Mopar Muscle for the Road Course? A Stripped Down ACR Challenger May Be Coming
One of the great things about American performance cars in recent years is that they've gone from being focused primary on horsepower and straight line performance to being extremely well rounded machines that rival and often beat many "pure" sports cars in terms of handling and dynamics. Chevy's Camaro 1LEs and Ford's GT350 and various track packages for the Mustang GT are great examples of this.
And while Dodge has done commendable work in getting its larger, heavier muscle cars to be more adept at going around corners the, Charger and Challenger are still primarily targeted at the more traditional muscle car buyer. That may be about to change though.
According to a Mopar enthusiast site, unnamed sources have stated that Dodge is planning to reveal an ACR-badged Dodge Challenger to help celebrate the car's 50th anniversary in 2020.
In the past, the ACR treatment has been given to cars as wide ranging as the Neon and the Viper, with the track-focused ACR Vipers in particular being known for breaking lap time records across the world.
No specs have been given, and as with any rumor this should be taken with an appropriately sized grain of salt but the idea of an ACR-tuned Challenger sounds pretty great to us. We'd expect it to use Hellcat based powerplant with a heavy amount of weight savings and aggressive aero pieces. A cheaper, naturally aspirated version using the 6.4 Hemi would also be a welcome option.
The competition for a Challenger ACR would likely be cars like the Shelby GT500 and the Camaro ZL1 1LE, and while the age of the LX platform and its inherent weight disadvantage make the Mustang and Camaro stiff competition—we are excited to see what becomes of this. Maybe we'll even find out more when the SEMA Show goes down in a few weeks time...
Then again if Dodge is still looking for more ways to inject interest into the LX platform we still thinking adding a manual transmission option to the Charger would be a great way to do it.
Love Hellcats? Click here to see subtly modified this 2018 Charger Hellcat.
