and then go away for precisely the same reasons they did in the early 1970s: increasing fuel economy standards and the price of gas.
He forgot shortage of gasoline, insurance rates were rising, and safety standards were changing.
According to the Detroit News, Chrysler spent a mere $151 million on the program, going from concept car to Job One in fewer than 21 months. There was, unfortunately, nowhere to hide the weight. At 4,140 pounds, the Challenger's poundage is the consequence of the project's short development and low budget (taking weight out of a car costs a lot of time and money).
I am not sure I agree with all of that. The Ford GT40 and GT, my favorite of all cars but too expensive for me was built in 15 months totally from scratch and normally that would take 50-55 months. About the only thing that was somewhat designed was the 5.4L engine but only in basic form. There were still major changes done to it. As for development time reducing weight, the 1967 Ford GT40 weighed 2,505 and the new 2005 Ford GT weighed 3,350 or basically gained 845 lbs. So even with all of that weight reducing technology
in materials and manufacturing you factor the safety standards and daily reliability and it still gained weight.
Dodge worked on it for 21 months and still did not take the weight out of it from the concept but did base it on a proven but heavier platform obviously for time to market and cost savings in development. They could have worked on it for another 6 months and still not reduced anything because they never planned to and because they couldn't without a major redesign of the basic LX platform.
Bottom line is muscle cars were never meant to be light cars but the pony cars were the ligthtest of the bunch for sure. Dodge just wanted to reintroduce a Challenger on a proven reliable platform without having to spend an lot of R&D and just put a big engine to make up for the weight. That is what muscle cars were all about anyways but I like the new Challenger better because it will be good on the drag strip and on the curved roads.
In all it was a good article and he has a great writing style.