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Experience of owning a Dodge Challenger with a 6.4L V8

1st September 2021, 15:50 by Rahul Nagaraj

I had a fair idea that V8s would vanish soon enough and now is the chance to get one and experience one.

BHPian scatpack392 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Hello fellow BHPians, I am Abhijit, currently based in Detroit, MI and I currently drive a 2019 Dodge Challenger Scat Pack. This is my first ownership report on Team-BHP so I will keep it short and simple.

I will begin with the Likes/Dislikes section followed by some history on why I chose this particular car and the review thereafter.

Likes:

The 6.4L HEMI V8 (485 horses)
Active exhaust provides a decent roar
SRT Performance Pages and Drive modes
Classic muscle car look
Lots of space – Huge trunk in addition to near full-size roominess in both front and rear
Uconnect 4C with 8.4 inch display – it’s a great infotainment system

Dislikes:

Traction issues in snowy/icy conditions, better to own a beater for the winter
Skinny tires offered on most of the packages (245/45/R20)
Huge cop magnet - gets a lot of attention
No power seats for passenger – limited seat functionality for driver side
Huge blind spots (Blind spot monitoring available and it helps a lot!)
Shift skip – skips from 1st to 4th gear if shifted between 18-22 mph (its irritating sometimes!)

Background:

I have lived in Midtown Detroit for most of my time in the US till now, this was a place where you could see a lot of cars, just being next to Woodward Avenue would give you a lot of chance of spotting different cars - one of the reasons being the Woodward Dream cruise happens on Woodward Avenue and also people like to cruise up and down the road and relive the history that happened here. Well there was only one car I used to take pictures of:

And I kept spotting some more of these beauties,

And one more

This is from the 2019 North American Auto Show

For me, it was a straight choice to go to this car but, I did research a bit about the Chevrolet Camaro and the Ford Mustang before I decided to get this car. One of my friends owned a Camaro, I had seen how difficult it was to get out of the car and for a person like me that was a big no-no. The Mustang on the other hand was a beautiful looking car too, a close friend bought it which did make me jealous for some time, but then after all I was going to get something better than that. The Mustang had the same issue - space and roominess. Also another factor were the engines - I always wanted to own a big block V8 (Although the 392 is not considered a big block but it seemed a bit practical to a first time young buyer). By 2019, I had a fair idea that V8s would vanish soon enough and now is the chance to get one and experience one. I am still not over the idea of an electric muscle car (to be launched in 2024). I am glad to get one in time and enjoy it to the fullest!

Buying Experience:

Initially, my plan was to build a car on the website and order it according to my specifications - Manual transmission, B5 Blue, The 5.7L HEMI engine with the Shaker Hood and a few other bells and whistles. After building it every day on the website, dreaming about owning one somehow some practicality hit me and one of my friends advised to check the local dealers for some offers. In the meanwhile I also joined some Facebook groups where I had read about people asking newbies to go for the 6.4L instead of the 35.7L because one day we always crave for more and the 6.4L is actually a sweet spot between the 5.7L and the Hellcat which is a supercharged 6.2L motor and churns around 717 HP for the regular version. Numbers ran day and night in my head and I wasn't sure if I would want to own a car putting out 485 HP as my first car. This does sound unbelievable but the mpg rating for the 6.4L Manual Challenger is just 1 mpg less than the smaller engined version. That along with the 485 horses pushed me to make this choice.

I started looking for a car, it was December and I looked around for a manual Challenger for starters and I always wanted the Driver Convenience package so that was a deciding factor. These manual cars are rare, I mean there are not enough customers who can drive them so dealers keep a skeleton inventory but luckily I found 2 cars with the exact same specifications in two different dealerships on the same road. I went to the first dealership and the salesperson there, a newbie he seemed, didn't take me and my friends seriously. He showed us the car in the lot, showed us the numbers but what he lacked was the confidence that some Indian guy would go for this car. From what I understand, he would have assumed we are here just for a joyride and hence he claimed that he didn't have keys to the car

Getting a price from there, we went down the road, met a very enthusiastic salesperson who actually took some interest and believed in us. He showed me the car, the battery was down, it wasn't driven much and was just sitting on the lot in a corner. He jump-started the car and agreed to change the battery for the sale and I was in the car, my hands on the steering wheel and feeling the vibrations through the gas pedal as I was gently tapping to just hear the awesome exhaust note . I took it for a drive, went around a block and brought it back, went in, my credit was ran, I got my options and the day being a Saturday, they just said that my loan is almost approved. I went back home and was asked to come back on Monday. After work on Monday, I went to the dealership and sat with the finance guy and signed the contract and everything but I asked the car to be delivered on Saturday as I was travelling down to Dayton, OH for work.

The car cost close to $40,500 after all the packages and discounts (Dodge offered Power dollars at this time - $10/HP so I got a discount of $4850 along with a similar amount from the dealer)

Below is the window sticker for my car: