I guess I look at things longer term then most.
Brotherhood of muscle sold a lot of cars.
That wasn't the plan in 2015.
It was the plan to kill the viper, end the hemi, and make a new platform(that ended up being the Alpha Romeo car) with a 6 banger.
That's why they made the Dart beforehand.
Maybe I am not the only one that remembers the commercials like this, and the ones with the line of them in multiple colors looking like they are "driving fast" down a city street.
Then they added a category to X games to showcase a drift car version of the Dart, sponsored by Dodge.
Dart was the new, high tech, better MPG, snappy fun, sporty car for the future!
Huh, that's oddly familiar....
Things happened in between the rollout of the Dart and the end of the Viper, decisions were made that this business model needed to wait for EV's to really pay off. So they backed out of things like killing the hemi(viper didn't survive though) cancelled the new platform for the Charger, I mean it was fine, Ford made Panther cars for 30 years so Dodge should be able to do it for 20....
What I am getting at this whole time is despite them continuing the manufacture of a hemi car the fix was in long ago. Chrysler(FIAT) had no intention of continuing another decade worth of cars like this, much less another half century+. It wasn;t because "fans got mad" or "sales were too good!" because if that was the case the Caravan wouldn't have been ax'd. The EV Charger was in the works back in 2016.
Europe functions differently then the US. Foreign countries in the auto world have a long history of complete misunderstanding of how to make money over here. Local boys like the guy that just stepped down, John Colletti from SVT Ford, the guy that fought to get the first Z built over here.... they stick their neck out and convince the foreign people to spend the money.
But the plan has been the plan, and they weren;t convinced the last time around, EV's were the future! Not like they could drag the chassis of the Charger along for another 10 years, the 5.7 was an antique, and Europeans don;t see the point of a V8, from a corporate sense.
But it's fine, ignore history and recall the last 3 years and pretend Chrysler hasn;t tried to pull this before.
I like Hellcats too. The company that built them was closing up shop ten years ago. Planned transition.
Oh if you wonder what happened to the Dart, FIAT thought it better to bring one of their cars in under the Neon nameplate(it went to Mexico and Euro) but decided not to bother.
