The Battle for American V8 Sedan Supremacy
By John Pearley Huffman, Contributor Email
Date posted: 02-24-2008
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do...hotopanel..1.* (To see pics and a Video go to link)
Cars like the new 2008 Pontiac G8 GT and 2008 Dodge Charger R/T were once supposed to be every American's birthright. Brawny, V8-powered, relatively affordable rear-drive cruisers that can blow through a couple of big Western states in an afternoon at 90 mph — their drivers staring at the horizon through Ray-Bans, steering with one hand and smoking a Pall Mall with the other.
You know, big, fast American cars. They're not hybrids, they don't run on biodiesel and they rumble and roar through dual exhausts. And they do the sort of epic burnouts that inspire Bruce Springsteen songs.
These aren't sedans you buy for their utility. After all, any four-cylinder, front-drive AltiCamAccord6 will match them commute for commute. Nope, the new Pontiac G8 GT and Dodge Charger R/T are cars you buy because they speak to your born-in-the-USA soul. Well that, and because you can't afford a BMW M5.
So what if one of them comes up from Australia and the other is assembled in Canada with a Mexican-made engine and German transmission? One of them is the best "American" V8-powered performance sedan for about $35,000.
To find a winner we spent more than a week testing these cars in and around Southern California. They were run on the highway, in the canyons and on the test track. We used them and abused them. Here's what we learned.
The Shadows They Cast
First of all, these are not small cars. But the Charger is even bigger than the G8. Slightly.
From bumper cover to bumper cover and across its steel unibody structure, the Charger stretches out 200.1 inches long. That's only 4 inches longer than the G8, which is also built around a steel unibody. But the Dodge is also a half-inch taller and its 120-inch wheelbase is 5.2 inches longer than the Pontiac's.
On top of that, the two cars have very different proportions, with the Charger having a long hood and short rear deck in classic muscle style, and the G8 having a relatively short hood in the Euro sport sedan tradition. Also the G8 appears even lower due to its ground effects and deep front spoiler. When the two are parked side by side, the Charger appears even larger than it is relative to the G8.
It also drives bigger.
Comfort and Speed
Remember back when it was DaimlerChrysler? Well, so does the Charger R/T. There's a lot of Mercedes in the Charger's engineering, especially in its suspension. Dodge plucked its coil-sprung, short- and long-arm front and five-link independent rear suspension right from the Mercedes-Benz E-Class. As a result, the Charger rides a lot like, yep, a Mercedes.
Always composed and comfortable, the Charger R/T's ride motions are a study in control. Hit a pothole and the soft P225/60R18 Continental ContiTouringContact radials politely report back that something has been encountered and summarily smothered. Until the Charger (and its LX-platform brothers the Chrysler 300 and Dodge Magnum) came around back in 2005, virtually no American car rode this well. Three years later we take its mannered ride for granted, even though we shouldn't.
Just because the Charger is rear-wheel drive doesn't mean it's at home in the twisties. Hard cornering in the Charger is all about plenty of steering input and body roll. The steering is relatively slow and absolutely numb, but the front tires scream and squeal enough to let you and the world know they're struggling under the weight of this 4,135-pound sedan. The Dodge's stability control system (which can't be completely turned off) is too sophisticated to ever let the car get truly out of shape, but the Charger is engineered for on-road poise, not heroic speed.
The C