Dodge took a big gamble with its muscle car line when the Challenger coupe and previous Charger sedan went away. Instead of continuing with V8s, Dodge nearly went all-in on electric power, and didn’t add any sort of gas-powered version until recently. For most of the new Charger’s life, that gamble has been a bad one, with customers showing little interest in the Hemi-deficient muscle car. This year, though, may mark a turning point for at least one half of the Charger line.
People Are Rocking With The Hurricane
On the whole, Stellantis reported a sales increase of 33% year-over-year for the Charger. That’s a decent increase, but it doesn’t give a clear idea of what’s happening with the car. The real story is in the sales split between the gas-powered Charger and the electric version. The Charger with the Hurricane has now reached 4,583 units in total sales, an increase of 181% over last year. Compared with the second-quarter of this year with 2025, the increase is even more impressive at 404% from 578 to 2,911. It’s likely that this was supported by finally adding the more entry-level R/T Sixpack with the standard-output Hurricane and both two- and four-door body styles.
As for the Charger Daytona’s sales, they’re looking grim. In fact, they look like the inverse of the Hurricane-powered Charger’s sales. Dodge only sold 294 examples in the second-quarter, down from 2,352. That brings the total number of electric Chargers sold to 534 for the year, down from 4,299. Both numbers are decreases of 88%.
As further evidence that the gas-powered Charger is showing some promise, its sales this year have topped the Daytona’s sales last year to date. It’s also more than halfway to the full-year sales of the Daytona last year. So, it’s certainly on track to become the best-performing version of the new-generation car. This also fits the expectations set by Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa a few months ago. He said that the gas Charger variants would make up “90% of the expected volumes.” If you do the math, 89.5% of Charger sales are from the combustion version, but we’d say that’s close enough.
The Charger Is Still Far From Its Previous Glory
Despite growing Charger sales, the model is still struggling compared to its predecessor. In the final year of production for the Charger, Dodge sold nearly 35,000 examples. That was also down by nearly half compared to 2023. It was a similar story with the Challenger, which has effectively been replaced by the two-door Charger. In 2024, Dodge sold a little more than 27,000 Challengers, and that was down from nearly 45,000 the year before.
As for ways to improve sales, there’s one that probably everyone has been thinking the whole time they’ve been reading this story: offer a Hemi. We can’t think of any real reason Dodge couldn’t do it, since Ram reintroduced the Hemi in the 1500, and the updated current generation didn’t have an electrical system designed for it. The Charger would probably require a bit more work in the engine bay than the Ram, but it seems plausible to us and could be worth the trouble if it resulted in multiple times the current sales.
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