ALT-2 Muscle Cars Making a Comeback
Remembering Plymouth.The soul of Plymouth is restless and roaming the halls at Dodge. While Plymouth as a badge of Pentastar may have ceased to exist, the memory and spirit of Plymouth lives strong in the design studios at Chrysler Corp. Case in point is the third incarnation of the Dodge Charger. One look at this undeniably handsome beast and one immediately thinks "retro" and "way cool!" Have you ever seen a more coupe like four door?The odd thing about this car is that the retro features don't hark back to the venerable Charger of the late sixties. It took me a while to place what was familiar about this car, but eventually the ghost of the "E" body Cuda whistled through the back alleys of my mind.Look at the distinctive line on the rear quarters of the new Charger and then study the same area on a '70 to '74 Cuda-especially the "hockey stick" lines on the AAR version. Look familiar? The crease along the upper edge of the Charger's quarter panel very nearly mimics the same line on the enormously popular (not to mention collectible) Cuda.Chrysler also built a concept Cuda and briefly considered it for their line up. An early version of the 2006 Challenger concept also borrowed heavily from the Cuda legacy, especially a strong nod to the vertically segmented grill of the 1971 model year.Plymouth had a proud and distinctive life before it became an economy clone for struggling Chrysler in the 80's and 90's. Dodge does well to borrow from its cousin's performance heritage. If Chrysler wanted to really honor Plymouth's memory, why not resurrect the last unique achievement in the Plymouth canon: The Prowler (with a manual shift Hemi).
