2007 Dodge Charger

Weight

After two successful seasons with a Dodge Viper, the two-time Formula D champion returns in 2007 with this radical new Charger to achieve his third championship title in the series. But as great as the car looks sideways, getting it prepared for it was no easy task. The first issue the MOPAR research and development team found was the weight. The Viper, although with a V-10 motor, it was still considerably lighter than the Charger by being a sports car mostly consisting of carbon fiber. Led by Shaun Carlson, the MOPAR technicians stripped the car down to bare metal and began by replacing most body panels with carbon fiber and fiberglass replacements. The windows have been replaced with lexan. To show Carlson’s determination to shed pounds, the first prototype was fit with huge wheels and brakes, along with crazy fenders and a wing. The finished product had none of that. It had brakes big enough to get the job done, the wheels were changed with lighter replacements, and the massive brakes were downsized to something considered less-than complete overkill. Believe it or not, the car weighs around 3300lbs, over 900lbs lighter than stock.

Suspension/Brakes

By now it sounds like you have seen leftover cars at the junkyard with more parts than Hubinette’s Charger, but all that was left is top of the line, straight out of the shelves from MOPAR’s best. The suspension has been completely revamped with coilovers on all four corners, a custom design by powerhouse KW. These coilovers are held by four 19x10-inch Racing Hart light-weight wheels that are wrapped with tires as big as 295/35/19s in the back. Those massive tires provide for enough contact patch with the floor to yield massive amounts of smoke, which is always a crowd pleaser. The brakes are Brembo’s finest, providing all the stopping power the Charger could need. But you would not need the top of the line Brembo brakes unless you had something so massive residing under the hood.

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Performance

And "massive" it is. MOPAR has introduced the Charger with an adaptation of their biggest motor currently available: a 392 (cubic inch) HEMI crate engine. The engine has been built by Gary Stanton, who apparently found ways to even better the motor with a higher compression, a higher redline and add-ons. Technicians claim that the motor puts out 650hp and that the motor runs on 104 octane gas only. Impressive numbers for a naturally aspirated motor. However, recent sources have shown pictures of the Dodge Charger carrying a turbocharged motor. There has been no official word yet of any modification of the kind, but the pictures are there to prove the change.

The car’s debut occurred in December of 2006 during the D1 Grand Prix championship at Irwindale, CA where Samuel Hubinette managed to qualify for Top 16 in his brand new Charger. In 2007, Hubinette managed to achieve his first victory in Formula D in West Virginia, at Summit Point, proving that the new (and possibly already improved) Dodge Charger is up to the task of providing the crazy swede with his third Formula D championship victory.