.’s points. (Would love to see if it helped the corner grip though.)
I would love to have one it would be neat to go in the snow and great handling and great looking to boot. How could you go wrong? Cost is another issue though.
I like the concept but doubt it would sale. Beef up the TC internals and put a Chrysler 300 coupe body on it and all of a sudden FCA is banging on Caddy’s door. Combine that one with a Hellcat “Firepower 300” coupe and sedan and all of a sudden Chrysler would be selling cars again. This is so simple. I swear I could lay out a viable plan for FCA: Hemi powered Viper (compete more directly with vette) Badge engineered Viper based Alfa, Jeep Wrangler JK truck (eco-diesel option), Jeep full size truck and Wagoneer based on SWB Ram 1500, Ram Suburban and Tahoe fighter with Cummins option, oh and for god sake get rid of those massive emblems and stupid grills. If FCA did all that I would spend days trying to figure out what FCA product I’d buy first, bet lots of other people would too.