Zoomin

You know, all that you said makes sense, but here's the thing that gives me pause: back in the 70's, all the manufacturers seemed to offer a bunch of options just fine, and computers were in their infancy. Not only that, but the Big 3 ruled the world. It wasn't until they tried to get all fancy with cost savings, doing the badge engineering thing, that things went swirling down the toilet.

If anything, given the levels of technology that is now available, we should have more choices, not less. That way, more people like the OP could get exactly what they want.

mopar2ya

Simply put... venthos is right... cookie cutter will be cheaper to mass produce than custom just about every time. Dodge is responding to the mass majorities desires. Good business sense as venthos stated. The japanese put the mass production machne into motion... the big three had to follow to regain a competitive posture in the current manufacturing climate

toofart

Yeah, in the end it all makes sense. I just wanted to rant. Thanks for hearing me out, guys.

mopar2ya

You know we will always be here for ya bro...

RUBBERBNDMAN

Henry Ford was Japanese? Thanks for clearing that up.

mopar2ya

uhhh... different era RUBBERBNDMAN... I am talking a few years farther down the road. Remember Datsun?

Henry may have invented it... but the japanese refined it.

And remember the saying... you can have any color you want as long as its black.

Black... hmmm... guess Henry was into speed too...

RUBBERBNDMAN

lol

RoswellGrey

In the end, toofart's right. Yes, I said he's right. How come on Japanese cars, you can get such a simple thing as crank-operated windows, but they're virtually impossible to find on American cars? I've had power windows in an '85 Thunderbird, '86 Thunderbird, '94 Thunderbird, and '00 Mustang, and absolutely NONE of them have worked worth a damn. If I could delete that "option" from my '09 Challenger, I certainly would. I heard the other day that crank-operated windows are available on the Focus coupe, and I seriously considered getting one of those as a second car. Another thing that I consider absolutely worthless is power seats. Since I tend to keep cars till they either get wrecked or pieces literally start falling off of them, I can assure you that power seats will fail about as often as power windows do if more than one person regularly drives the car (I'm 6-2; my wife is 5-3, so there's a lot of movement of the driver's seat). Ditto for power locks. Where American car companies made their mistake was when they began to make "optional" equipment standard.

Jeremiah 29:11

At the end of the day, this is a topic we have discussed many times.

https://dodgechallenger.com/forums/fb.asp?m=8892

https://dodgechallenger.com/forums/fb.asp?m=116


The safety features and safety design is a major contributor as well as creature comforts all add to the weight.

The cost of customization in manufacturing is just too high to delete or add options.

The comment about deleting air conditioning may be fine in the North but for example the southern part of the U.S. people would think you are nuts
with temps consistantly in the 100 degree range every day.

Bottom line: The weight of the Challenger is going to stay that way unless the come out with a newer platform that is light to begin with. Even though this is a shortened LX platform we have known since 2 years ago that it was going to be heavy just like it's brothers the Charger, Magnum, and 300. No news here.

Let's go talk about something more exciting like Superchargers.

RoswellGrey

Sure, Jeremiah, like the topic of superchargers hasn't been discussed over and over and over ... Besides, we're in the wrong forum for that. We'd have to go to the "Nitrous, Super Chargers, & Turbos" section.