This week for me began late at night in my near silent man cave, the only sounds in being streaks of clattering away at a mechanical keyboard, punctuated by several clicks of a mouse, and the occasional sigh.
"The hell even IS a pony car...?"
This week's definition of a pony car, according to Wikipedia, is "an American car classification for affordable, compact, highly styled coupés or convertibles with a 'sporty' or performance-oriented image."
So... these things are just for show? Are these things actually sporty or not? Need I turn up in a Challenger adorned in a sparkly pink colour shifting My Little Pony livery?
Even before having been assigned a car this week, I was already worrying. I know nothing about American cars and culture. Asking me to review a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T is like asking me to read and review the Holy Bible written in Braille. I am just about the least qualified person to offer critique on the matter, and am most likely going to completely miss the point and not understand a thing. It most likely is something I'm completely disinterested in, to begin with.
Okay then, what's a Challenger?
A Challenger, to my understanding, is a mangled mess bolted onto a chassis and four wheels. I knew nothing about it to begin with, but the more I read, somehow it seemed like the less I knew about it. It was offered with a choice of - get this - EIGHT different engines. That's right, if I thought the Lexus from last week had an excessive number of gears, "I ain't seen nothing yet". This car has the same number of engine choices as a modern "sport" luxury coupé has gears. Some people claim that a car's engine is it's heart, and I can definitely see where that argument comes from. What is the identity, personality, and intent of a car then, with EIGHT different engines to choose from? Are these things built with Legos?
So then which is the best engine? The biggest one with the most power output, right? In the Challenger's case, the biggest engine would be... the 440 Cubic Inch (the hell is a cu in? 7.2 lit- SEVEN POINT TWO LITRES?!) RB440 engine, producing... 395PS? How the hell do you manage to make so little power out of so much displacement? And torque... 490 lb⋅ft, which is... 664 N⋅m?!
That's... more than double what my 2002 FD makes.
So then, back to the Challenger... which engine is the best?
Is the biggest engine the best engine? It has a 7.0 L Hemi. Isn't the Hemi Dodge's... special... signature... trademark... thing? Is that the best engine, or is the 7.2L better? Or the badass sounding "Magnum" engine the best? Or is a smaller engine with a lighter mass and better balance the better engine? I DON'T KNOW.
My head hurts even before having laid eyes on the car I'm going to be assigned. Thankfully, I didn't have to choose an engine; the COTW officials are just going to assign me a car, and I'm just going to have to trust that everyone else has the same car, mechanically speaking.
MECHANICALLY speaking.
Unfortunately, I'm extended the courtesy of getting to pick the colour of my Challenger.
There are twenty factory paintjobs for this car.
Is this... what Freedom feels like?
I must've spent about half an hour just looking at the car with paint samples superimposed onto it, trying to decide which colour looked best/ fit the image of 70s America best/ best represented my personality. There was a lot of quirky charm to the paint selection as well, and some names, like "Go Mango" and "Sublime" made me chuckle a lot. Everything, from boring like "Beige" to whack butt wild like "Panther Pink" was on offer, and I even recognise some colours that has carried onto modern Dodges, like "Plum Crazy". What a treat!
I ended up with "Light Gold Metallic". It wasn't too attention grabbing like lime green, pink, or purple, and not completely, abysmally flat like beige. The hue really did seem to fit the overall shape and time period of the car... I think. Over the email exchange, I was given a link to a collection of liveries and designs of the car, since I'm getting to be known as "Mr. Boring", or the "license plate guy" in the weekly races. As if the Challenger needed any help being unique with all the factory options with engines, paints, and other bells and whistles. I mean, come on, in a sea of customised cars and wild liveries, being completely stock is a good way to stand out too, right?! Kind of like coming across an unmolested 180SX at a car meet.
I bite anyway, out of curiosity. There are a lot of what looks like NASCAR designs, which I, of course, know nothing about. A few Hot Wheels designs of varying quality, cop cars of dubious authenticity, and even some... *er-hem* simplistic designs with flames. People really like these things, huh? After seeing a few orange cars with flags on their roofs however, I decide to just roll up to this week's meet with a factory fresh, museum worthy Challenger, complete with its dealer license plate. I'm just going to try to not ruffle any feathers this week.
