This year, the 2015 Dodge Charger got some significant updates in styling front and rear, a new interior, and a lot of new tech features to keep it fresh. Most notable is its new LED daytime running lights you can see coming from any distance.
Up front is a new grille and headlight design which shares a lot of similarity with the Dodge Dart in language, for better for or worse. Our R/T Plus got projector beam headlights and LED fog lights to go with the new piano black grille finish.
It’s got all new aluminum hood and along the side the Charger got new fenders and doors. At the rear is a revised fascia, a new LED racetrack tail light treatment and the obligatory big dual exhausts. Our R/T Plus tester also had some pretty nice looking 20-inch polished wheels.
Inside you will find a lot of new stuff starting with a completely redesigned dash made of significantly upgrade materials, soft touch trims, and new switchgear. A new steering wheel design has multiple controls and paddle shifters.
A new instrument cluster features a customizable LCD center display and traditional dials on the side which is a nice touch. Front and center is the latest generation Uconnect touchscreen infotainment and driver interface.
It has all the audio and navigation system controls, and a myriad of other settings for things like HVAC and connectivity options for your devices. Redundant hard controls are provided in a simple center stack for most used things like volume and tuning, fan-speed and the all-important sport button.
Seats are the optional ruby red Nappa leather trimmed units with heated and ventilated front and heated rears. They’re not as aggressive as the SRT sport seats, but fully power adjustable and quite supportive for aggressive drives.
Rear seat passengers get plenty to love with full-size class head and leg room, rear HVAC vents and as mentioned before, they’re heated. They can fold down in a 60/40 split for increased trunk space, which itself is as large as you’d expect here.
Under the hood is the 5.7 liter HEMI V8 with multiple displacement which allows it to run on four-cylinders under coast and low power conditions. It’s got 370 horsepower and 395 pound-feet of torque. It comes with an eight-speed automatic as its sole transmission option.
Since I mentioned fuel economy and its impact on the wallet, the EPA rates the Charger R/T as tested at 16 mpg city, 25 mpg highway with a 19 mpg combined rating. I managed to beat that this week with 20 mpg combined, even with the AC on at all times.
While the rear-wheel drive chassis is largely the same as it has been for some years, it did get quite a few updates for 2015. These include first and foremost a new electric power steering rack, which allows for driver selected modes.
New aluminum axles and housings reduce uns-prung weight and several tuning enhancements keep the Chargers rear-wheel drive chassis feeling fresh in the marketplace. Curb weight for ours as tested was 4,264 pounds.
Overall, the chassis and powertrain upgrades continue to make the Charger a pretty unique standout in the marketplace, which has few competitors. From American brands you can look at the Chevrolet SS, but it’s not really at all the same thing, much smaller. The Ford Taurus SHO is front-wheel drive based and really not even in the same league.
As far as safety goes, the IIHS rates it as good across its battery of tests, but it hasn’t yet been tested for the new small-offset test. And while it offers the crash-prevention systems now required for Top Safety Pick status, we’ll have to wait until the new model is fully tested to know where it lands.
