Dodge Boys play muscle card—let’s bring back Pontiac!

Car enthusiasts have been chatting online about the soon-to-be-released Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat. This modern supercharged muscle car with its 6.2-liter V-8 makes 707 hp and 650 lb-ft of torque. The National Hot Rod Assoc., says it will do the quarter-mile in 10.6 sec. at 126 mph right out of the box. So, it is going to be the most powerful production muscle car ever.

On top of this recent news, we were floored when we attended the Chicago Auto Show earlier this year and saw a bunch of special high-performance Dodge models that are being built in very limited numbers such as only 100 units for a very plain but powerful looking white Challenger.

Those of us who collect cars and study automotive history will remember that Dodge and Pontiac were archrivals in drag racing back in the day. It was Pontiac’s Super Duty 421 Catalinas versus lightweight Dodges with 440 Wedge V-8s and later the Hemi. The weekend racing action sold cars on Monday.

So, were starting to wonder about this: If a relatively small automaker like Chrysler can still generate excitement and sales (Have you seen Chrysler’s figures lately?) with high-performance Dodge models, why did General Motors ever drop Pontiac, which was it’s high-performance brand for many years?

Maybe it’s time to bring back some “Pontiac Excitement” and give those Dodge Boys another run for their money!