Canadian-made Dodge Charger is a tangle of contradictions and personal conflicts

The Charger Sixpack comes with 420 horsepower in the R/T and 550 in the Scat Pack.Jeremy Sinek/The Globe and Mail

Another new Dodge, and another tangle of automotive contradictions and personal conflicts. The 2026 Charger is an actual car, which pushes all the right buttons with Enthusiast Me, who never did drink the SUV Kool-Aid. It’s also available as an electric car, which satisfies Environmentalist Me. And by the way, the Charger is the 2026 North American Car of the Year.

But the Charger is also a large, powerful and relatively expensive car, which disappoints Environmentalist Me, who wants to see smaller, affordable electric cars. Then again, it’s built in Canada, which satisfies Patriot Me, and which also means the electric version qualifies for the $5,000 federal EV rebate that is denied to built-elsewhere EVs priced above $50,000.

The Charger was originally launched as a two-door. Now it comes as a four-door too, except I can’t label it the sole surviving traditional full-size Amerian sedan because, well, it’s a hatchback.

What was Dodge thinking, you may ask; don’t Americans despise hatchbacks? Well, maybe, but SUVs have lifting tailgates too. Dodge folk call the one on the Charger a “hidden hatch liftgate.” Also, they add, the roomy rear cabin with a back seat that can be folded into an expansive cargo deck make the Charger just as practical as an SUV.

The Charger now comes in a four-door, but isn't a sedan because it has a liftgate.Jeremy Sinek/The Globe and Mail

Also, like most SUVs, the Charger has all-wheel drive. This may not make it a sport-utility car, but AWD certainly makes its abundance of horsepower much more useable. And not only for those who endure northern winters; above a certain level of power, adding AWD traction can cut acceleration times more effectively than adding 100 horsepower.

So, traction is good, but what if you want to drift or do burnouts in your muscle car? No worries: poke a couple buttons and the Charger becomes rear-wheel drive; poke one more, and the stability-control nannies leave the room.

Last but not least, the engines. The newly available gas engine is Stellantis’s creamy smooth inline six-cylinder three-litre twin-turbo Hurricane that’s supposed to supplant the venerable Hemi 5.7-litre V8 as the high-output alternative in various Stellantis products. In Charger Sixpack, the Hurricane engine is standard, making 550 horsepower in the Scat Pack, which launched last fall, and 420 horsepower in the new R/T, which arrives this spring.

Despite appearances, there’s a longitudinally mounted inline six-cylinder engine lurking in there.Jeremy Sinek/The Globe and Mail

Customization options include 64-colour Attitude Adjustment interior lighting (here), as well as low- or high-back seats, carbon-fibre accents and suede.Jeremy Sinek/The Globe and Mail

As for the Hemi, you may have heard that popular demand prompted Stellantis to reinstate it in the Ram 1500 pickup. However, if the Hemi were ever to do duty in Charger, it won’t be the regular 375-horsepower version; expect it to be in hyper-output supercharged form like the 700-plus-horsepower versions in Hellcat/Redeye/Demon versions of the previous Charger and Challenger. The electric Charger Daytona Scat Pack, meanwhile, makes 670 horsepower.

As it stands, the gas-powered Chargers are less expensive than the 2026 electric Daytona versions, but they’re still not cheap. Dodge says the pricing, starting at $59,995 for the R/T two-door, is justified by their standard all-wheel drive, powerful turbo engines and relatively generous equipment levels. And yet, they’re not so well kitted as standard that you can’t still spend up to about $15,000 on options.

So here we are. Is the expanded Charger lineup a thoroughly well-executed answer to a question nobody was asking? Or is it a unique and exciting combination of attributes and options that you didn’t know you wanted until Dodge created it? I’m still conflicted. For the sake of the Canadian workers in Windsor who build it, let’s hope enough Americans buy in.

