2007 Dodge Challenger

Dodge Challenger, the legendary muscle car returns in style. Designers at Chrysler Group knew they had a rich heritage to draw upon. The Challenger concept sits on a 116-inch wheelbase, six inches longer than the original. But its width is two inches greater, giving the concept car a retro, squat, tougher, more purposeful persona. The signature side view accent line is higher up on the body, running horizontal through the fender and door and kicking up just forward of the rear wheel. In section the upper and lower body surfaces intersect and fall away along this line, which has just a whisper of the original car's coved surfacing.

The five-spoke chrome wheels, 20-inch front and 21-inch rear, are set flush with the bodyside, giving the car the powerful muscular stance of a prizefighter eager to challenge the world. Wheel openings are drawn tightly against the tires, with the rearward edges trailing off. To emphasize the iconic muscularity, the designers added plan view “hip” to the rear quarters.

One of the key characteristics of the original car the designers wanted to retain was the exceptionally wide look of both the front and back ends. To achieve this the designers increased both the front and rear tracks to 64 and 65 inches respectively, wider than the LX, wider even than the 1970 Challenger. Bumpers are clean (no guards), body-color and flush with the body. The hood reprises the original Challenger “performance hood” and its twin diagonal scoops, now with functional butterfly-valve intakes. Designed to showcase the modern techniques used in fabricating the car, what look like painted racing stripes are actually the exposed carbon fiber of the hood material.

Exterior details one might expect, like a racing-type gas cap, hood tie-down pins, louvered backlite and bold bodyside striping, didn't make the “cut,” the designers feeling such assorted bits would detract from the purity of the retro monochromatic body form. But tucked reassuringly under the rear bumper are the “gotta have” twin-rectangle pipes of the dual exhausts.

In contrast to the bright Orange Pearl exterior, the interior is a no-nonsense, “let's-get-in-and-go” black relieved by satin silver accents and narrow orange bands on the seat backs. As with the original car, the instrumental panel pad sits high, intersected on the driver's side by a sculpted trapezoidal cluster containing three circular in-line analog gauge openings. With its thick, easy-grip rim, circular hub and pierced silver spokes, the leather-wrapped steering wheel evokes the original car's “Tuff” wheel. The floor console, its center surface tipped toward the driver, is fitted with a proper “pistol grip” shifter shaped just right to master the quick, crisp shifts possible with the six-speed manual “tranny.”

Although the flat-section bucket seats of the original Challenger didn't offer much support for aggressive driving, the front seats in the Challenger concept car boast hefty bolsters much like those found on Dodge's famed SRT series cars. The trim covers' horizontal pleats or “fales” provide just a hint of that “70's” look. Rethought, reworked and redesigned, the Challenger concept car offers iconic, a HEMI-powered performance coupe derived from a classic American muscle car.