Something tragic may be about to happen. To Dodge. Which is the last American car company, even if it is owned by a foreign conglomerate (Stellantis).
It sells cars, first of all – which is a thing almost no one else does anymore – in favor of these Universal Transportation Appliance crossover SUVs, which overlap each other so closely it is difficult to divine why there needs to be more than one brand selling various sizes and colors of them.
Dodge sells cars. American cars. Big, ballsy cars – with big V8s that drive the rear wheels that average Americans can afford to buy.
No one else sells cars like that anymore. It is probably why Dodge sells a lot of them, even though all of them are pushing 15 years old, in terms of the last time they received a significant redesign. Which they haven’t because they don’t need it – as evidenced by the fact that people continue to buy them, eagerly.
For precisely that reason.
You don’t fix what ain’t broke.
Until, of course, the government breaks it.
As by this force-feeding of electric cars down the throats of unwilling Americans – the automotive equivalent of the attempt to force-needle every American, most especially the so-called “hesitant” (to be forced to submit to an injection that may harm or even kill them for the sake of protecting them – allegedly – from a sickness that doesn’t meaningfully threaten them).
The source of all this force being these pathological people – “the government” – who think they know best and are determined to make us do what they think is best. This to include no more driving the kinds of cars Dodge makes, that no one else makes – in favor of electric cars that everyone else makes.
Or rather, that everyone else is being forced to make.
If Dodge is forced to make them, too, it will be the end of Dodge.
Tesla already makes electric muscle cars – which they aren’t, either. They are very quick cars, certainly. But that is not what defines a muscle car and surely Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis, who said earlier this week – with a proverbial gun to his head – “If a charger can make a Charger faster, then we’re all for it” – knows better.
No! You know it ain’t so, Tim!
My 1976 Pontiac Trans-Am would not stand a chance in a stoplight heads-up with a Tesla S, which can get to 60 in less than 3 seconds. But no matter how quickly the Tesla gets to 60 or runs a quarter mile it will never be a muscle car.
Speed is not everything.
