Dodge seeking your input...

[Back N Black]

You guys crack me up!, getting all irritate to some guys first post. Just hoping maybe, that this guy is someone that actually will be able to make a change.

whos irritates?

I'm sorry Krayon, did i spell that wrong? 

[Nacho-RT74]

and I like Station Wagon Magnum too ( the real Magnum, not the Chagnum, although also the 78 Magnum )

Ok skip... even you are right, why not give the chance ?. For some years we have acclaimed Dodge didn't hear us when the new Charger came out, and NOW that "apparently" there is an open communication way... why not ?

[71ChallengeHer]

How about Dodge actually being at Chryslers at Carlisle this year. Maybe they should try being at the NHRA drag races too. I went to Maple Grove this summer. No Dodge or Mopar stands anywhere.  So I bought a John Force t-shirt instead of Mopar.

[Smokey Bear]

I'm not trying to be flip, but what I would like is the reliability and solid engineering of a Honda. My last two brand new Mopar's were both lemons (1995 and 2007), the first I was stuck with and lost my shorts on, and the second returned to Chrysler and they lost their shorts on.  Maybe I'm just unlucky, but consumer reporting certainly indicates otherwise.

Good luck on your quest. 

[TeeWJay426]

First of all, change the name of the 'Charger' to Intrepid, since that's what it replaced, and it has absolutely nothing in common with the original from 66 to 74.
Next, make the Challenger actually competitive with the Mustang & Camaro....... (ie, offer a convertible and lower the price by 10K$)
Lastly, offer a incensing agreement that is favorable to the enthusiast of the older Chrysler products for replacement/repro parts that we actually want and will buy if they hit the market.

Personally, I think this is too little too late..... the boat has already been missed for finding out what the old school Chrysler fan wants to see from a modern Chrysler. The OLD Chrysler is long gone and doesn't give a s**t what the loyal Chrysler fans of old want to see, and the ownership of what is left of what we once loved is so diluted that we won't have a voice that matters anymore.

[Cooter]

Ok "Chrysler", You asked, here it comes....Coming from one who has to work on your stupid, idioticly designed Cab Forward vehicles with the damn windshield on the front bumpers, take a hint form the very people you claim are the "loyal" fan base you are so concerned with all of a sudden, but couldn't care less when you designed that abortion of a 4dr Charger.... You have minivans for families, leave the musclecars to the guys that can get in, sit down, shut up and hold on...Why is it you put a "Teaser" vehicle out that looks GREAT, but when it comes to the real deal, it looks NOTHING like what was purposed for the Charger???  

The term musclecar means small to intermedate body with the most powerful engine available stuffed in it...Not Some over priced, jacked up Intrepid, with a rear billboard stripe....I guess Chrysler had to miss the mark with the Charger just like Pontiac missed it with that Honds Civic they are calling the new GTO....Said it was aimed at the BMW croud? WTF? Who the hell in a BMW croud wants to pull up in a musclecar? The musclecar guys were disliked by the BMW croud back in the day and not too much has changed..Why not make that 3000 LB "Stripper" with no engine/trans and 6 cylinder rear suspension available to the PUBLIC instead of a few Rich "Race Teams"? History repeating itself all over again...First Herb McCandless and a Hand full more get factory backing and when the factory pulls out, all the left overs get them started in their own businesses selling Race parts...Again, Why are the new Challengers costing so much? Why is there even an MSRP, if the damn thing is gonna cost the average "Joe" $60K?....What happened to the days of the REAL Chrysler Corp.? When you could walk into a dealer show room and if you had the Coin, you could order a Dodge Bus with a 426 HEMI??? Why is it nowadays, you gotta buy all this extra sh*t you don't want/need? Like a "Package" Upgrade to get the bigger engine? What happened to the days of ordering a 6 Cyl. body and dumping a 426 Hemi in it from the factory? Heater delete? Radio Delete? Back seat Delete? What happened to listening to what the customer wants instead of what you sell the most of? I guess it'll all be over soon enough when Fiat owns Chrysler...I'll stick with MY kinda Mopar...The "REAL" Musclecars...Ok, Rant over....Chrysler, Doesn't give a good damn what the "Fans" think, all they want to know is, is there a market for the new cars coming out, and how well liked are they...Why is it Chrysler spent 30 years telling us what we want, but as soon as they are out of cash, they want to know what we want?

[skip68]

    Well said Cooter.    You are paying for all the BULLSH*$  like 13 speakers, power seats, navigation, ect. ect. ect. ect. ect. ect. ect. ect. ect. ect. ect. ect...........   That's all good for top of the line cars and some middle of the road ones.  BUT, why not make a "power package" for the car guy ?       No frills, basic car with lots of motor at a good price.      Now your talking sales.   

[FastbackJon]

I know a lot of times I won't read a lengthy run-on long paragraph response, so I'll make mine short and sweet.

