Modern Muscle with Room for the Kids: Mom's Hot-Rodded Charger Scat Pack
It might seem strange today, but when Dodge first debuted the reborn Charger back in the mid-2000s, there was a lot of controversy and criticism about them taking the historic, beloved Charger nameplate and slapping it on a four-door sedan.
Never mind the soft, bloated luxury coupe that wore the Charger name in the late 1970s, or the front-drive four-cylinder Dodge Charger compact hatchback in the 1980s. A lot purists and hardcore Mopar fans didn’t like the idea of four-door Charger. Even if it had a rear-wheel-drive and a Hemi V8 under the hood.
A Muscle Car with Space
Today, almost 20 years later, the modern Charger sedan has become one of America’s most prolific performance cars, not in spite of being a four-door sedan but because it’s a spacious family car.
By the mid-2010s, when Dodge started dropping extra-hot Scat Pack and Hellcat versions, the Charger had become one of the coolest daily drivers money could buy. It was a bonafide muscle car you could drive every day while hauling whatever you needed.
Nitto Pit Crew member Tani Lacombe is one of those people who was won over by the Charger’s combination of everyday practicality and muscle car thrills.
After spending her childhood watching her parents race their muscle cars on the drag strips of Southern California, Tani had always had a yearning for a modern muscle car of her own.
Family Fun
There was a problem though. She needed a daily driver. And as a mother of three, there was simply no way a Mustang, Camaro or Challenger was going to handle three kids, their car seats, and all of the stuff that comes with having a family.
Fortunately, this is exactly the kind of person the Dodge Charger was built for. And so it was a bit of no-brainer decision that Tani became the proud owner of a 2019 Charger Scat Pack.
Although bone stock when she acquired it, the Charger has since seen some upgrades to help it stand out even more on the road and to be that much more fun while hauling the kids around.
Let the Mods Begin
Air ride suspension gives the big Dodge an aggressive stance that can be altered on the fly, and a set of staggered 20-inch RSR R904 wheels fill up the Charger’s fenders nicely.
Matched with the wheels are a set of Nitto NT555 G2 tires 275/40/R20 in the front and 315/35/R20 in the rear. The G2 is an ideal choice for Tani’s mixture of daily driving and weekend fun.
Complimenting the air ride and wheels and are some subtle exterior upgrades, like a ZL1 Addons front splitter and side skirts, KNG Motorsports rear diffuser, and a Downforce Solutions wicker bill.
Although it sounds quite nice out of the box, the Scat Pack’s 6.4L, 485 horsepower Hemi V8 has been enhanced aurally with a mid-muffler delete and a set of Carven exhaust tips to set things off.
Last but not least are some dress-up parts for the cabin, including carbon fiber overlays for the dash and steering wheel, along with accent lighting, and most recently a new aftermarket shifter from Barton.
Every Day Hemi
As for what’s next, Tani says the next area to upgrade is the engine bay — not just with some cosmetic billet parts, but also with some engine parts as well, including a nice cam to further improve the 6.4’s power and sound.
In an alternate world where Dodge decided not to sell a genuine four-door muscle machine in the form of modern Charger, Tani would have been forced into buying a boring SUV, minivan or family sedan.
But thanks to Dodge ignoring the reluctant purists and building a legit four-door muscle sedan, Tani and so many others have been able to enjoy modern muscle every day without compromise.
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