"And for About 40 Grand Less . . .
You know what they say: 10 grand here, 10 grand there, pretty soon you’re talking real money. So when a Dodge Charger SRT8—base price, $38,095—showed up at Hogback Road just as the Bahn Burners were heading to Grattan, we thought it would be interesting to see how this relatively low-priced missile would measure up against the high-priced execu-rockets.
The answer: very well, indeed. Better, in fact, than we expected.
Propelled by a DaimlerChrysler 6.1-liter Hemi V-8—425 horsepower, 420 pound-feet of torque—the 4274-pound Charger rumbled to 60 mph in 4.8 seconds, covered the quarter-mile in 13.2 seconds (a tie with the Cadillac) at 109 mph, pulled 0.90 g on the skidpad, and stopped from 70 mph in 168 feet.
The basic test numbers were impressive, but the Charger’s agility on the Grattan road circuit was truly revelatory. Even though we experienced brake-fade problems during the full-tilt process, we were able to herd the bad-boy Dodge around the track in 1:32.65, just 0.1 second behind the CLS55 Benz and almost a full second quicker than the Cadillac STS-V.
That’s a tribute to excellent work by DC’s Street and Racing Technology skunkworks guys, as well as a testimonial to a superb job by the chassis engineers.
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