The Ultimate Dodge Challenger Road Trip
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By Edward Loh, Angus MacKenzie
Photography by Brian Vance

2008 Dodge Challenger SRT8 In London
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Nope, your eyes aren't playing tricks. And no, we haven't been fooling around with Photoshop. That really is a Dodge Challenger SRT-8 parked on Waterloo Bridge in London, England, all testosterone and torque and Hemi orange attitude. We're a long way from Motown, Toto...

And we have a long way to go. Almost 3000 miles across Europe, in fact, on a journey that will see the big Dodge one of just two Challengers outside the U.S. tackle some of the Continent's greatest roads, from flat-out autobahn to steep and writhing Alpine passes to famous racetracks where hard-muscled legends once diced with death.

Dodge Challenger European Tour Map
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Why? Underneath its retro skin, the new Challenger SRT8 is a thoroughly modern musclecar, with the suspension, steering, and braking to match its V-8 performance. This is a musclecar you don't need to make excuses for when the bench racing moves away from the dragstrip and onto the road course. And where better to prove the point than Europe?

DAY 1

Watch the Day One video HERE

Morning rush has died down a bit as we roll out of London's fashionable Chelsea district. There is still a lot of traffic; a hodgepodge of blue, white, silver, black. Working Brits seem to favor city-smart, but anonymous Fiestas, Fits, Golfs, and Smarts. So it's no surprise that our bright orange Challenger SRT8 literally stops traffic. It's not just the color, carbon-fiber hood stripes, and 20-in. Alcoa-forged five-spoke wheels the car seems cartoonishly supersized.

2008 Dodge Challenger SRT8 In London
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Our first stop: Brooklands, home of the world's first purpose-built racetrack, constructed in 1907, two years before the fabled Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and long since carved into an industrial park. The original clubhouse remains now part of an excellent museum as does some of the giant banking of the 3.25-mile track (and you thought NASCAR invented banked turns).

Our Chrysler connection is land-speed-record ace Sir Malcolm Campbell. Campbell, better known in the States for driving his Bluebird land-speed-record cars at Daytona Beach and Bonneville in the 1920s and '30s, first started racing at Brooklands in 1911 and subsequently entered over 300 races. He won here driving a Chrysler in 1925.

2008 Dodge Challenger SRT8 In London
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Brooklands is fascinating, but we can't linger, as we have a train to catch, across the English Channel. We head out onto the M25 the busiest motorway in Britain and drive east, then south toward Folkestone and the Eurotunnel terminal. Until this underground rail link was completed in the early 1990s, the only way to get your car off this island was by sea or air. At nearly $300, it's not exactly cheap to use, but it only takes 30 minutes instead of the five hours or so you need to cross the Channel by boat.

It's roughly 190 miles from Coquelles to Paris. At first, we cruise between 75 and 80 mph through a light sprinkle of Peugeots and Renaults. But when we roll into Paris, it's just after 6 p.m., and we're met by a wall of rush-hour traffic. We'd covered 173 miles in 2 hours 20 min. The next seven miles takes us an hour.