How about a new Charger with the styling of the original 1966.

2 doors.
Similar proportions.
Hardtop (no pillars or fixed quarter windows).
Fastback
Similar cargo area.
Four bucket seats.
Hidden headlights.
Full-width taillights.
Chrome.
Good muscular engine choices (similar to current Challenger)

And then if you can keep the dealers from marking them up $10,000...

[loudmouthaussie]

Scott A couple of things you now have to look at the world market to survive in other words design all cars so they can be easily configured for right hand drive most of the expense is in the dash area, design it so the centre stays the same and you can swap around the outer sides, mirror image to an effect.If that is to hard just get the Chrysler 300 right hand dash  and stick those in the export cars to save money.
Now if you walk down any Australian street you will see plenty of four door family cars V8 and plenty of them Fords and Holdens.We love high horsepower V8, bring us the charger even with four doors because it will sell as long as it comes here with the big engine. I am sick of hearing in Australia if the charger was here it would take away the Chrysler 300 sales. What a load of rubbish i would never drive a 300 but i would drive the charger.
For other right hand drive countries where the Charger name doesn't have heritage you can always re badge them in those countries call them something else.
Our arms would be open for the Challenger as well.
Welcome Scott your going to have some fun and its good PR for you and Dodge.

was chatting to a bloke whos converting challengers downunder (or trying to). only reason we dont have em is coz UK said "no". bummer. lookin at 100K+ when they are ready. its def. not a 100K car imho

[b5blue]

I'd be happy with "Scat Pack" stickers. 

[68charger383]

I live in Los Angeles and drive 30K a year for work. I rarely see any challengers out here. You need to cut the prices to at least compete with mustang & camaros.

$45K for an SRT when a camaro SS is $36K and a mustang GT is $28K means I'm probably going to buy one of those cars.

I like the free car vehicle giveaway idea as well.

[Ghoste]

You guys are wasting your time.  It is just like stripedelete mentioned, Scott works for a company that is a marketing subcontractor for automakers.  He may pay attention to your complaints so that he has an answer in case someone at Chrysler says, "gee, I can't for the life of me figure out how come consumers won't buy the products I've created", but the chances are slim.  He mostly wants your input on the type of events where you feel Chrysler should be participating and what is more likely to make you leave said event feeling all warm and fuzzy about buying a new Dodge minivan or whatever.  Would you like a free pentastar shaped hot dog at the Mopar Nationals or should they hand out t-shirts at the Woodward Dream Cruise with a picture of the 2010 Charger on it?

All that being said, I think Dodge should continue to make their presence known at motorsports events but with a greater emphasis on sportsman racing.  The NASCAR sopa opera may get a lot of tv coverage but I personally don't think it has much effect anymore on buying habits.  Dirt track racers and bracket drag racers on the other hand very much defend their brand of choice and carry the flag.  The other Mopar events are pretty much on track but some free stickers or something would be nice.  They used to give things out but anymore when I see a Mopar display at an event, they just have some static displays of Crate Hemis and no one around who knows a single damned thing about any of the products on display.  Would it be fair to guess that none of the people manning the event display trailers actually work for Dodge and therefore have no knowledge of the brand they are representing??  Hmmmmmm?
That's the only that pops quickly into my head to help your company Scott.  As for helping Chrysler, that answer lies in the responses of everyone here.  If you do actually get a chance to tell someone in Chrysler marketing what people want, it should be clear that their so called "captive customers" are sick of seeing the heritage ignored and having their opinions rebuffed by Chrysler.  The customers you need to win over are going to have to be fought for at the dealer level and a lot of dealers just do NOT get that.  Instead of closing dealerships, you should be expanding them and gaining better control over the way they do business.  Get them to quit gouging the customer at purchase and trying to weasel their way out of warranty repairs after purchase.

[BigBlackDodge]

Does anyone have an email for someone at Chrysler, maybe send them a link to this. I know it's wishful thinking, but there's alot of good ideas being posted. If Chrysler really wanted to know what the brand faithful think, this is a good indication.


BBD

[SFRT]

I won't be buying a new Dodge for any reason. I am more than happy with my '69.

I wanted a new Challenger, and would have bought it except..here's my experience...

went to the largest Dodge dealer in the Bay Area...specifically to check out a Challenger.

They had exactly ONE crappy auto base model in an ugly color.

this is the largest dealership..where was the killer top of the line ones? the one I wanted to buy? The hemi with a manual transmission and all the bells and whistles? how can I commit to buying a car when there isnt even one there to look at? I do not want to buy a car based on a brochure. Guy at the dealership wasnt very helpful either.

then I went over to the Nissan dealer and they had ALL their top of the line cars there and the guy let me mess around with the new super-badassed GTR for as long as I wanted to.

get a clue.

