Any electric car replacing a beloved combustion model has big shoes to fill, perhaps none more so than the new Dodge Charger. While it’ll also be available with petrol straight-six power, it’s fair to say that the fastest version being the electric 670bhp Daytona version hasn’t gone down well with fans of the old V8-powered Challenger and Charger.
One way to try and win back some of that goodwill is to make an EV sound like something approaching a combustion car. Various manufacturers have tried it with differing degrees of success, and now Dodge has revealed its interpretation of this trend.
The company has posted a short clip to its social media showing the Charger Daytona accelerating through a tunnel, and it sounds… kind of like a V8 muscle car? There’s a distinct growl to the sound it makes, albeit underlined by an electric whine, and as we hear the car come off throttle, there’s even a sort of off-beat burble as the ‘revs’ die off.
Fellow Stellantis brand Abarth has already tried to recapture the characteristic sound made by its cars, in the form of the 500e’s sound generator. From a distance, it’s a decent approximation of the petrol Abarth’s characterful four-pot burble, albeit one that’s obnoxiously loud up close and doesn’t react to throttle inputs the way a combustion engine would.
Dodge Charger Daytona – rear
We assume Dodge is using similar tech for what it calls the Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust on the Charger, but based on this clip, it at least sounds like it’s programmed to behave like a combustion engine.
At the Charger’s launch in March, Dodge’s now-retired CEO Tim Kuniskis claimed the company had agonised over what to make the Daytona sound like. Ultimately, the company’s settled on something much closer to its muscle cars of old than the odd, futuristic wail produced by the original concept version back in 2022, which might placate a few of its die-hard fans. Maybe.
