Dodge Charger Daytona. Credit: Stellantis

Dodge Charger Daytona Starts At $59,595 With Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust System

August 8, 20245 months ago Steve Hanley 0 Comments

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Dodge used to be a full line car company, but now it only makes muscle cars for those who feel the need for speed in a very special way. Dodge is part of the Stellantis global empire, which has been developing a battery-electric chassis called STLA Large. The 400 volt architecture will form the basis for a number of vehicles from Dodge, Ram, and Jeep, including the all new Dodge Charger Daytona, an electric car with two 250 kW (335 hp) electric motors, one driving the front wheels and the other powering the rear wheels.

The Charger Daytona name harks back to several iconic muscle cars from Dodge, but there has been quite a lot of fudging of the branding going into the new EV era. Early on, the Dodge Charger was a 2-door coupe and the Dodge Challenger was a 4-door sedan. Then in the last decade, Dodge swapped the names around for reasons no one outside the company’s marketing department seems to understand. Now the new Charger Daytona electric car from Dodge will be built as both a 2-door and a 4-door at the company’s factory in Windsor, Ontario. The 2-door version is set to debut soon, and the 4-door car is scheduled for production sometime next year.

Performance-wise, the Dodge Charger Daytona should be a screamer. The optional Scat Pack — a name applied to performance versions of Dodge cars beginning in the 1960s — bolts two 335 horsepower electric motors into the chassis. Thanks to a battery pack that puts out up to 550 kW of power from its NCA prismatic cells, the Scat Pack can blast to 60 mph in a mere 3.3 seconds and do the quarter mile in 11.5 seconds. That is some serious hustle! According to Dodge, a special mode also prepares the battery for the best possible sprint time in the quarter mile.

The Charger Daytona can be charged from 20 to 80% in 27 minutes, corresponding to an average charging rate of 133 kW. (That is a metric we would like to see more manufacturers include in their specs.) The range of the Charger Daytona R/T is listed as 317 miles. For the Scat Pack, it is 260 miles. Those numbers translate to 510 and 418 kilometers, respectively.

Dodge Charger Daytona Prices

So how much does all this goodness cost? The base price is $59,595 plus a $1995 “transfer fee.” Dodge says the cars qualify for the full federal tax credit if they are leased. That raised a few eyebrows at the CleanTechnica test track, as we thought the upper limit on sedans was $55,000, but apparently the lease exception — which is big enough to drive a truck through, or a Charger Daytona in this case — makes most of the restrictions baked into the Inflation Reduction Act disappear. That is some magic eraser the Biden administration found!

The Scat Pack starts at $73,190 plus that transfer fee. Dodge also mentions optional packages such as a “Plus Package” with leather seats and a head-up display for an additional $4,995, or a “Sun and Sound Package” with a full glass roof and Alpine Pro audio system for an extra $1,095.

Thanks to the miracle of electronics, the Dodge Charger Daytona offers the driver a blizzard of driving modes to choose from — Auto, Eco, Sport, and Wet/Snow. The car also offers a Drag and a Track mode. The Track mode ensures maximum vehicle performance on smooth, dry surfaces while the Drag mode, which is intended for use on a closed drag strip, ensures optimum drag strip start and straight line acceleration. There are also functions such as a Drift mode and a Donut mode. What would life be without the ability to drift and do donuts, especially if someone else is paying for your tires?

Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust System Is A Feast For The Ears

Those of us who drive electric cars know they are eerily quiet. Muscle cars, traditionally, are bellowing beast. How to solve the contradiction? Say hello to the Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust System (patent pending). Dodge says the system “uses two passive radiators to create a unique exhaust profile with Hellcat levels of sound intensity that shatters the preconception of a typical quiet BEV and instead delivers a sound worthy of the Brotherhood of Muscle.”

That’s some great marketing hype, but what does it all mean? Autoblog has more.

“Trained ears and software programmers at Dodge have been working on the automaker’s Fratzonic Exhaust Dodge for more than two years now. The first version we heard from two years ago sounded too electric, the second draft from a year ago injected a few notes of necessary muscle. Now, more than a year later, we’re getting a taste of the third arrangement.

“This one is a lot closer to genuine muscle. Dodge ran a Charger Daytona through a tunnel to start the sample — getting an acoustic assist in the process — but even after the underpass, that ICE cadence of perfectly timed explosions rings clear. We don’t know what happened between the second take and this one. To our ears, this sounds remarkably close to a recording of a V8, although Dodge previously said that isn’t how they’d use the system.

“The Fratzonic Exhaust is basically a speaker driver with a tuned box and dual ]passive radiators.’ which are speaker cones without drivers. In situations where space is an issue, these so-called ‘drone cones’ work off of sound pressure in the enclosure and help create deeper pitches. Dodge claims the mechanical combination and tuning lets the Charger Daytona hit the same 126 dB exhaust level as the gas engined Hellcat models.

“The team at Dodge has created unique sounds for each electric powertrain level that involve familiar notes and the cadence of a V8. Also, each powertrain will offer multiple sounds for each vehicle, the volume and tone varying based on the drive mode selected. Dodge also confirmed owners will be able to ‘rev’ the Charger Daytona at a stop, adding to the old school performance feeling.”

Be still, my beating heart.

But Wait, There’s More!

Even with a fratzonic exhaust, not every Dodge fan will want an electric car. Fear not, octane-breath. The STLA Large platform is engineered to accept infernal combustion engines as well. The Dodge Charger Six Pack will be powered by a 3.0 liter twin turbocharged 6-cylinder engine in two power levels. It most definitely is not your grandfather’s Slant Six.

“The future of the Dodge brand launches with a two model 2024 Dodge Charger Daytona two door lineup that looks, drives, sounds and feels like a Dodge, outperforming the legendary models they replace, and delivering the experience the Dodge Brotherhood of Muscle expects,” said Matt McAlear, the Dodge brand chief executive at Stellantis. “And we are just getting started. Four door Charger Daytona models, along with the 550 horsepower Dodge Charger Six Pack H.O. and the 420 horsepower Dodge Charger Six Pack S.O. fueled by the 3.0 L Twin Turbo Hurricane engine, are coming soon. The next generation of Dodge muscle cars has arrived, and they are flat out the best muscle cars ever made.”

Six Pack is another marketing strategy used by Dodge in the past. It applied to V-8 engine cars that featured three two barrel carburetors — one in the middle for normal driving and two more that would spring into action when the driver tromped on the loud pedal. Dodge has not announced prices for the gasoline-powered variants of the Charger Daytona yet. It will be interesting to see whether the market prefers electrons or molecules in its new generation of muscle cars from Dodge.