Dealin' Days: How to Save Nearly $10,000 on a Scat Pack Challenger or Charger
When it comes to shopping for a new car, it's natural to take a vehicle's manufacturers suggested retail price as the primary indicator of affordability. Yet anyone who has ever shopped for a new car knows that "suggested" is a key part of the MSRP equation.
Depending on the brand, your location and the time of the year—a car's MSRP may simply be the starting off point for negotiations, which actual transaction prices being far lower than the window sticker says.
When Dodge introduced its Scat Pack Challenger and Charger models back in 2015, the cars represented tremendous value off the showroom floor, but that's just the beginning of the value.
Thanks to the power of factory incentives from Dodge and a bit of negotiation, you can get into a brand new Scat Pack for a much less than sticker price.
Since the beginning it's never been terribly hard to get a nice discount on a Scat Pack, but recently with Dodge introducing its "Power Dollars" promotion, it found a nice way to tie in the discounts with horsepower ratings.
You basically get $1,000 off MSRP for every 100 horsepower the car has, meaning a 485 horse Challenger or Charger Scat Pack will be sold with a $4,850 factory discount. And that's before you get to any additional discounting from the dealership itself. The dealer discounts will of course depend on inventory and region, but over the past year I've seen some low option brand new Challenger and Charger Scat Packs priced into the low $30,000s at times—or nearly $10,000 off their original price.
A quick look for 2020 Scat Pack Chargers shows cars in both Michigan and Nevada being advertised at a nearly $9,000 discount. With heavy discounts, the price for these muscle machines dips into the same realm as a loaded Honda Accord or Toyota Camry.
However, with the pandemic having closed most auto assembly lines for a couple months, there's a currently low inventory of most new vehicles so the deals likely won't be quite as aggressive until production fully gets rolling and the lots get restocked.
Naturally, you might be wondering that since these cars are discounted so heavily, their resale value must plummet like a rock. But when it comes to a Scat Pack that's far from true.
In fact, both Charger and Challenger Scat Packs have pretty great resale value. A look at used car listings shows that even a four or five year old example with nearly 50,000 miles on it is still hard to find for under $30,000.
That means that if you buy one at the right price, there really isn't a whole lot to lose. And that's before you even get to fun of owning a modern muscle car with nearly 500 horsepower under the hood and an exhaust system that will wake up the whole neighborhood.
Now if you'll excuse me I need to go tempt myself not to hunt down a screaming deal a on a new Scat Pack Charger in F8 Green. If only you could get one with a manual transmission...
