Cruising The Oregon Coast In A 2009 Challenger R/T

Everyone who’s driven our 5.7 L hemi Challenger agrees that this car is dying to be out on the open road—with its girth, its power, and its interior visibility issues, this Mopar just isn’t very happy in the city. Dugging around in second gear at 30 mph is torture—this car just wants to go! So I picked up my boy Chris and we hit the road for the Oregon coast, one of the most awesome stretches of highway in the world. The Challenger agreed—and once it was out of traffic and out of sight of the law, the car was more fun than I ever could’ve imagined. More…

Despite perks such its burly launch and tire-roasting abilities, the Challenger is a just a lovely cream puff of a highway cruiser. The huge trunk and comfy seats make it great for long trips, and it’s roomy as hell—a way bigger car than you might expect it to be. It’s also a blast to drive. The sweet spot, at least in moderate weekend traffic, feels like about 85 mph or so, the point at which the car still dodges easily in and out of traffic without feeling reckless enough to be a heat-score.

As for the gearing, I found that the six-speed gives you one more gear than you actually need in this car. It’ll have you rowing through the low gears a little faster than you might want to, and because the rev limiter kicks in at a measly 6000 RPM, it’s not hard to bounce off it in both 1st and 2nd unless you’re really watching the tach. But then at normal highway speeds, and even at up to 20 mph above the limit, you’ll find yourself shifting a lot between 5th and 6th to keep from either burning gas or lugging. The shifter gates are pretty close together because of this excess of gears, so be prepared for a gear-selection fail or two while you get used to the pattern. And while the pistol-grip is a neat, retro-muscle-car idea, it didn’t exactly feel like a real pistol grip—it was sort of a modern, sculpted little stump with a couple of indentations for your fingers, and the geometry that it encourages you to adopt makes the throw of each shift longer than it needs to be.

Still and all, I like the six-speed way better than the automatic SRT Challenger I tried, even though that car had the bigger 6.1L hemi. The stick encourages crisper and more active driving, and there’s way more potential for showing off—the 5.7 has no shortage of power. It’s like anything: manual is always better. And the one thing I loved above all else? Passing fools. When you’re used to driving smoggy clapped-out 4- and 6-cyls like I am, the feeling of just dropping a gear or three and slamming the doors on someone and flying past them at 95 mph with a big muscle-car b’ohhhhhhhh! is pretty awesome. Long caravans of slowpokes on the two-lane roads presented no problems at all for the Challenger—it just eats them for breakfast. Even sitting at a stop light, the 5.7L sounds badass—the idle’s got a bit of that lumpy-cammed dug-dug-dug-dug-dug of its muscle-car predecessors, and the body torques visibly when you rev the engine. I love it! And in four-lane traffic, I noticed that this car cuts a path—I’m not sure if it’s the mean exhaust note or the menacing look of it in the rearview, but people will get out of your way if they can.

Once we got into the twisties—Oregon Route 34 is a fantastic road to take from I5 to the coastal 101, if you’re ever in the area—the Challenger got a chance to show off its agility. The independent rear suspension helped it feel pretty responsive through the turns, and it stuck to the road well. There was a bit of body roll despite the front and rear sway bars, though I felt that was just part of the Challenger’s big-car appeal. I believe our R/T has a softer suspension than the SRT, and you could feel it a little around those tight hairpins as we got closer to the coast. The car actually looks like it could sit a good inch or two lower, though even at stock height I had it bottom out once or twice during city driving—bad news, thanks to that plastic belly pan I noticed when it was up on the lift: it’s bolted to the chin spoiler with a row of 10mm bolts which end up being the lowest points on the car’s nose and start shearing off once you’ve dropped it on the ground a couple of times. That’ll be a serious headache when you go to do the first oil change and realize you have to get all that plastic off somehow.

The only misgivings I have about the Challenger include a handful of issues with its interior design, and the level of electronic intervention. Frankly, visibility is crap—between the huge C-pillars and the gunslit rear window, you have your intuition alone to tell you how far your rear bumper is from any given obstacle—assuming you can even see that obstacle, with the car’s ass-in-the-air stance. I didn’t try to parallel park it, but John confirmed that it’s pretty daunting to do so in a a downtown-Seattle-sized parking spot. And since the turning radius isn’t great, you’re likely to be doing more thee-point turns than U-ies, and any kind of backing and forthing in this car takes a little getting used to. Other interior fails included the dash, which was rental-car bland, and the gauges, which weren’t nearly as cool as the Bullitt Mustang’s. The back seat is an obstacle course to get into, which is too bad—with its roominess back there, it hardly qualifies as one of those rears that was never meant to be used. But if that was the intent, Chrysler should’ve taken the opportunity to make the car’s exterior rear styling as crisp and sexy as the front.

As for the electronic nannies, well, I’ve already mentioned the rev limiter, which seems excessively conservative: I mean, no engine is going to blow up at 6000 RPM unless you run it out of oil. The push-button start and the whole electronic-fob thing always weirds me out, and seems especially out of place on a muscle car. And the Challenger’s hill-assist is a nightmare—it basically feels like you’re trying to take off with the parking brake engaged. This is supposed to be helpful? How is holding a stick-shift car on a hill suddenly a skill we need a computer to perform for us? In any case, on extreme hills, the car pretty much won’t let you go either forward or back, and the only way out of it is to stall it and then back it off the hill with the clutch in—but then, of course, you lose power steering and brakes, which is wonderful when you’re on a hill. But if the grade of the hill is gentle, the assist will sometimes flicker on and off, which is pretty dangerous when you think about it: suddenly, you’re rolling! This evil feature needs some serious work—sure, there might be some year-one bugs that need working out, but in the meantime I hope there’s a way to disable it. I can hold my car on a hill myself, thanks!

Despite its quirks, though, this car absolutely made me fall in love. I’m still a little on the fence about whether I like it or the Bullitt Mustang better—that Mustang was just such a lean little street-brawler, whereas the portly Challenger exudes a more refined brand of badassery. I think they’re cars that are best suited to somewhat different purposes, despite their targeting of the same marketing segment. I guess in the end you just have to decide for yourself if you’d rather launch sideways around every corner or roast your tires straight through every intersection.