Chrysler announced that the Dodge Challenger will be produced as a coupe, to arrive in dealerships in 2008 (as a 2008 model year car). According to Chrysler and the
Wall Street Journal , the 300 cost $1 billion to develop, and each additional variant (e.g. Charger) cost about $330 million. All four vehicles will be built on the same line in Brampton, Ontario. (Thanks, Bob Marks.)
According to several sources, Chrysler is trying to decide on which strategy to follow: a high-price, low-volume run, or a high-volume, lower-price run. Also in flux is the question of engines - restricting to just the Hemi, or allowing both the Hemi and at least one V6. However,
a manual transmission will be available along with an automatic, each having five speeds; an SRT-8 version will have the 6.1 Hemi while the stock Challenger will have the 5.7 Hemi (no, they will not have the new crate Hemi, nor did we expect them to). At this point we
believe there will be a first-year run of about 50,000 Hemi equipped Challengers, possibly with automatics, followed by a smaller run of Hemi Challenger SRT-8 cars with manual transmissions.