I arrived at Sardegna for the first race this week, still not knowing what really to expect out of the Challenger. I've done all the reading I can about the car, and even did Esther's little anime spectacle pushy thing to look smart a few times, to no real avail. American cars of this era just seem to lump together without much to differentiate them; they're all 2 door FR cars with V8s, 4 speed manuals at best, open diffs, soft suspension, no ABS, and bias ply tyres. With a combination like that, there's a very exacting way to drive these cars, and you can only really expect so much from them. About the only way to really separate these cars from each other is how much power and mass each has, and how tall each car is geared, or simply subjective stuff like styling, sound, and brand loyalty.
From what I've read, the Challenger has the most horses among its stable mates (aha, get it? Pony cars? Horsepower? Stable...? Okay I'll see myself out). The car I wound up getting was the 7 litre Hemi, which makes 430PS. In comparison, the Camaro Z/28 makes a paltry 293PS, and the Mustang Mach 1, 306PS. It however also weighs the most, at a whopping 1,724kg (3,800lbs), which isn't a long ways off from the RC F from last week. The Mach 1 is a little lighter at 1,615kg (3,561lbs), and the Z/28, a featherweight by comparison, light even by today's standards at 1,415kg (3,120lbs).
As per tradition however, the first few races were all done in the Car of the Week, just to get a feel for the car before we start throwing other things (like a F150 Raptor!) into the blender.
First to last, Racer, Nismo, Rob, Rick, me, Vic. Nat's... been uncontactable and MIA since two weeks ago. I can only assume she didn't do well in her tests.
Because most of us racers are filthy millennials that can't wipe our own butts trying to eke out a living in this mad world, our cars are all fitted with optional ABS, traction control, and brake bias controllers for the meet. Using TCS only for launch as I would a modern car, the Challenger bogs down in 1st gear severely, so much so that it was much quicker if you simply let the wheels spin when you drop the clutch, simply because a wheelspinning car is faster than a car with a dead engine.
The scene at T2. Vic basically shot up from last to 2nd, just from smoking his tyres at launch (like god intended, if I understand the Bible correctly), with me being forced to the outside of the slight left kink of T1.
That's right: the V8 Hemi in this thing I find has a ridiculously, spitefully narrow powerband; it redlines at 5,500rpm, and it simply goes limp at anything below 4,000. For crying out loud, even a 1967 Cosmo with a Rotary engine has a wider powerband than this almighty 'MURICAN V8. With all the hype that was thrown at me in my last minute researching about muscle cars and great thumping V8s with mountains of torque, the Challenger was as disappointing to me as walking into a McDonald's and finding out they're all out of fries, or going to Monza and finding out they don't run the oval anymore. At this point, what even is the point anymore? Why am I still here, just to suffer?
As if this dead horse needed more beating (aha, get it? Pony car, dead horse- I'M NOT SORRY!), the engine and its slim jim narrow powerband is perhaps to blame for another one of the car's glaring faults: its gearing. The gears on this car are so narrow that you're in 3rd for less than three seconds at full throttle on a flat road. Not only does this mean that you're fumbling around with the stick in this car a lot, losing precious milliseconds on the track, the low gearing on this thing means that the Challenger tops out at a gear limited top speed of 184km/h (114mph). I've seen longer skirts in anime than the gearing of this Challenger. The short gearing means that I often found myself drowning the engine mid corners. Shifting down would cause it to immediately run out of breath, and even light up the rear tyres. Unfortunately, because of the peaky muscle car engine, it's faster to shift down into a lower gear, get the rear end lively, and power out of the corner with a hint of both power oversteer and one tyre fire than to crawl out of a corner in a higher gear, as Vic and I will demonstrate to you:
Because of this car's abysmal gearing, we were running short versions of most tracks this week, like Sardegna C, Suzuka East, and Maggiore Central, in spite of my disdain for these short tracks, likening them to going to a Red Light District for just a hug. In this case, I'd rather just a fling and flick, than to have to spend an entire night at redline to a woeful drone of an asphyxiating car. No amount of research I could do could get me to understand how the American public and engineers both could accept these ratios. The car was nearly topping out even at a relatively tight, technical, home grown track of Laguna Seca, and I'm sure America has many, many more wide open tracks that let cars stretch their legs more. WHAT are these cars made to do? Just a quarter mile and nothing else? Did no one else find issue with driving a car at its redline constantly?
