Recently Autoevolution published an article in their “what if?” series asking the question of what if the Challenger was revived as an SUV rather than a muscle car in the mid 2000’s.
Autoevolution commissioned Joao Kleber Amaral to creat this rendering of the Challenger Hellcat transformed into a “people hauler”. While it does look “good” thanks to the perfect Challenger design, it’s a terrible idea for a few reasons.
The first being that Dodge already offers an SUV that does the job better, the Durango. The Durango has the correct styling and shape to be an SUV that in Dodge fashion stands out from the rest with its lights and horsepower output.
Second being that there are already too many SUVs on the roads today. A majority of the cars driven today are soulless bland colored SUVs. Sure, they’re the perfect mix between sedan and truck but it’s become a cliche to drive one because everyone drives one. SUVs lack the ability to better explore character and shape that sedans and trucks do. As such they call come out looking the same. The same shape paired with the same colors (grey, silver or black) have made the road bland and characterless. A far cry from what Dodge does.
It’s obvious I don’t like SUV’s just as obvious it is that Dodge would never turn the bestselling muscle car into a copy and paste SUV.
I never knew they experimented with trying to turn their muscle cars into SUV’s, but I am so glad they didn’t. Like you had mentioned, there are enough different varieties of SUV’s as it is. There needs to be different forms of cars to keep the car lots versatile to clients as well.