The New Dodge Charger Makes The Mustang Seem Tiny

The Chevrolet Camaro is gone. The Dodge Challenger is gone. That leaves the Ford Mustang all alone in the world of Detroit muscle cars. So it’s natural for people to label the new Dodge Charger as a Mustang rival. It’s available with two doors, essentially replacing the Challenger. Dodge calls it a muscle car, be it as the electric Charger Daytona or the combustion-powered Charger Sixpack coming next year. But if you compare the two side-by-side, you’ll understand they’re not really competitors.

The new Dodge Charger lives in a completely different zip code from the Mustang. It might even span two zip codes, because it’s only two inches shorter than a Mercedes-Benz S-Class. Parked side-by-side, you’d never notice the difference between them. And for the record, these numbers aren’t just for the four-door, but the two-door Charger, too. It’s huge.

 

We can’t remember the last time an American brand built such a sizable coupe. The Challenger never cracked 200 inches, nor the Chevrolet Monte Carlo when it retired in 2008. There isn’t a single 1990s coupe that gets close, but 1980s G-body cars (think Oldsmobile Cutlass and Buick Regal) from General Motors are approximately 200 inches. The Ford Thunderbird, Mercury Cougar, and Lincoln Mark VII from 1988 are closer at 202 inches, but we’re still coming up short.

In fact, the last American two-door car as big as the new Charger was a Ford Crown Victoria. Though rare, Ford offered the boxy Crown Vic in two-door trim through 1987. A quick check at the Ford Heritage Vault confirms it stretched 211 inches from nose to tail. 

Here’s a quick chart showing how the 2024 Charger Daytona stacks up to the Mustang and other vehicles of interest, both past and present.

If the Charger was a tad smaller, we might be tempted to call it a Mustang rival. But there’s also the issue of weight. The Charger Daytona comes it at nearly three tons, or about one and a half Mustangs with a little left over. To be fair, we don’t yet know how much the gas-powered Charger Sixpack will weigh. But it still dwarfs the Mustang in a direct size comparison.

We asked Dodge for some guidance on Charger competitors, but the company declined to comment. An official angle will come closer to the Charger Daytona’s on-sale date later this year, but we can tell you the automaker benchmarked the Camaro and Porsche Taycan (among others) during the Charger’s development. So while there’s a bit of pony car influence baked into the recipe, it’s certainly not a Mustang competitor. If anything, we’d say the new Charger is in a class all by itself.

Did we miss any big two-door cars in this quest for some Charger competition? Jump into the comments and let us have it.