A 12,000 car run makes no sense to me from a corporate stand point.

First, Dodge has to know that their first year will the best chance they have of selling a lot of units -- especially with the Camaro coming out in '09. Given the types of sales that Ford has had with the Mustang and the falloff after the first year, why limit the numbers? Dodge's own experience with the first generation Challenger bear this out as well.

Second, Dodge has to make a lots of cars to make a good profit off Challenger. A $30-40k car is not going to generate a big profit for challenger. It's one thing to make a lot of money off the Vette or the Viper, but a pony car has to make up the margin off of volume.

Last, it may be a dealer's dream to have a limited number of cars to mark up way above MSRP - but it's not the auto maker's. An auto maker is going to want to put a car in everyone's hand that wants one and that can afford one. Leaving money on the table by having limited production to be soaked up by dealers markups isn't going to make the new owners of Chrysler very happy.

Now maybe a 12k car run this fall and another larger run next spring makes some sense, but were starting to talk about '09s now - which again to my first point just seems like they are shooting themselves in the foot.

Anyways my $0.02.