Motors Who wants a new dodge challenger?

What makes you say this?

Nissan GTR is certainly quick enough without the weight loss but the plan in the V-Spec is to use carbon fibre to reduce the weight and give it more power at the same time giving it a better bhp per ton.

But the cars trick is not its accelration or outright pace which very few cars could beat it on anyway, its the cars cornering ability.

Nissan can handle its power fine also, they just say dont use the launch mode too many times which the people whove broke theres have done because its all theyve played with. Which is the same for any car that has a launch mode, if Nissan wanted to use it regularly they would of clearly labeled it. The main issue is the clutches for uprating power. Although 700bhp has already been achieved from a stock car running at higher boost on the turbos

 

I'd rather have the new Camaro than the new Challenger but the Challenger is a close 2nd

 

A production update: Dodge Challenger comprise 1 in 2 vehicle orders for all LX-platform Chrysler. It's quite popular, even when approaching Winter.

GT-R standard RHF55 turbines are rated for, as published, 540ps; however, since this is the same turbine as used in the GDB, the pair will propel the GT-R to 680ps without hesitation. The transmission is perfectly rated for the output and sustainable at said maximum boost. It's sensitive only to hard launches at full power--a vulnerability every car shares. The Viper was the one who got its act together with the newest generation as it suffered from massive understeer and rides totally mush in its first runs. If you're talking of track cars, the natural-breathing 911 derivatives are utterly unrivaled. The GT-R is heavy because of the electronics, extensive chassis stiffening, semi-auto 6-speed gearbox, and active AWD drivetrain. Bin them for a standard front-mid-engine rear-drive box and the four-seater GT-R is already the same weight as the Viper. And, if I'm not mistaken, the Viper needs a diet as it's ridiculously heavy for such a small wheelbase and being a roadster.

 

American attitude is more a matter of displacement and exhaust notes, rather than handling like sh**. The viper ACR and the Corvette ZR01 seem to be proof of the fact that, with clever tweaking, one CAN actually control all that power.
And i KNOW that european engineers would get WAY more juice out of a 8.odd litre V10... but they would never build one... It's an attitude thing that the europeans can't seem to get right.
That "Look at me... i might be a poser, but my car has more displacement than yours has a boot" thing...

 

Anyone see it on Top Gear last night? It does look wonderful!

Shame Hammond didn't mention anything about there being a manual option!

 

Nope... sadly not...TopGear is still on Season 10 on local TV, and my *cough* OTHER *cough* sources tend to wait until the season is done before sharing...

 

BentAnat:
http://www.finalgear.com/shows/topgear/12/2/

Just for you

And mother-goose, i completely agree, i want one, and i want it now.

Just love hammonds, 'i feel cooler already, look im chewing gum!'

Gutted they only had an auto Such a lovely looking car, blows my mind away the hundreds of horse power the american muscle cars put out, and there's jeremey before hand driving round a poxy 160bhp fiat 500.

 

Thanks, stickeh.
I forwarded the link to my torrenting friends... over 3G it's too expensive (300,- an episode... that's enough to buy a PC game), and if i d/l that at work, the d/l will never finish before i get fired...

 

I think you just answered your own comment....they wont build a 8l V10 because they dont need to.

Although the brits have done it on pure displacment and power look at the TVR Cerbera Speed 12 7.3l V12 producing 800bhp capable of about 1000bhp though.

1/4 mile: 9.0 seconds at 155 mph

Or for huge displacement you can always look for John Dodds Rolls Royce Merlin car with a 27litre V12

Or the good old 6.3l V8 mercs

But american and brit tastes are very different I mean look at Aerial atoms and Caterhams which are very popular here which are basically a roll cage and some of the fastest accelration money can buy like the Caterham Levante which I started earlier produces 1074bhp/ton which is insane.

Love being a brit eccentric cars Cheesecake lol

 

American muscle has character that the British may never understand. Perhaps, the closest you lot can be to raw power is the one-off VIP-muscle-kind-of-thing V8 Vantage. Not all American cars handle poorly. Coupe-for-coupe, they're right on par with what few cars the British design or produce at all--and you can't substitute German performance coupes and executive class saloons for your lack thereof. If we take a look at the entry-level and mid-level cars, the Americans and Canadians drive far faster cars than you: your diesel Civic and has nothing on the Civic we get here and your BMW sedans are a complete joke. You praise your intelligently-appointed, torquey high-comp diesels and small cars, but circuits aren't connected downtown city blocks and you would wash out in the corners if you wanted to bump up your power to compete with the Americans on the straights since your wheelbases won't take any more. American cars are big, but not always slushy. They've got the chassis stiffness and suspension geometry to make for better hard-hitters on the circuits than the typical sporty UK car. The Brits make much smarter use of the space in a car, but does not mean you are fast when you plunk in a high-revving DOHC into the hatchback because you've still, in principle and in application, maximized economy over body rigidity.

