ORIGINAL: Billionaire
Dodge skimped on every product development cost they could. They reused the Charger chassis instead of creating a new, lighter one. They reused the charger interior instead of making one like the concept. They use the same paint colors as the Charger & 300 instead of buying extra painting equipment for high impact colors. So all you get that's new is the body. And also Dodge loaded the Challenger up with many off-the-shelf options which cost them nothing to develop. Maybe they got a bit of extra profit by sticking in all those options.
By the way, speaking of interiors, the Cadillac CTS interior in cream + brown trim is fantastic looking and the car only costs between $33 to $37 thousand. It's the best interior I've seen lately. Challenger would've been a better, more completely new car if GM had built it. Challenger's interior looks more like a cheap $20K car. But then again GM probably would have made the body look ridiculous.
In order to bring the Challenger up to the full potential that it should've had, you'd have to take apart the whole car and find ways to lighten it and rebuild it, then put in a whole new custom interior to make it look a lot like the concept or something cool, and then put on a high impact paint job. The it'd be the way it really should be. I'm looking forward to seeing some people do that and it'll probably end up in hot rod magazine or summat. I would like to do that myself too.
Okay, I guess you would prefer it if they had done the Challenger like the way they did the Viper. Whole new platform, different engine that was at the time not used in anything else, shared pretty much nothing with any other car they had on the market since they didn't make any RWD cars at the time. The problem is you're going to pay for it big time. The Viper's dash is inferior to the Challengers and has not changed in forever, the radio head routes back to the 90s, the Viper is small on the inside, and magazines for years complained about how it is not driver friendly by its characteristics and being uncomfortable. The Viper academically is just a platform with a huge engine in it.
In comparison, the Challenger is getting some new seats, a similar BUT NOT THE SAME dash, a pistol grip shifter that has not been used on any other cars yet, an outstanding stereo system with brand new technology being utilized in it, is getting a seriously upgraded 5.7L that the sedans are yet to receive, a recently upgraded manual transmission which the sedans are also yet to have, etc. And yet your not satisfied? Who cares about having a whole new line of paint, the Charger has already had some classic style paints that we all know will eventually offered on the Challenger. Besides, what is wrong with sharing paint colors? The more you make the Challenger have completely all new stuff, the worse the price is going to be. "Off-the-shelf" options as you put it have development costs that many times are still being paid off with as time goes on, you should know that in running a business. Also remember that on some things, Chrysler has had to pay royalties to their ex-wife so it is not a "free lunch."
Cadillac vs. Dodge? That does not make any sense whatsoever, Cadillac better have a better interior since they are a luxury-performance division. Dodge is a non-luxury performance division. The CTS is meant to compete against BMW 5 Series and Mercedes E-Class, the Challenger is meant to compete against the Mustang and Camaro. Have you even seen the cars GM has been making for the last 20 or so years? GM's interior has been absolutely horrible until recently and it is not consistently good throughout all of their models yet. The new Malibu, the Cadillacs, the new Buicks, and a few others have been doing well, but Pontiac as a whole is still very generic. On top of this, many of GM's interiors although significantly more visually appealing still consists of