Dodge Hasn't Ruled Out a New Charger Daytona With a Huge Wing
Prior to Tuesday's reveal of the new Charger EV, the name Dodge Charger Daytona was most famously used on a 1969 NASCAR homologation special with a rounded nose and an enormous rear wing. Now, the name also belongs to the brand's first-ever electric muscle car. That car has a slightly rounded nose, but lacks the huge rear wing that made the nameplate famous. That may not be the case forever.
While both the original Charger Daytona and the Charger Daytona EV are "aero cars" in some way, their very different goals led to very different conclusions. The 1969 car was designed for racing at NASCAR's biggest tracks, meant to reduce drag in the front and produce downforce in the back. Only one of those two things is beneficial to an EV, so Dodge chose to bring back the rounded nose hidden under the "R-wing" mock front grille along with the Daytona name for EVs. Meanwhile, the wing was left in the past in part to preserve at least some range after making other sacrifices to put the muscle car experience over efficiency. But according to Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis, that does not mean a Charger Daytona with a huge rear wing will never happen. The CEO told Road & Track that his team has "talked about it a million times."
"I always make the joke that we don’t care about range," Kuniskis said. "But at some point, you have to care about range, you know? And a big wing on the back is designed for nothing more than downforce, and downforce is the enemy of range. So it wasn’t going to be something that we could do. But the nose cone was perfect. Now, does that mean we won’t do some special editions—you know we love our special editions—with some sort of a wing? Yeah, sure."
The Daytona name was revived three separate times over the long reign of the last generation of four-door Charger, but all three special editions were relatively normal-looking and lacked either a rounded nose or a towering wing. With the Charger Daytona EV, Dodge has a more streamlined car that could be a better stylistic fit for a bench-sized conversation piece on top of the decklid and a customer base that might actually buy a car with that kind of option.
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