Dodge Phoenix Reviews

Dodge may seem like an unlikely candidate for electric vehicles, given its current line-up is underpinned by a 600kW supercharged V8 known as the Hellcat, but that’s not enough to stop it from making the switch.The American brand has come to rely on its Challenger coupe and Charger sedan as the backbone of its range, but with parent company Stellantis planning to sell 40 per cent of its vehicles in the USA with battery power by the end of the decade, not even Dodge can ignore electrification.That’s why the brand has teased what it has dubbed the world’s first “American eMuscle” car. The image appears to show a 1968 Charger with modern LED lights and a new triangular logo, but the car is obscured by tyre smoke from a four-wheel burnout. That suggests the new electric muscle car will boast all-wheel drive to help tame its electric performance. Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis said the decision to switch to electric has been driven by finding more performance as much as a desire to build cleaner cars, admitting the Hellcat has been stretched to its limits.“Even for a brand that’s known for pushing it a bit too far, we’ve pushed this pedal to the floor,” Kuniskis said. “Our engineers are reaching a practical limit of what we can squeeze from internal combustion innovation. We know electric motors can give us more, and if we know of a technology that can give our customers an advantage we have an obligation to embrace it to keep them in the lead. We won’t sell electric vehicles, we’ll sell more motors. Better, faster Dodges.”The Dodge eMuscle car will be based on the STLA Large platform, which will also underpin the new Ram Toyota HiLux rival and an all-new Jeep off-roader. According to Stellantis the STLA Large will have a driving range of up to 800km and utilise an 800-volt electrical system that will allow for ultra-rapid charging. The company also said the largest motor will be capable of making up to 330kW, which may be well short of the Hellcat, but not if Dodge can fit a pair of them for all-wheel drive, tyre-frying performance.For now we’ll have to wait until 2024 to see the finished product and hope Stellantis Australia decides to revive the Dodge brand down under.

Australia has long been one of the most competitive car markets in the world, often with more than 60 brands fighting it out for sales. And there seems like there’s no chance of its slowing down either, even with the loss of Holden. 

One of the biggest cinematic franchises of the last two decades, the Fast and Furious movies loosely follow the wacky japes of a crew of former street racers as they have slowly transition into international anti-terrorist action heroes. Where once it was all about punk kids not liking the tuna and closing off roads for pizza boys to find another way home, these days it is all secret agency tac-op

The Viperidae, or Viper for short, is among the most aggressive and lethal family of snakes in the world, making it a fairly apt description for what is often described as the “most dangerous” sports car ever made: the Dodge Viper.

The cars many V8 enthusiasts hold up being responsible for kicking the recent muscle car war into high gear is Dodge’s SRT Hellcat range. First shown in August 2014, the Hellcat badge represented a high-performance variant of the SRT Challenger and Charger muscle cars, along with the Jeep Cherokee Trackhawk, which joined the line-up in 2018.Producing a monstrous 527kW (707hp) from a 6.2-litre Hemi V8 wearing a fat 2.3-litre twin-rotor intercooled supercharger, the Hellcats were the most powerful Chrysler production vehicles ever built and the most powerful muscle cars of all time until Chrysler brought out the race-tuned 626kW (840hp) Demon sibling in 2018.While Chrysler has enjoyed a resurgence in Australia over the last decade, we missed out on the go-fast Challenger and Charger models as these platforms are not built in right-hand-drive format. We did get a limited number of Jeep Trackhawk models, but for some people a 2.4-tonne SUV is the antithesis of a proper muscle car.The supercharged Hemi models started at US$60,990 (nearly $87,000 Aussie pesos) at their launch, but the Dodge Hellcat price was well over $200,000 once they’d been imported to Australia and put through a rigorous compliance programme. The cost of this work ran into the tens of thousands of dollars and, with their rarity and popularity, this drove local prices up.While Chrysler caught Ford and General Motors napping off the line, both manufacturers have hit back with their own bombastic muscle cars packing over 485kW (650hp) and plenty of flat-out racing smarts like variable-ratio oil pumps, intercooled superchargers, and magnetic ride control dampers. The Shelby GT500 Mustang and Camaro ZL1-1LE both showed Hellcats a clean set of heels around race tracks as the Hellcats cannot get away from their heavy, ponderous underpinnings that date back to 2005!Although many tag 2020 as the era of Tesla and electric vehicles, the positive reviews from media and owners pushed Dodge to keep developing the big supercharged V8 Hellcats to include the monstrous limited-edition 626kW (840hp) Demon model (which can run the quarter-mile in single-digit times!), the Jeep Trackhawk SUV, and the new “Redeye” Hellcat models which use some of the parts from the Demon to produce a staggering 594kW (797hp).Dodge saw fit to equip the Redeye with wider guards and bigger wheels and tyres for more grip, upgraded differential and axles, as well as the Demon’s huge 2.7-litre supercharger that pushes more boosted air into the 6.2-litre V8. All that work means the SRT Hellcat Redeye edition is the fastest production muscle car ever produced, and this makes it incredibly sought-after.All Demons have been sold, though there are already a handful in Australia for sale for anywhere between $300,000 and $400,000 as they’re considered to be modern classics. Hellcat Redeye models have started coming into Aussie shores, though these should price between a normal Challenger and a Demon as they start at almost US$71,000 in their homeland (before any expensive compliance work has to take place).Thanks to Australia’s import laws, the best chance to own a Hellcat model is to buy one second-hand which has been imported into Australia and properly converted to right-hand drive by an authorised workshop. Any import car should have paperwork showing the import procedure was properly done, and the car had a legitimate title in the USA.The Hellcats seem to be fairly reliable, though there are plenty which have been crashed as drivers can struggle to control over 700hp so it might pay to check the VIN (the car’s unique identity number) on the American CarFAX service to see if there had been any insurance claims or accident history in its past. 

Dodge has unleashed a 6.2-litre V8-powered onslaught, laying claim to the title of 'world's fastest and most powerful' in no less than three categories at once.

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The current version of the Dodge Challenger and Charger will not make it to local showrooms in factory-backed form, confirmed Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) Australia's new boss Kevin Flynn.

Thousands of vehicles are caught up in a long round of recalls that involves everything from Takata airbags to incorrectly-printed tyre placards.