Good news/bad news

[JonW]

I saw the Challenger at the St. Louis Auto Show yesterday. Photos don't do the car justice. It is stunning in person. And here's the good news/bad news, from the spokesman at the show, who said he was quoting officially from DCX:

Good news: Will be in production the first quarter of 2008. All of the first year's production will be 6.1s with a 6-speed manual.

Bad news: Only 2000 cars will be built for 2008. There "may be one or two other colors" offered besides Hemi Orange, or whatever name is chosen for the orange prototype.

That sucks BIG time. Can you imagine how much they will be marked up? He did say more will be made for 2009, and more options and colors would be offered in '09, but would not be more specific.

I'm REALLY bummed out. Someone with some inside connections at DCX tell me this guy is wrong. PLEASE!

[Cuda340]

Originally Posted by JonW

I saw the Challenger at the St. Louis Auto Show yesterday. Photos don't do the car justice. It is stunning in person. And here's the good news/bad news, from the spokesman at the show, who said he was quoting officially from DCX:

Good news: Will be in production the first quarter of 2008. All of the first year's production will be 6.1s with a 6-speed manual.

Bad news: Only 2000 cars will be built for 2008. There "may be one or two other colors" offered besides Hemi Orange, or whatever name is chosen for the orange prototype.

That sucks BIG time. Can you imagine how much they will be marked up? He did say more will be made for 2009, and more options and colors would be offered in '09, but would not be more specific.

I'm REALLY bummed out. Someone with some inside connections at DCX tell me this guy is wrong. PLEASE!

That is bad news, if true.
This is in line with the following news that was posted on the allpar.com website in October (see last paragraph):

"Chrysler announced that the Dodge Challenger will be produced as a coupe, to arrive in dealerships in 2008 (as a 2008 model year car), and to be built on the same line as the 300, Charger, and Magnum. Chrysler assures us that the production car will be practically indistinguishable from the concept. We have been told to expect a price of about $31,000.

There are reportedly many Challengers currently out there, so production may (speculation!) actually start around February 2008, even though officially the date remains around April...According to 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. Chrysler announced 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. Rumors are flying about a 6.6 liter Hemi, but we believe that is speculation at this point.

One possibility was just sent to us: the Challenger start out in SRT-8 form for model-year 2008, with both a manual and automatic, built on the LC (shortened LX) platform. Following that will come the standard Challengers."

We, however, have also heard that the workers at the Brampton factory are sworn to secrecy and will lose their jobs if they divulge anything. If this is true, I doubt that someone in the auto show would be "in the know" and would be able to make that kind of statement with any accuracy.