Thus far the Charger and 300 are the first cars to get the new to Chrysler 8 speed ZF transmission which frankly can only be an improvement from the Mercedes sourced W5A580 5-speed offered in the Challengers. At this point, the conventional wisdom is that the Challenger will eventually which is ironic considering the class of that the Challenger is in is far more competitive as it has more direct competitors in its price range such as the Mustang, Camaro, and (personally I don't count this one, but since the automotive press won't shut up about it) the Genesis Coupe, where as the Charger really doesn't have a competitor with the G8 gone with Pontiac and the Caprice being a police only car for now and the Taurus does not compete no matter how you look at it, and the 300 is lower priced than most competition but only competitor is the Genesis which the 300 in my very bias opinion is clearly the choice.

The interesting thing is despite the gear ratio advantage, in tests it would appear that possibly due to the Challengers hotter tuning and perhaps slight weight advantage, the Challenger is not that far off from its LX siblings. In the Motor Trend V6 show down, it pulled 0-60 times of 6.4 secs, I can't find the article, but one of the magazines did a test of the LX 8-speed match up that was around 5.9-6.0 secs if I remember correctly. The question is would the Challenger potentially gain more from the 8-speed as we are led to believe or would it gain just as much if not more from offering 6-speed manual. Although the conventional wisdom says more is better by keeping it in its peak, could this be over kill and actually be counter productive by the time wasted in shifting so many times? Also, would it be a better move to consider purchasing a dual clutch 6 or 7 tranny or would this be cost prohibitive?