Besides, I don't think anybody can really keep up with the Krauts and Japs, anyway. We'll let them do their thing and, if we're lucky, they might give a piss about the rest of us drivers.

 

YES... TVR...
IMO, TVR's are (were) the last of the REAL supercars.
Performance that'll make them run with any Lambo/Ferrari, but none of the political correctness that most european cars seem to have these days. Styling that's so over the top that it borders on the perverse, Noisy enough to make ears bleed (i heard and saw a sagaris while i was in SA the other day - WOW do they sound good).
Just simply unapologetic. The unreliability (to quote Top Gear here "... A TVR band at the launch? If they're anything like the car, they'll play very loudly, very fast, and then burst into flames...") is part of that incorrectness.

Mind i consider myself a petrol head. I love most [sports] cars (and most of those i don't love i can respect *cough*BMW*cough*): Lotus, Lambo, Corvette, Mustang, Nissan GTR, etc...
I just don't think that a lotus and a challenger play the same game (nevermind the ballpark)...

American cars have brute force. Nevermind that (unfortunately) the majority can't corner. It's not about that.
Little Lotus have the art of handling down to an art form (*cough* Nissan GTR setup was done by lotus, AFAIK), but they lack displacement.
Ferrari has the upper class performance, the attitude, but not the styling. And they're too PC.
Lambo is less PC, more shouty, but still, somewhat polite... and there's hip-hop songs written about them... tssssk.
Aston Martin has the styling (wow), and sounds good, but just isn't as fast or as brutal.
Audi doesn't have the styling or the attitude (save the R8, which has the styling), but they do have the numbers about right, and they handle well. The problem is that they're too ...well... german...
Nissan has the pure numbers right (with the GTR). Oh Boy are they right. However, where's the car's attitude? Where's that "you know what, i don't care" message.

and so the list goes on...

 

Exactly, the challenger looks like it has.....soul, if you know what I mean?

 

EXACTLY.
And that's why i'd want one... same reason i'd want a Viper, or a vintage Corvette.

 

I find the simpler days of motoring with simpler sports cars were the golden age. 1980-1995 about does it for me. On the flipside, this new Challenger should have been offered a little more naked to suit the purists: no traction or stability management computers, no air conditioning, FRP bonnet/bumpers/boot/wing, thicker tiebars, brake ducting, lighter 5-speed box, 1- or 1.5-way Torsen LSD, and softer rear coils for the now-lightened frame. Not only would it have retained more of the character of the classic Charger such as squatting under acceleration and basic necessities, but it would be a much punchier car without diluting its essence with today's mish mash ********.

 

Well lets see. 600hp 8L engine in the viper correct? Not bad. 600hp is 600hp no matter how you cut it. The acr is just a handling pack for the viper. It has plenty of room to grow. No tcs and only aid being ABS. Sounds good to me.

Corvette, 638hp, 6.2L, not bad either. This is in street trim. All comforts of home.

Now lets put all 3 cars against each other.

Launch corvette how hard you wish. The trans is built to take the power it makes.
Launch the viper as hard as you wish, again its built to take the power. The viper transmissions have been known to take more than 1600hp.

Launch the nissan too hard and it says ouch. Fine engineering that.

The issue remains, nissan built a nice grenade of a car with a spybox built in. NICE. Big brother is always watching. The again GM put in a black box in the corvette too, but they need a court order to even look at the data, even then you can say no.

No matter how anyone slices it, both 900lb gorilla's wearing a tux are built and designed in the US and run the green hell faster than the gtr did. Porsche keeps claiming bs over gtr times, but does not say anything about the viper and the vette. Seems interesting to me.

As for its weight being because electronics, thats pure BS electronics make a car lighter than a car that relis on mechanical parts. The AWD system maybe packs on weight but the likes of Subaru and Mitsubishi don't seem to weigh nearly as much as the GTR.

 

JaguarKing makes a good point above, not in the respect of what he's talking about (thats fine too but thas not the point I'm making). It highlights the differnce in what Europeans and Americans look for in a cars performance.

Us Europeans like pretty rapid acceleration but what we think of as a fast car is something that can corner at stupid speeds, limitless amounts of grip etc. It's why everyone quotes 'ring times in their advertising blurb.

Where as in the states (from my limited exposure, so this is just an observation) they quote the standing 1/4 mile figures, something there you'd use a launch control system. The GTR is designed more for demanding twisty roads, something where you wouldn't probably use the launch control system but you would use it's monster grip and massive power, just like the BMW M cars.

However the Merc AMG's (especially the black editions) subsribe to the American philosophy more, they put big thumping V8's under the hood and they produce cars that will kick it's ass out going around a corner (which is why they are popular over in europe because most cars are designed not to do that, AMG's trick is they do AND they still handle).

