Escape Velocity

There are times when the highway beckons.

When the roads around town, between home and work, provide no relief. When you're feeling too many things bearing down on you...the way one of my favorite songs puts it:

"I have been in cities where the multitudes envelope me,

The stations and the depots felt so cold.

Looked up at the city spires, they couldn't build them any higher,

A giant's teeth were clenched around my soul."

It's those times when you need an escape. You know, when you've given your last at the end of a too long day..."it's been a long month this week"...and you're not quite so exhausted that you can't do anything but collapse. That's physically tired; and when you're like that, that's just what you do...collapse on your bed, and then somehow you sleep it off and rally the next day.

No, I'm talking about emotionally tired. Times when your brain needs room to vent.

S P A C E.

When only open land will give it to you. Maybe it's farm fields, maybe the coastline, maybe it's the desert.

Maybe for you, it's Highway 1, heading North past San Simeon. Maybe it's the trip up Wyoming's Wind River Canyon. For others, Alligator Alley proves to be the right fit. Maybe it's Hwy 60, heading NW out of Phoenix. Who knows. But you've decided on how you want to spend this evening.

You find yourself pausing a bit as you walk up to it. You just waxed it the other day. It's a little dusty already, but not bad. A quick swipe with your finger confirms that the finish under the dust is still as slick as butter. You open the door...reverently?...something like that. It's different than coming up to just any other car. With this one, it's like approaching a thoroughbred. You do it with a mixture of reverence and awe.

You slip into the driver's seat. You pull the door shut, and hear that solid "thud." Listen to the silence for a moment...it's the last time you'll hear, or want to hear, that silence for a while. You turn the key, and the engine purrs, then roars to life. It's the sound of American Muscle, pure and powerful.

You move cautiously through the crowded streets around home. She (or he, if you have a male car) may be a bruiser, but it's still your baby and you never can trust other drivers too much. You finally reach your favorite stretch of road. A quick look around confirms...traffic is sparse or non-existent. Now is the time.

You give it some throttle. A little smirk crosses your face. Maybe you're one who stomps right to WOT; maybe you squeeze the peddle instead of stomp. Either way, we all seem to get to the same place: whipping down the road, sliding through the gears, and with each jump in speed and roll of pavement under the wheels, the stress seems to melt away. Soon, you find you're focused on sensations: the white lines flashing by on the blacktop ahead, the sound of the wind rushing past, the drone of the pipes underneath and behind you. You're in a zone, and you find you've relaxed deep into the seat. And it's then you notice your little smirk has turned into a big ol' grin. You ask yourself "when did that happen?" And eventually, you let off the throttle and let 'er slow on down. Because just like that thoroughbred, you have to let 'er cool down on the way back to the stable. But you have what you came for. You've reset your levels and refilled your tank...until next time.

This is your escape vehicle...your transport to sanity. Yours may have a name: The Mistress, HellBitch, Ares, or Maggie Mae. Maybe it's the Lady in Red, or Plain Jane, or The Interceptor. Maybe Loco, or the Batmobile, or Dr. Evil.

They go by many different names, but one thing is for sure. If you see me in mine, or one of my compadres in theirs, take a little care in what you say. Let me give you some advice: don't call it "a car."

Because you see, it's not just "a car," ... it's a MOPAR.

Dodge Challenger...An Orange in an Apple Orchard

Growing up, I watched Motor Trend, Car & Driver, and other similar magazines doing their periodic "Pony Wars" comparing the Chevrolet Camaro of my day with the Ford Mustang. These were early 80's shootouts, which is to say fairly pedestrian and boring, compared to the technology of today or what I imagine the late 60's pony car shootouts entailed.

Conspicuously missing from those articles was the Dodge Charger or Challenger. This was with good reason, as the Charger and Challenger both effectively sunsetted as muscle cars in 1974-75. The Dodge ponies were therefore nowhere on my radar screen as a young kid dreaming of owning my own cool car...old muscle cars were not as common in my little part of the world as they were in other parts of the country. Like many youngsters of my day, I was only exposed to classic Dodges by the Dukes of Hazzard.