With a modern day ABS, the Challenger can actually be pushed quite hard on corner entry, and the bias ply tyres really do require a lot of weight on them before they start to bite. That is to say, without the assurance and precision that ABS affords, the Challenger is a sloppy mess to drive. It really makes one appreciate just how much ABS is doing for the driver, driving this back-to-back with ABS on and then off after the weekly meet. I began to realise the thousands of adjustments it needs to make a second, how quickly it needs to calculate and make those adjustments, while balancing out braking force left and right, all while accounting for changing road surfaces and undulations.
With this assured increase of deceleration power, the rear end of the Challenger just about reaches up for the sky in each braking zone, causing it to slide out in most situations, especially with aggressive heel and toe, which can be easily caught by manually easing off the brakes a little and applying a quick flash of counter steer, which gets the car obediently back in line. With an aftermarket brake balance controller, this problem is better massaged out of the car. Of course, I only remember I HAD a brake balance controller at race 5 at Suzuka...
Corner exit, however, is a little more... hairy.
In addition to the earlier mentioned indecision when it comes to the car's gearing on corner exit, the Challenger exhibits every shortcoming of a car of its era. You simply can't put the same weight over the rear tyres on corner exit as you did corner entry, so the car needs to be babied out of a corner. You'll need to account for both over and understeer when you apply power out of a corner, as you'll need to carefully and gradually shift weight over the rear with the gas pedal well before hitting the apex to ensure you won't make a mess of the rears when it's time to actually put power down. And once you do, you'll need to watch for the understeer as well in this extremely nose heavy car.
Other traits common to cars of its era, the Challenger shares as well, such as having a completely open diff, bias ply tyres, and soft suspension. What this list translates to in driving is that the car is very liable to snap on you if you induce awkward lateral weight shifts mid corner, as all the power simply flies to the side without grip, causing a torque vectoring effect that sends you only in the completely wrong direction at any given moment. You therefore need to avoid any road imperfections when driving this thing hard, such as rumble strips, and really plan out a rock solid line way in advance, as the car doesn't take mid corner adjustments well. It is nigh impossible to get this thing back once it starts fishtailing as a result. While I did fishtail it in a race that never happened at a track that didn't exist, I was lucky enough to recover it unscathed. The only way I could describe the sensation is attempting to navigate a cargo ship through a slalom at sea... while time is flowing a hundred times faster.
So, what's my verdict of this car?
If you hadn't been bored to death my my review of the car yet, you probably can't tell that I really don't give two shits about the car. I've never felt this bored writing a review before. The charm of COTW is that I get an incentive to drive cars I usually overlook, and I can tell you after driving this that I really don't feel any less apathetic towards the car before and after driving it, simply because there's no real point to it. I can hardly be bothered to give it a Beater and Forget Her. I just want to walk away from it as quickly as possible.
Its completely useless gearing makes lap times completely out of the question for most tracks, with only very few exceptions like Tsukuba, Laguna Seca, and Horse Thief Mile. Needless to say, a 50 year old muscle car isn't going to corner, so putting it on these tight, technical tracks is torture for both man and machine. It really does appear to me, someone who knows nothing about this segment of cars, that they're simply built for the quarter mile, and nothing else. No exaggeration.
To put this theory to test, I arranged for a very unscientific Zero-Yon- I mean, quarter mile test, at a top secret location. The folks in charge of this salivating test track are so secretive with its location, that I had to be blindfolded, put to sleep via drugs, and then locked in a black box every time I access and leave it. There appears to be an infield layout to this track as well, but that's so secretive, no outsider has yet been allowed in.
