quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
No doubt the E-Charger has a cool look, the Fratzatonic sound is strange, but, the future buyers will be into it, imagine being able to hack into the cars brain and change it from muscle car to a giant fart... yeah someones gonna do it...

You can already do that with Tesla. I have heard one sound exactly like George Jetson and another sound just like a cammed Hellcat.

Many companies already pipe in fake engine noises on their ICE vehicles to enhance the experience. This isn’t really any different and I’m sure you can turn it off if you like.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: 1s1k,

The electric exhaust noise maker on the concept car brings up something I have experienced in car buying. No matter how cool or well executed the vehicle may be, there always seems to be some weird or useless feature that someone thought up and stuck on the car or truck.
Examples:
On my Charger, the driver door opened so far that when you were seated normally in the seat, the door was out of reach. I had to lean way out of the car to grab the door to close it. I figured it was set up so fat cops could bail out of the car with all their gear on. When I took the car to the dealer and asked to have the door adjusted, I was met with doubt as whether or not that could happen. I just learned to live with it.
On the Challenger, it has "smart windows". When you activate the door handles, the glass drops down about an inch. Get in, close the door and the glass jumps back up. Last winter the glass often dropped, but ice would interfere with the jumping back up part. Which isnt smart at all. No one has been able to explain this feature to me. I plan to try to have this feature deactivated when I take the car in for service, but confidence is not high.
Now we have a high tech, sleek, high performance concept Charger which makes a fake noise!

^^^ Glass moves down an inch so as to allow the door to close without air pressurization.

Fords Mustang already plays engine noises in the cabin (not sure about the M-ache Mustang).

I wonder how well the electric Challenger would do in a race between it and a Ram 1500... team driven cross country.

quote:

Originally posted by Beancooker:

126 db speaker that makes ICE noises? If that’s the case, hard pass on that “option”.

Ya, but what if they designed a built in place to clip your duplicate baseball cards by the wheel spokes and had a microphone so you could make vroom vroom noises while twisting your right hand like there was a throttle pretending you had the real thing? You could also use it to say things like “Hey, good lookin! We’ll be back to pick you up latter!”

Fortunately, there are any number of manufacturers that have solutions for FENG in ICE vehicles. Borla for example. FENG - Fake Engine Noise Generator

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
The electric exhaust noise maker on the concept car brings up something I have experienced in car buying. No matter how cool or well executed the vehicle may be, there always seems to be some weird or useless feature that someone thought up and stuck on the car or truck.
Examples:
On my Charger, the driver door opened so far that when you were seated normally in the seat, the door was out of reach. I had to lean way out of the car to grab the door to close it. I figured it was set up so fat cops could bail out of the car with all their gear on. When I took the car to the dealer and asked to have the door adjusted, I was met with doubt as whether or not that could happen. I just learned to live with it.
On the Challenger, it has "smart windows". When you activate the door handles, the glass drops down about an inch. Get in, close the door and the glass jumps back up. Last winter the glass often dropped, but ice would interfere with the jumping back up part. Which isnt smart at all. No one has been able to explain this feature to me. I plan to try to have this feature deactivated when I take the car in for service, but confidence is not high.
Now we have a high tech, sleek, high performance concept Charger which makes a fake noise!

Many cars have smart windows that do that. It's so the door shuts the same way with the same effort every time. It keeps you from slamming the door to get it to seal good when the windows are up and the air pressure is "stuck" in their. With the window dropping a couple of inches there is no pressure inside the cabin and a normal shove will shut the door the same every time. The manufacturers started doing that when people wanted quiet cabins so the seals around each door/window became quite large to try and eliminate outside noise.

Whoops super sig beat me to it.

quote:

Originally posted by .38supersig:
I wonder how well the electric Challenger would do in a race between it and a Ram 1500... team driven cross country.

Who cares. I have never known a single person who has driven across the entire country in a pickup truck. Very few people do that in anything other than an RV these days and most of them are retired. Most people don't want to spend their whole vacation staring out the windshield of their car and would rather spend it at the destination.

quote:

Originally posted by 1s1k:
Most people don't want to spend their whole vacation staring out the windshield of their car and would rather spend it at the destination.

