THis guy should have brought up the LY platform as the future platform but maybe he is not totally informed.


Yin and yang

Super Bee, police cruiser are seriously fun


12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, March 18, 2007
Terry Box tbox@dallasnews.com

Big bright yellow Dodges with Hemis and hood scoops still provoke me.

Does that make me profoundly immature? Probably, given that I'm a grandpa. But at least I had an antidote when I drove the outrageous Charger SRT-8 Super Bee: a black-and-white Hemi Charger police car that Dodge uses as a demo for law-enforcement agencies.

For three days, I rumbled around in the "Detonator Yellow" Super Bee – which on top of everything else sported bee graphics on the rear fenders that are as big as my head. Then I played good guy in the police cruiser for three days, scattering traffic in the "fast" lane of the wretched Dallas North Tollway. It was an odd but enjoyable sort of car yin and yang.

Both Chargers are on the Chrysler Group's seasoned but still excellent LX platform, which features an independent rear suspension derived from the E-class Mercedes-Benz. These cars speak English with a slight German accent.

Mostly, they speak loudly in the auto industry. The LX platform – which also supports the Chrysler 300, the Dodge Magnum and the future Dodge Challenger – is easily the best big sedan architecture in the domestic segment.

But for how long, I wonder? For years, the Chrysler Group has been the quirky, smallest member of the Big Three – the guy who shows up at board meetings in an Italian suit, ostrich-skin cowboy boots and silk bow tie. Who else but the Chrysler Group would have designed an entire line of stylish new full-size sedans with 1950s chopped tops? And who else but Chrysler could have reintroduced the legendary Hemi as a muscled-up, modern V-8 with a personality of its own?

With all this talk of beleaguered Chrysler being bought by General Motors – which is hard to believe – or a private equity group or even a parts supplier, I worry that one of the industry's nonconformists is about to lose its non.

For now, though, you too can cruise around in a 2007 Super Bee so ablaze with color that you will need one of those homemade solar-eclipse boxes to fully view it.

Even better, beneath its flat-black hood scoop, my Super Bee had a killer-bee SRT-8 Hemi V-8 that's punched out to 6.1 liters and gets a bigger cam, better breathing, a little more compression and 425 gut-bucket horses.

The big motor – rated at 14 miles per gallon city, 20 highway – barks when it starts and emits more alluring moans, growls and roars than a small jungle. Tied to a fairly decent five-speed automatic, it's good for low-five-second zero-to-60.

The 6.1 Hemi is a Garland chiropractor's dream – a torquey neck-popper off idle that keeps you compressed into the seat all the way to its 6,000-rpm redline. In one spine-altering outing, it will prompt you to forgive Dodge for making the Charger a two-ton sedan with four doors and a big wing on the trunk.

This is a great motor that I think needs a better-tuned transmission. The five-speed feels tentative with the big Hemi. My advice: Click it into AutoStick mode, turn up the Lynyrd Skynyrd and make those 255-20 tires on the rear squirm and dance.

On smooth surfaces, the Super Bee clings to the road like – of all things – a high-end German sedan with a real personality. It even makes those muted, expensive-sounding clunks over expansion strips, and – unlike any Chrysler in the '70s – steers precisely.

It stops like a modern muscle car thanks to its red-calipered Brembo brakes. On rough surfaces, though, it felt a lot like my Mustang – kind of rough and unsettled.

Inside, the supportive black-leather seats were stitched in yellow, a nice touch in an interior that didn't entirely fit this $46,960 car. The gauges