Given the great lengths to keep this track a top secret, and the great pains to go through to even rent it for an exorbitant price, it's not a track I like to have to use to test a car, even if it is undisputedly THE best place on earth (?) to test a car at its top speed, with two 12km straights linked by two enormous, generously banked corners not even a LaFerrari or Veyron would have to brake for. I only needed about 402 metres of straight road that day, but the owners of the track seemed to really like muscle cars, so I was actually invited to their test track free of charge to run the quarter mile... using distance markers in metres. Without proper timing equipment. And yes, I was drugged and put to sleep all the same on the way there.
I wasn't really doing the Zero Yon for a time, though. I know if I quoted a time, people would be all up in arms, saying crap like "you don't know how to drive (in a straight line)", "you don't know how to launch it", "you're running the wrong tyres and pressures", "you're carrying too much fuel, stupid", and "you shift slow af". I only had a stopwatch at hand for this, which was far from scientific, so I really, REALLY, didn't care how long the Zero Yon took. All I was here to do was to test a theory.
I crossed the 400m line at about 5,300rpm in fourth gear. If you recall, redline was 5,500rpm, and this car has only four forward gears.
This "car"... was really built to just do the Zero Yon, and quite literally NOTHING else. I now know why this segment of cars is called the "Pony Car" - because these cars are all one trick ponies.
To explain further my apathy towards this car and this segment: what's really the point of reviewing this car if the one thing it's meant to do can be read off a spec sheet? The only thing that separates a Camaro, a Mustang, and a Challenger to me therefore is price, styling, and the standing quarter mile times, and deciding on a car based on just those three factors feels very... shallow, to me. I don't think I can offer any new perspectives, or explain anything new of any significance by driving the car in the place of someone who couldn't. You really don't need a review to tell you that a muscle car can't corner. I'm not going to change the minds of anyone who's passionate about any particular pony car into liking another. It's also not a hill I see any merit dying on.
Ultimately, I need more than price, styling, and a standing quarter time from a car to really fall in love with it. None of them are going to corner. None of them will have gearing tall enough for most tracks. This effectively also means that whichever has the tallest gearing will be faster around most tracks. And, again, you can read gear ratios and top speeds off a spec sheet. There's zero reason to test them. They therefore all meld together in my mind in a barely distinguishable, completely irrelevant, never entertaining lump.
LITERALLY the same.
If I wanted an American fix, I'd get into my Viper, a Corvette, a modern day ZL1, or an F150.
or... even... *GASP* a Tesla.
I think I just became the most hated man in all of motorsports.
Yes, this Model S Signature Performance - not even the P100D, leaves muscle cars, and even the RC F, for dead at launch. Even though EVs are known for their abysmal lack of top speed, the Model S did just hit 200km/h (124mph) on the shared straight of Sardegna - 16km/h (9.9mph) more than what the Challenger does gear limited, which it can't even hit with slipstream due to the slight uphill at Sardegna's home straight. The ONE thing pony cars are meant to do, a family sedan does better, as one of the very many other things it does, which includes behaving well and cornering. There therefore is no point whatsoever any more to these classic pony cars.
Proof:
You have NO IDEA how fast I had to set my shutter speed for this shot, just so Nismo would show up as more than a blue blur.
Don't get me wrong; that's not to say that this car, or these cars, are worthless. They may be pointless, but I don't think they're worthless. I'm sure I don't need to point out the legions of fans these cars have all over the world. So much so you get distinct groups with... passionate rivalries between them, so much so that these cars have survived oil crises and recessions to still be with us today in genuinely impressive builds and guises, and even painstaking restomods. Looking through the livery design catalogues for the Challenger, I think I understood at least that these cars were to a generation older than me, what the Viper is to me: completely useless and unjustifiable, and nigh impossible to explain, but loved nonetheless.
And that's fine. But the Challenger, and other cars of its era, just don't speak to me at that level. These cars aren't for me. And it's okay to not know everything.
...I suppose.
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