This is true which is why I drove 1,200 miles in 17 hours on 8/6 in my truck with one of my kids, the dog, 4 bicycles, 2 kayaks, fishing gear, guns, and suitcases towing the Sea-Doo. It was the 4th time I did that this year. We stopped for fuel 3 times. Twice in Georgia: Buc-ees in Dalton so we could could get through Atlanta, then at exit 16 in Valdosta so we could make the next 320 miles home.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
The electric exhaust noise maker on the concept car brings up something I have experienced in car buying. No matter how cool or well executed the vehicle may be, there always seems to be some weird or useless feature that someone thought up and stuck on the car or truck.
Examples:
On my Charger, the driver door opened so far that when you were seated normally in the seat, the door was out of reach. I had to lean way out of the car to grab the door to close it. I figured it was set up so fat cops could bail out of the car with all their gear on. When I took the car to the dealer and asked to have the door adjusted, I was met with doubt as whether or not that could happen. I just learned to live with it.
On the Challenger, it has "smart windows". When you activate the door handles, the glass drops down about an inch. Get in, close the door and the glass jumps back up. Last winter the glass often dropped, but ice would interfere with the jumping back up part. Which isnt smart at all. No one has been able to explain this feature to me. I plan to try to have this feature deactivated when I take the car in for service, but confidence is not high.
Now we have a high tech, sleek, high performance concept Charger which makes a fake noise!

Yeah. I thought the fake engine noise was the realm of the Ford Raptor.

For the record, my Cayman GTS apparently has some noise/air/vibration recirculation bullshit built in but it's not amplified. We knew that, but it's subtle and with the windows down it's clear that is enhancing but not replacing any part of the flat-6 chaos going on back there.

However we DID pass on the same generation M3 for this. What a weak pile of sneaky artificial noise bullshit. Take that to the outside in a Dodge fartcan? I'll take a Tesla first.

Thanks for the smart window explanation! When I asked at my dealer, everyone said they were not sure why the windows move!

I kinda wonder if this is the beginning of the end of the second American muscle car era?

Right now is a great time to be a fan of the V8. Dodge, Ford & Chevy are making some exquisite products. The current Mustang 5.0 GT makes as much power stock as the late 80’s early 90’s Mustang 5.0s I used to see extensively modified with nitrous and superchargers at Jenro’s in Virginia Beach every weekend when I was younger. I used to love hanging out there until some losers ruined a good thing.

Establishment associated with modified cars and car shows fined and encouraged to disassociate from the car scene


I’ve always loved the Challenger and Barracuda. The current Challenger in that odd shade of metallic green is really tempting. (This is coming from a HARDCORE Mustang fan)

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:
Coming to a police department near you:

That just hurts the soul. Growing up I'm pretty sure I dreamed about the roar of car engines not the whine...

Given all the electronics and lighting on the average patrol car, my guess is you would be lucky to get through half a shift with an EV.

quote:

Originally posted by stickman428:
I kinda wonder if this is the beginning of the end of the second American muscle car era?

Right now is a great time to be a fan of the V8. Dodge, Ford & Chevy are making some exquisite products. The current Mustang 5.0 GT makes as much power stock as the late 80’s early 90’s Mustang 5.0s I used to see extensively modified with nitrous and superchargers at Jenro’s in Virginia Beach every weekend when I was younger. I used to love hanging out there until some losers ruined a good thing.

Establishment associated with modified cars and car shows fined and encouraged to disassociate from the car scene


I’ve always loved the Challenger and Barracuda. The current Challenger in that odd shade of metallic green is really tempting. (This is coming from a HARDCORE Mustang fan)

F8 Green. Dodge rules the automotive world in color pallets.

Dodge emasculates muscle cars
By Mike McDaniel

A long-profitable niche for American car makers has been the all-American muscle car. Low-slung, two door sedans with enormous horsepower, wide tires, aggressive styling and the low rumble of those powerful V-8 engines. There’s nothing quite like them, and they sell for a premium. Ford made the Mustang, Chevy the Camaro, and Dodge, the Charger and Challenger.

They were initially designed to go fast in a straight line, but as technology improved and suspensions became more sophisticated, they began to hold their own on the racetrack as well as the drag strip, and their internal amenities began to rival luxury sedans. Dodge’s 2023 Challenger, available in a variety of models, boasted a beginning price of $32,800. But engines of over 700 horsepower were available, pushing the MSRP to some $99,315. The more horsepower, the higher the price, and prices from $60,000 to $80,000 were demanded for the real muscle cars.

And suddenly, in August of 2022, Dodge announced beginning in the 2024 model year, there would be no low, V-8 rumble, at least not a gasoline-powered rumble. Dodge was going full woke and would henceforth produce only electric powered muscle cars.

