ORIGINAL: CarandDriver.com
2008 Dodge Challenger SRT8 - Short Take Road Test
We finally slap our test gear onto the potent Challenger SRT8 to see if it’s actually up to the challenge.
BY STEVE SILER, PHOTOGRAPHY BY AARON KILEY AND THE MANUFACTURER
April 2008
With so much presale buildup, we’ve told you bit by bit pretty much everything about Dodge’s old-meets-new Challenger SRT8. By now, the fundamentals should be familiar. The SRT8 is essentially a Charger SRT8 sedan with four inches cut from the middle and two fewer doors; it’s powered by the same 425-hp, 6.1-liter Hemi V-8 found in other SRT8 models in the Chrysler family; and it looks spectacular in orange. It also outguns the R/T and SE Challenger models that will be added for ’09.
What you might not know are some of the finer details. The 2008 SRT8 is the only Challenger to be designated as an ’08, and each of the 6400 U.S. cars—they are already sold out—gets a numbered plaque, orange seat stripes, and faux-carbon-fiber hood stripes. Also, the Challenger SRT8 debuts SRT’s brake “knock back” system that ensures the pads stay close to the discs during spirited driving as well as a “Performance Features” readout on the dashboard that displays acceleration, braking, and handling achievements for the driver’s amusement. The Challenger SRT8 starts at just over $40,000.
But until we shot up Angeles Crest Highway in the SRT8 at the press program in Pasadena, California, we hadn’t been able to log any significant drive time. Soon afterward, we got our paws on one at home in Ann Arbor and took it to the test track to get the numbers. Would the Challenger’s bad-ass attitude be backed up with genuine muscle-car street cred, or was Chrysler unable to mask the family sedan beneath the retrospective skin?
More Than Just Another Square-Jawed Muscle Car
The answer? Both. Thanks to that monster motor and a short first gear, the Challenger does earn a dollop of street cred, hitting 60 mph in 4.8 seconds, charging through the quarter-mile in 13.3 at 108 mph, and running to a drag-limited top speed of 168 mph.
But the Challenger SRT8 is more than just a drag-strip junkie. Its LX platform, for all its heft, does bring with it a sophisticated suspension that made easy work for Chrysler’s Street and Racing Technology team to engineer a combination of decent ride quality and tenacious grip, neither of which is a strong suit of muscle cars from bygone years (or, for that matter, of the current Ford Mustang). So, like any SRT8 product, it may be inescapably a family car in many ways, but it’s a fast and capable performance car, too.
Seriously Capable, but Where’s the Feel?
The multilink front and rear suspension is tuned for amazingly flat cornering, something vividly apparent on Angeles Crest Highway, where we flogged it left and right but watched the horizon that was the big, long hood stay level with the ground. Coupled with the sticky optional Goodyear F1 Supercar summer tires, the suspension imparted the Challenger with some pretty astonishing grip in corners. On the skidpad in Michigan, which admittedly was described as “really slippery” that day, the Challenger pulled a respectable 0.86 g with moderate understeer that can be corrected by the pedal on the right. But alas, with a curb weight of 4189 pounds, Chrysler was unable to mask the LX platform on which it’s based.
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