[skip68]

This is what I was talking about!

[skip68]

This is what I was talking about!

There are better pictures of this car but it has the look of a sports/muscle car of today.  Some may not like it just like some don't like the 68 Charger and love the 67 Chargers.  BUT, we can all agree that this car was a step in the right direction.  Then you look at what the Charger ended up as and wonder WTF.  
I think I saw this car at a SEMA show years ago and was thinking "sweet"....
   The site I got this picture from had several concept cars of the new Charger and they all had some of the 68-70 styling that made this car so popular.

It really makes me wonder that with all the effort that was made to make these concept Chargers, (and all had some touch of the old ones) What the hell happened ?

It can't be tooling cost because they went out on a limb with the Viper.  That was a car that was only going to have so many buyers and not the average joe.  So looking at it like that, it would have a limited production number V's the Charger that would sell by the truck load.  

[Old Moparz]

I can't think of anything I need, or what I'd like to see on the car show circuit from Dodge, I'm all set with the website sticker that Troy gave me at Carlisle this past summer.


I would however, bet that forums like this one, other websites, clubs, vendors, & such, would like Dodge showing some loyalty to their customers & fans by offsetting the costs associated with major national events & shows. Cover some of the fees like club tent rentals, banners, & group admission fees. It'll go a lot further than seeing giant inflatable Dodge emblems roped down to stakes in the lawn next to show cars that won't be built or that people can't afford.

[THE STIG]

Holy Crap, to come to this site and ask this group "What can the current Dodge do better?" is kinda like asking Hitler "What do you have against the Jews?" So now it's my turn. I agree with the majority on most of the issues, dealerships suck, cross hair grills, the re-badged 300M that soils the reputation of our classics by being called Charger, etc. But I have a few issues I don't think have come up yet. I'll start small at first let's look at the current Dodge logo it's a Ram head and it's stuck on every Dodge model. So your flag ship model is a big truck, and you can't figure out why your not selling cars.  Next is fuel economy now when my 70 Charger was new gas was like a nickel a gallon or somthing like that (I don't know I was'nt born until 10 years later) so nobody gave a damn about about MPG, but times have changed a bit yet Chrysler has not. The LS1 Camaros/Trans Ams are capable of nearly 30 MPG (Dodge can't get that from a V6) yet can still pull the door off of a new Challenger. In short the Chryslar Corporation has'nt been the same since the first gas crisis of the early 70's, they went bankrupt and Iacocca took over and to his credit he saved the company but in doing so he sold it's soul, then came the train wreck that was the Daimler merger. The last point I'll make is that I've seen the rebadged 300Ms being used as Police cars, this is an absolute abomination Chargers are the anti-cop cars, think about it every movie or TV show featuring a Dodge Charger (Dukes, Dirty Marry, Vanising Point '97,The Simpsons, Fast and Furious, Bullet, etc.) the car is driven either by the Antagonist or a Protagonist working outside of the law, so how did we go from being the the car of the Dukes to the car of Roscoe P. Coultrain?

[DodgeChargerNeeded]

I have a question this guy comes in signs up on this site and riles everybody with this thread, makes 2 posts and disappears. Is he for real or just somebody having a little fun with us.

[Ghoste]

His links seem to indicate he's a real person but I don't think he has a tremendous amount to do with Chrysler.  He works for a promotional firm that Dodge has apparently used to introduce the new Challenger and my guess is he's looking for ideas from us that can be used to make a pitch for continued business from Dodge.  Reading about our gripes is most likely waaaaaaaaaaaay down on his list of fun things to do.

[elacruze]

No worries on being blunt.  That is what I expect and appreciate. 

This is great content.  That's right, I said GREAT!  Whether you think Dodge wants to hear it or not, post it.  Nothing gets brushed under the rug by me. 

Where are you now?

If you don't stay involved, things will turn ugly. People will question your commitment, credibility and veracity.

Perhaps even accuse you of being a disinterested shill.

[Khyron]

Who is your daddy and what does he do?

[Smokey Bear]

Where are you now?

If you don't stay involved, things will turn ugly. People will question your commitment, credibility and veracity.

Perhaps even accuse you of being a disinterested shill.

Perhaps it has sunk in that 95% of Chrysler's old customer base no longer exists. There is a certain point where you just can't woo people back.... you know, like after 20 years of crappy cars (with a few exceptions).

[70charginglizard]

I gave up talking about this subject long ago....whats the point. No one is listening anyway and if you show your opinion you seem to get nothing but a dead horse beating so I'll leave it at that.

[Nitrox]

This is what I was talking about!

That concept was cool back then. Now its fatigued. It looks like an Avenger or a Stratus. Cool, but already done.

Dodge, just make a muscle car tht looks like its going to kill somebody. Easy as that. And make it affordble so we can afford to buy the damn thing.