We’ve seen American auto manufacturers indulging in economic suicide before. Donald Trump is correct in asserting that going electric vehicle (EV) crazy will destroy union jobs. Union bosses are all in for Kamala Harris. Union workers are all in for Donald Trump. Even as Ford and Chevy are admitting there is no real demand for EVs, and in the face of billions in losses over their EVs, are seriously walking back their EV offerings, Dodge seems determined to convince muscle car customers they don’t really want muscle cars after all.

Muscle car enthusiasts willing to part with nearly $100,000 dollars aren’t going to be satisfied with muscle cars with fake muscle. Replacing the throaty roar of a V-8 with the muted whine of electric motors isn’t going to raise their blood pressure, and Dodge knew it two years ago. They touted their “Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust” and their “eRupt Multispeed Transmission, as viable replacements for the real thing.

The exhaust system on the concept Charger, which [Dodge CEO Tim] Kuniskis said is as loud as a Hellcat engine, pushes sound through an amplifier and tuning chamber located at the rear of the vehicle. He compared it to a wind organ with chambers and pipes.

“Exhaust system?” EVs have no exhaust systems. Perhaps the “exhaust system” will expel unused electrons? What Kuniskis is trying to sell is a stereo system that plays, at enormous volume, a sampled simulation of the real thing. And the “eRupt” transmission is software that momentarily interrupts power delivery to the electric motors to simulate the shifting of real transmissions.

Now Dodge has more or less perfected its fake stereo exhaust, and Car and Driver notes: And unsurprisingly, while the noise is artificial, it sounds quite a bit like a V-8 engine.”

Dodge produced a brief social media video of an electric charger passing, loudly, under an overpass:



This synthetic soundtrack is produced by the Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust. Although Dodge hasn't revealed much about how the system works, we know it utilizes two passive radiators to create a noise that amps up as speed builds. The original concept was said to be capable of producing 126 decibels, but it's unclear if that degree of noise will be available on the production vehicle. Regardless, it will likely run afoul of noise restrictions that have popped up in certain cities, such as New York City.

Still, from the video, the "exhaust" certainly sounds deafening. If we were to hear it without any context, we have to admit we could be fooled into believing it is the sound of a gas-powered car. There's even a slight high-pitched whine as the Charger Daytona begins its acceleration, which seems to reference both the whir of electric motors and the wail of a supercharger.

EV Charger owners can also apparently turn off the “Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust” to run more or less silently, which seems of the opposite of why anyone would buy a muscle car in the first place.

So, Dodge is producing muscle cars some 1000 pounds heavier than gas-powered offerings—EV batteries are heavy--which will burn through tires at warp speed—electric motors have loads of torque and fast acceleration—and Dodge isn’t saying much about range. Even back in 2022, Kuniskis wouldn’t comment on range, essentially saying: “hey, they’re muscle cars; who cares about range?”

Most Americans won’t buy EVs because they’re too expensive. Dodge will shortly find out if muscle car enthusiasts are willing to spend huge bucks for decibels they can get from their home stereos.

https://www.americanthinker.co...tes_muscle_cars.html

^^^ What an embarrassment! They should crawl into a hole after that.

quote:

Originally posted by .38supersig:
^^^ Glass moves down an inch so as to allow the door to close without air pressurization.

On the C7 Corvette, the glass moves up into a channel that locks it in place so it doesn’t get sucked out while driving. Interestingly enough, you can open the door with a bit of force with a dead battery, but you cannot close the door. I learned this the hard way.

quote:

Originally posted by 6guns:
^^^ What an embarrassment! They should crawl into a hole after that.

Unfortunately, there are probably thousands of folks here in CA who can’t wait to drop their artificially earned dollars to get one of these POS’s. I doubt Chrysler is banking to support the sales to real America. They know there is more money to be made selling to stupid people wanting a car to drive to their local Starbucks and possibly capture an Instantgram picture.

Month after month Stellantis (Dodge's corporate masters) has 5 to 7 of the Top 10 slowest selling cars in America, and zero of the Top 10 fastest selling cars in America. Part of the reason is they've jacked up the costs of their ICE cars to offset their EV cars. At the rate some of their overpriced ICE cars are selling, it'll take over a year to sell all of the cars they've already produced.

Earlier this month, I saw $63,500 as the base price of this EV.

Stellantis is going to end up bankrupt following their EV strategy.

quote:

Originally posted by 1s1k:
I have never known a single person who has driven across the entire country in a pickup truck.

Now you do. I've done it no less than two dozen times.

(Yeah, I know it's a two year old quote, but I just saw it.)