More recently, in the last 2 years, I found myself optimistically entering my midlife crisis, and looking for a new vehicle. Coming out of a pickup truck, and with a family of four to accommodate, I found myself looking for my class of dream car: a "big, fast, growling, American sedan." In terms of styling, power, and solid design, a black 2006 Dodge Charger R/T fit the bill perfectly. But I did look at a Mustang GT too...yes, I said sedan, but I've been in deep like with the Mustang design since they released the "new, old look" in 2005. What can I say, I'm an old school kind of guy. Checking one out at the Chicago Auto Show, though, sitting in the driver's seat and trying to overlook the lack of rear doors and talk myself into it, I reached back into the floor of the passenger seat. I was rewarded with a wedge fit for my forearm, between the back of the passenger seat and the front edge of the rear seat. As my kids grew, they'd never fit back there. My thought was that they shouldn't even list this as a four passenger vehicle...only little children or chicken-legged scrawny teens would ever fit back there. And I come from a family of offensive linemen, so that seemed an unlikely future for my children...Mustang was out of the running.

So I became a Mopar guy, and I was anxious to read Motor Trend's write-up "Pony Car War!...New Camaro v. Mustang v. Challenger." FINALLY...a three-way pony car war, and one in which I felt I had a horse in the race. Challenger, go get 'em little brother!

If you've read the issue, which came out in June 2009, then you know (and even if not, you can guess), the Challenger R/T came in 3rd, the Mustang GT 2nd, and the Camaro SS 1st . I was disappointed until I delved into the statistics of the showdown, and confirmed what my eyes already told me: they were comparing apples and an orange. The Challenger (and Charger) aren't "Pony Cars,"...they're something much different, and in my opinion, shouldn't be compared in the same test with Camaro and Mustang.

Here's how I come to that conclusion:

• Passenger capacity: Challenger carries 5 to the Camaro's and Mustang's 4. That may seem really close at first, and dismissable. But look at the size of each rear seat passenger that each can accommodate. Rear headroom in the Chally is almost 2" more than Camaro and 2.5" more than Mustang. How about legroom? Rear seat passengers in a Challenger get 2.7" more room to stretch their sticks than in Camaro and 2.8" more room than Mustang. And, living in the "City of Broad Shoulders", as I do, let's look at rear seat shoulder room: Challenger offers 53.9", topping Mustang by 2.3" and giving passengers a whopping 11.4" of additional personal space over Camaro. If you're one of two adults in the back seat of a Camaro, don't breathe in deep and expand those lungs too much.
• Weight: Once one concludes that Challenger is the only one of the three that can comfortably carry adults larger than hobbits in the rear seat, all the other numbers fall into context, starting with weight. I would expect additional sheet metal, structural framing, etc. to be necessary to support more human pounds of flesh. I see it as understandable that Challenger would weigh in at 300 lbs more than Camaro and 600 more than Mustang.
• Braking: Weighing more, and able to carry more weight, is it any wonder the Challenger takes longer to brake?
• Engine: Here's where I had my biggest bone to pick with Motor Trend's review. Talk about stacking the deck for Camaro, and comparing apples to oranges! The as-tested Camaro SS has a 6.2L V-8, to the Charger R/T's 5.7L V-8 and the Mustang GT's 4.6L engine. No wonder the Camaro SS had the performance numbers in the test: 0-60 in 4.7 v. the Chally (5.1) and Mustang (4.9). Similar disparity was seen in 1/4 mile times: Camaro (13.0 sec.), Challenger (13.6) and Mustang (13.5). Now excuse me, but to be fair, there is a little baby out there called the Challenger SRT-8, sporting a 6.1L hemi...why not compare displacement to displacement? Do that, and you're looking at 426hp for Camaro and 425hp for Challenger. For that matter, let's be fair to the Mustang guys and let them bring their GT500 to the party...5.4L/540hp, 0-60 in 4.1, 1/4 mile in 12.1. How does that feel, Camaro?

Now, in my editorial here, Dodge doesn't get off the hook. Look, Dodge: if there's going to continue to be these "Pony Car Wars," then build a pony car. There's a missing niche in the Dodge lineup between the Viper and the Charger/Challenger: a small, 2+2 seater, muscular welterweight...2 seats and two baby boosters strapped to an engine. Take the 6.1L hemi, stick it in a frame that sheds 500 lbs from the Challenger, retro-style it, and let it go punch Chevy and Ford in the nose.

Until then, read these Pony Car Wars, and the Challenger's place in them, with a grain of salt. Camaro and Mustang can't let you rocket five (or even four) adults down the highway in comfort while letting them ride in a real muscle car, with cool retro styling to boot.

And since I'm editorializing, passengers in my Charger get something not even Challenger rear seat passengers get: their own door. I love my big, fast, growling, American sedan.