Challenger SRT8 revs up sales

[SRT8 WOOLF]

Challenger SRT8 revs up sales
Challenger SRT8 revs up sales
Chris Vander Doelen, The Windsor Star
Published: Monday, July 21, 2008
Roger Barnes, who has driven from coast to coast and halfway back over the past month, attending car shows from Vancouver to St. John's, can testify that muscle car culture is alive and well in Canada.

Despite record gasoline prices and black clouds over the North American automotive industry, the instant sales success of the Canadian-built Challenger two-door coupe is one pocket of sunshine amid the general gloom.

With the right looks and the right engine, it seems, thousands of people still lust for a hugely overpowered gas guzzler so fast its top speed would be grounds for confiscation in Ontario three or four times over.


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Chrysler's Reid Bigland, pictured, says the 2008 Dodge Challenger SRT8, equipped with the 6.1L Hemi engine, has become an instant sales success despite high fuel prices.
Nick Brancaccio, The Windsor Star

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Font:****A special events manager for the A&W chain of restaurants, Barnes has put 15,000 kilometres on a bright orange, 20081/2 Dodge Challenger SRT8 by driving it across Canada over the past 35 days. The car has been so anticipated by its fans that it creates instant crowds wherever it appears.

"They come at me where ever I go. They'll cross six lanes of traffic to get to this car," Barnes said last week at a joint A&W/Dodge promotional event in Tecumseh.

"Young, old, men, women -- I'm surprised it gets so much attention from women," said Barnes, 59. "But they've been reading about it. They tell me all about it. That blew me away."

No matter what the price of gas, the reintroduction of iconic Detroit muscle seems to work, as Ford discovered with the resurrection of the Mustang two years ago. If the luck holds for General Motors, it will work again when the Chevrolet Camaro is reintroduced in 2009, also from a Canadian plant.

"We've already sold out our allocation for Canada for the 2009 calendar year," Reid Bigland, president and CEO of Chrysler Canada, said of the Challenger. That's despite a market shift away from large sedans so sharp that the company was forced to kill the midnight shift in Brampton, where the Challenger is built on the same assembly line that produces the Chrysler 300 and Dodge Charger.

The first 500 Challengers sold in Canada at more than $50,000 apiece were collector edition SRT8s. The engine is a howlingly powerful and politically incorrect 6.1-litre Hemi V-8 that puts out 425 horsepower.

Its combination of nostalgic lines and 21st-century performance has had critics rhapsodizing that the car is "sex on wheels," and a super car at a fraction of the price of European competitors.

All 500 Canadian SRT8s were spoken for before they were built; 120 have been delivered to Canadian dealers, and 90 of them are already in owners' hands, several of them in the Windsor area.

The next run of Challengers off the line when Brampton Assembly reopens later this month after summer shutdown will be 2009 models, which will also be available with a slightly smaller 5.7-litre Hemi V-8 engine, as well as a sensible 3.5-litre V-6 engine that gets 36 miles per gallon. Base price for the V-6 is less than $25,000.

With demand for the Challenger running just as high in the United States as in Canada, only 3,000 of the 2009 models will be available, and all of them have been ordered by dealers across Canada, which is unheard of for a mass market car.

"That's definitely a good sign," Bigland said during an interview last week in his Windsor office overlooking the Detroit River. Chrysler hopes to sell a lot more Challengers in 2010, once the collectors are satiated and demand settles down.

Unlike the 2008s, none of the 2009 models should be hard to find for buyers, said Bigland, who has been driving a black version of the SRT8 to work for the past few weeks. "It gets a lot of attention, I'll tell ya," he said with a laugh.

How many V-6s will be sold at that point? Bigland has no idea. "I don't know where the mix will settle in, but we can change production as needed." Manual versions will appear this fall, for the V-8s only.

Barnes was to resume his drive back to his hometown of Vancouver this week. He said he's had the time of his life driving the SRT8 across country, but advises that the V-6 is probably the way to go for most people considering buying the car.

"It was pretty intimidating when I first got into it," Barnes said of the SRT8. His top speed on the Prairies? "The speed limit," he said piously, if a little unconvincingly. "It can creep up on you," he said.




© The Windsor Star 2008