Cockpit notables include a low-profile UConnect screen, flat-top-and-bottom steering wheel, pistol-grip shifter and only a single column stalk; there are buttons on the dash for the lights, buttons on the wheel for drive modes.Supplied

Looks

The sedan and coupe share their full-sized-plus exterior dimensions, as well as hoods, rooflines, liftgates and front and rear fascias. The four-door channels the look of its Charger predecessor, but we see little resemblance to the former Challenger the coupe.

Interior

With the extra-cost eight-way power driver’s seat and power-adjustable steering column, comfort is easy to find at the wheel, though the eight-way seat should be standard. The dashboard, effectively sculpted for reduced visual mass, houses a low-profile 12.3-inch touchscreen that’s user-friendly and leaves climate controls and basic audio functions to “real” switchgear. The digital gauge cluster (10.25-inch standard or 16.3-inch optional), is multi-configurable, though we’d like a better representation of traditional round dials.

Around the wheel there’s a single left-hand column stalk, a handy drive-mode selector on the wheel, “manual-shift” paddles and a pistol-grip drive selector on the centre console.

Unusually, the trunk release button is on the ceiling above the rear-view mirror – what looks like a trunk release on the dashboard is actually an electric hood release. The doors are also push-button release.

The rear cabin is roomy but, for the size of the car, legroom is unremarkable, while the high floor and limited foot-space under the front seat force adult occupants into a knees-up posture.

Performance

Claimed zero-to-60-miles-per-hour acceleration times of 4.6 seconds (R/T) or 3.9 (Scat Pack) are eminently attainable thanks to AWD, which, depending on drive mode, can vary the power sent to the rear from a fixed 50 per cent (Wet/Snow) through ranges of 60 to 100 per cent (Auto/Eco) or 70 to 100 (Sport) or fixed 100 per cent RWD (Sport sub-menu).

Thusly, committed drivers can dial in as much rear-drive feel as they want, while our sessions on winter-covered skid pad and slalom courses revealed that even in Sport mode, the tail is unlikely to get away from timid drivers unless they really provoke it.

In routine driving, punchy throttle tip-in lends either engine an eager feel, and hard-launching an R/T reveals minimal turbo lag. In the Scat Pack, lag looms larger and booting from rest initiates a somewhat busy sequence of lag, then lunge, then an almost immediate upshift as first gear runs out.

Either way, the engines spin with creamy smoothness and a soundtrack that segues from an almost V8-like burble when pottering to a velvet vroom with the hammer down.

Our on-road drive route included little opportunity to explore the Charger’s paved-road cornering, but ample exposure to its ride quality; there’s a fair bit of fidgety body motion (more so in Scat Pack) but impressively little impact harshness over sharp-edged pavement scars.

With the available Performance Pages on the touchscreen, drivers can monitor or record countless aspects of vehicle condition and performance.Jeremy Sinek/The Globe and Mail

Technology

Standard ADAS includes level 2 (hands-on) assisted driving including active lane management, while standard infotainment assets include the 16.3-inch touchscreen with Uconnect5, and wireless Car Play and Android Auto. The Plus Package on either trim adds (inter alia) Navi, the 16-inch gauge cluster, head-up display, wireless phone charger and 360-degree surround view camera.

Cargo

The cargo-deck square-footage may be generous, but the low roofline compromises maximum cargo volume; the seats-up 644 litres is about the same as a subcompact SUV while the seats-folded 1,059 litres falls short of even that SUV comparison. Still, it’s roomier and more versatile than any sedan.

Tech specs

2026 Dodge Charger SixPack

Price: $59,995 - $80,490 (plus $2,295 destination plus fees and taxes)
Engine: Twin-turbo 3.0-litre inline six-cylinder
Horsepower / torque (lb-ft): R/T: 420 / 468; Scat Pack: 550 / 532
Transmission / drive: Eight-speed automatic / variable AWD
Fuel consumption (litres per 100 kilometres): To be announced
Alternatives: Ford Mustang, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Kia EV6

The writer was a guest of the automaker. Content was not subject to approval.

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