I still want that Challenger RT with a Manual and LSD though, big time.

 

The STi and Evolution have much different electronic dependencies than the GT-R. Consider that the GT-R uses fully active drivetrain and suspension components. That means there is a computer-actuated centre multi-clutch differential as well as active front and rear 3-way torque splitters and computer-controlled fluid damper rates. GDB and CT9A Impreza and Lancer used much simpler, but less accurate, torque-distributing mechanisms; and even though the Lancer was computer-aided, it was still always heavier than the Impreza because of that. Furthermore, the modern STi and Evolution are significantly heavier than the prior generation not only because of, like the GT-R, more advanced computer-controlled mechanisms, but because of larger, more rigid frames filled with larger, heavier components.

I already know that the electronics substitute what would have been heavier mechanical functions, but they entail their own burden of weight if more computers and their sensors are installed to monitor more components of the car--brakes, engine components, cooling, transmission, and even aero is active. But--this is the critical reasoning--bear in mind that the purpose of computers is to improve precision, not reduce weight by substitution. Nissan's pursuit, here, is extracting the maximum out of the car with limited resources. Those resources are: reduced power, mild downforce, realistic road tire spec, roadworthy comfort margins, typically basic driver skill. About the gearbox: GETRAG or not, no semi-automatic transmission will withstand that type of launch on a repeated basis. I don't figure that launch would ever be legitimately used except once at the start of a race. Substitute it with a big clutch manual box with lots of synchros solely for the sake of repeating such impossibly pointless drop-clutch launches, and it would invalidate its 'ease-of-use' engineering principle: reserved for the dexterous drivers, slower shift times, diverts attention from holding the wheel firmly (almost impossible to shift while executing turns).

I don't argue that I agree with--or even offer a defense for--Nissan's methods for the GT-R, (I really hate the car, in fact; it's utterly despicable to me.) but it is a car that plays both roles of mild-mannered road car and accomplished track car very well (345mm rear tires on the base Viper; really still a road car?). This is why it has garnered much attention and respect.

I don't know what Mercedes-Benz has done to improve this for their MY'08 AMG cars, but they were always just a bunch of lux sleds with enormous engines and their related components. The frame and chassis were completely unchanged--frame rigidity and, by extension, translation of energy across suspensions were comparable to mashed potato. They 'handled well' and hugged corners because of big tires and stiff coil rates, neither of which do anything to improve the initial turn-in and stability over surface undulations.

 

Lets put it this way. Here is another example of poor engineering. The trans in a stock mustang gt is rated at around 400lb of torque. Out the box the auto shifts slowly and comfortably. Simply retuning the ecu makes the trans shift like a bat out of hell. It will chirp tires with a nearly stock engine in both second and third gear. And get this it still maintains stock comfort.

Thats basically a 5speed auto with a tweak. The corvette has a much stronger auto trans out the box. The trans has been proven at the track with more than 600lb of torque launch after launch. It can have paddle shifters as well.

Point made, they put a weak spot in the car. The trans is not up to snuff with the stock engine, the vspec if it retains that trans then it will be serious bottle neck and in serious truble.

The gtr quoted time is a certain acel rate advertised. But they advertise it with launch control on, but launch control will void your warranty. Bad idea to me. No other manufacturer gives you a self destruct button on a car. If nissan want to take out launch control and advertise their 0-60 in over 4 seconds then they can honor their warranty.

 

Nissan have stated on numerous occasions that the 0-60 time is 3.5 seconds without launch control and Nissan didnt even tell anyone there was launch control, it was only when everyone started using it that they said dont. It wasnt meant to of been used from the start!!

Although with launch control drops this and edmonds a US site found it was quicker than the Dodge Viper, Corvette Z01 and Z06 and thats on US 91 octane fuel not the 102 RON jungle juice we have over here. Lets not forget the gearbox does a shift in 0.1 seconds.

Finally they didnt give it a self destruct button I'd say they hid it pretty well considering you have to fanny about with all the buttons in the car to get it to work.

 

FYI, the octane rating in Europe is different from the stuff in the us. 93 octane here is equivalent to the highest rating the Europeans pour in their tank at a regular gas station, US rating is typically 9-10 points lower that the equivalent euro stuff. 102ron ~ 93octane here. Witch is widely available around the country except California.

However the e85 we sell here is quite more pungent due to it being 85% ethanol and has a much higher rating and is equivalent to roughly race gasoline witch is 105octane (~115ron).

as for the gtr running 0-60 faster, that is true and that is with the launch control however the zr1 does it in 3.4seconds as tested vs 3.3seconds with launch control gtr. The zo6 is rated at 3.9seconds 0-60 however. No shady math here, and nissan does not even advertise the 0-60 on the1r US gtr page.

in any case, point taken.

here is an article to fuel rating if that tickles your fancy.
http://www.answers.com/topic/octane-rating-1