Rumor: Dodge Wants to Do a Cheap, Hardcore Sports Car

The Dodge Charger Daytona launch hasn’t gone quite as we—or, probably, Dodge—expected, as we recently discussed with Dodge CEO Matt McAlear on our InEVitable podcast, asking him about the car's heft and bewildering inability to do burnouts. For better or worse, the Charger Daytona controversy has put a spotlight on Dodge’s performance plans, and when The Drive spoke to McAlear recently, his responses were revealing.

Per that interview, McAlear is open to a halo car, a Viper successor of sorts. He acknowledged there’s a market for something on the high end of price and performance, a true halo car. But he also told The Drive that a market for an “entry-level halo” exists. That’s a rare and arguably dying breed, the affordable sports car—a role that has previously been filled with cult classic but departed vehicles like the Nissan 240SX, Toyota Celica and MR2, and even the hotter Dodge Neon variants like the SRT4. Perhaps the purest entry-level halo car, to use McAlear’s words, on the market today is the Mazda MX-5 Miata, a relatively inexpensive but universally praised roadster that gives the entire Mazda lineup a sheen of sportiness.

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McAlear’s vision for this car reveals a desire to set itself apart from both the MX-5's past and the rare few contemporaries, like the Subaru BRZ and Toyota GR86. Pointing to the unconventional quasi-cars from companies like Polaris (the Slingshot) and Can-Am (the Spyder), which offer a lot of attitude and presence, vehicles purely built for entertainment but more accessible than a motorcycle. It seems unlikely Dodge is going to get into (or rebrand) a three-wheeled, ATV-like trike, but it could point to an idea gestating within the company for something truly raw, basic, and pure.

It’s part of McAlear’s vision for something that finds white space, not simply Dodge’s version of a vehicle genre—as he put it to The Drive, “not a Corvette fighter, not a Mustang fighter.” McAlear continues, wishing for a sports car that avoids the cost and complexity of frills like heated seats or advanced safety features, instead focusing on cost—and performance. Whatever the brand makes, if it makes something, McAlear is claiming it’ll perform—and the company won’t do it if it won’t.

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What could said affordable sports car look like? We looked at past concepts, current products, and did some educated guesswork and came up with a possible low-buck Dodge roadster. It’s got a bit of Dodge Demon, Dodge Copperhead, and Dodge Razor flavor with a fascia that riffs on the company’s most aggressive lower-cost vehicle, the Dodge Hornet. Is this the direction Dodge will go? At the moment, only McAlear knows for sure.