The Dodge Challenger — along with the Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang — form the pillars upon which the altar of muscle car performance is built. Of the three, the Challenger is the most old-school. This is a big, heavy coupe that feels big and heavy from behind the wheel, and is powered by your choice of not insubstantially sized engines.
The standard 3.6-liter V6 is a good jumping-off point, but it's really the diverse selection of V8s that earns the Challenger its name. The naturally aspirated eight-cylinders are properly quick, while the SRT variants and their supercharged Hellcat engines will tear down the local drag strip with joyful abandon.
But the Challenger isn't a brute. The ride is quite comfortable, even when you opt for models with a sportier suspension setup. Most of today's advanced driving aids are available here, including blind-spot monitoring and adaptive cruise control. And the Challenger is equipped with Dodge's Uconnect infotainment interface. In our opinion, it's one of the most intuitive systems on the market.
Though this Challenger generation has been massaged and tweaked over the years, the bones date back all the way to 2008. Unless Dodge surprises us with a completely redesigned Challenger, we expect the 2022 model to closely approximate last year's offerings. If you like what Dodge is selling, there's no reason not to consider the 2021 Dodge Challenger.
