It’s the end of an era for two muscle-car nameplates with rich heritage in the gas-powered era. The 2023 Dodge Challenger and 2023 Charger will be the last cars with those names to rely on ICE propulsion, and to commemorate the send-off into the EV era, Dodge will offer a brace of new versions, paint colors, and uprated models.
A Challenger Convertible will be offered through dealer channels, though it will be custom-built by outside suppliers. Dodge will also resurrect its Durango Hellcat SUV for one more model year, when initially it had said the vehicle would only be sold for a single model year.
In all, seven new special editions will be offered in the 2023 model year. Dodge teases them as tributes to models from the brand’s muscle-car past—and though it hasn’t detailed all of them yet, it does say that the “buzz” models will go to dealers as a bonus allocation after initial allocations sell out. Customers will be able to check DodgeGarage.com for availability of the buzz models, and the likelihood of dealer markups on the rarest of the rare Chargers and Challengers seems to be a sure thing. One of the seven buzz models will be revealed at the aftermarket and tuner SEMA show in Las Vegas in the fall—and Dodge won’t even talk about except to say that it will “make Brampton really proud.”
Stellantis’ Brampton, Ontario, assembly plant builds the Charger and Challenger. When their production ends, the plant will undergo a significant upgrade to accommodate a new generation of as-yet-unnamed vehicles.
2023 Dodge Charger and Challenger Last Call
Aside from the special edition models, the 2023 Charger and Challenger also will get revived heritage paint choices, including Sublime green, Plum Crazy purple, and B5 Blue; each vehicle also gets a “Last Call” plaque under its hood. The SRT Jailbreak package will be applied to the Charger and Challenger Hellcat. This package allows buyers to customize everything from paint color to stripes and decals to seat belts to wheels, exhaust tips, spoilers, and interior trim.
Charger and Challenger R/T models also get a “345” fender badge to denote their 345-cubic-inch V-8 engine.
The Charger and Challenger have been updated but not completely overhauled in their decade-plus in production. The Charger was new in 2005; the Challenger, in 2007.
Stellantis, the parent company of the Dodge brand as well as Chrysler, Jeep, and Ram, has confirmed on multiple occasions that the replacements for the Charger and Challenger will be electric vehicles based on a new large-car global architecture that will be sold with rear- and all-wheel-drive variants.