The marriage of Chrysler and Fiat in 2009 made a lot of people nervous. Chrysler was a storied, if often troubled, American automaker known for big cars with big engines. Fiat was an Italian automaker known only as a punchline.
They needn't have worried. Chrysler is doing well. It could use some fresh designs, but sales are up, driven in large part by the Charger and Challenger muscle cars. But you've got to wonder whether that craze can last. Horsepower is a commodity, and everyone makes big numbers these days. Consumers, particularly young ones, are more interested in connectivity and efficiency than performance. And autonomous cars may just make the whole thing moot.
Don't try telling that to Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis. He's been at part of Chrysler for two decades, taking the corner office in 2013. We sat down with him to talk muscle cars, where to find new customers, and what possessed him to green-light a 707-horsepower sedan.
WIRED: You've just announced the track-focused Dodge Viper ACR. What's the future of the muscle car?
Tim Kuniskis: It's interesting that you call it a muscle car. Because it is, and you're dead on, you're right. It's funny though, a lot of people look at the car and they want to lump it in with [Porsche] 911s and Jaguars and things like that.
If you look at the customers buying the Viper and what other cars they own and cross-shop against, they cross-shop against Camaros and Mustangs and Challengers. They go back and forth. A lot of the time, people have the Challenger and then they buy the Viper. People who have the Viper then buy a Hellcat. They're not trading between the two, they're adding to their collection.
I made a point when we launched the ACR, when we launched the Hellcat, people said aren't you taking all the focus away from the Viper and putting it on the Hellcat? We said no, we have a different avenue with that car. Now it's a lot clearer. We have this Hellcat, it's a trim level of the Challenger muscle car. It's the ultimate muscle car.
The ACR is the ultimate version of the Viper, which is our track car. You have one that's the ultimate muscle car and one that's ultimate track car.
Back to your question about muscle cars, we see the segment really kind of exploding. Our volume is up substantially. Ford has their new Mustang out, their sales are up. The new Camaro just launched and that will be a big lift in the market. That's getting really heated up.
But the question is, why? Is it fuel prices? What is it? I have another theory.
My theory of why that segment is blowing up is that the technology in these cars allows you to have what we call muscle cars, what we call performance cars, with minimal sacrifice. You get a Charger and you still have a full size sedan that you can take your kids to school in. The Challenger has a real backseat and you still get 31 mpg. Even on a 700-horsepower Hellcat, you still get 22 mpg. 31 mpg compared to the average midsize car at 35---if you do the math on somebody driving 12,000 miles per year, it's really negligible.
The other thing driving that interest is this: Think about all the cars in all the segments that you see on the highway. You drive around for an entire day and you'll have a hard time telling one car from another. There are 290 different nameplates from 40 different brands.
One of the key differentiators, historically, has been luxury. I challenge anybody to define luxury nowadays other than under the perspective of a brand. If you talk about features and content, what used to be considered luxury? Leather, cruise control, power windows, leather dashes, things like that. A lot have been pushed so far down into the trim levels and model levels and brands, that its pretty much available in every segment on every car. One of the things now that can really differentiate somebody is performance. Because it's quantifiable. It's a true differentiator.
That's what's driving some of the interest, particularly from a younger demographic. That's why you see the age swings so much on Dodge. Our Chargers and Challengers and Durango R/T, we're driving such a young customer into those cars that we have the youngest customer base in the industry.
The other side of that is "What is a muscle car?" There are hybrids, turbos, smaller engines. Ferrari is making a turbo-powered car again. Exotic materials are everywhere. Is raw power enough? In five years is the Charger Hellcat going to be ... "Well, we're going to do a V6 with two turbos." Or is the future in big, Detroit-classic, huge engines?
What makes a muscle car? The personality and attitude of the car, over and above the raw horsepower number. If you look at a Charger or Challenger V6, those are our volume cars. They have 300 horsepower. The look awesome, they have an awesome personality, an incredible road presence. They sound great. People love these cars and everyone would describe them as a muscle car. Now, is it a 485-horsepower Scat Pack V8 that runs 12-second quarter-mile times? Or a 700-horsepower car? No.
But, it's always been that way in muscle car realm. A 300-horsepower V6, it wasn't that long ago that that was one of the highest output V8 you could get. Just like luxury gets pushed down, the technology gets pushed down.
At some point iron block, pushrod V8s are not going to be possible. Will it be the end of performance like it was in 1971? No. In 1971, we didn't have the technology to overcome those challenges. Today we do. If you look at Porsche 918 and LaFerrari and things like that, you see them going with different technologies like hybrid electrification. Performance will never go away in my view. How we get there will change. Will we see smaller displacement turbos? Will we see electrification? Will we see hybrids? Of course we will.
One of the most popular videos on YouTube these days is guys racing Hellcats against Teslas. Think about that. That's crazy. But the Tesla is an amazing performance vehicle, it's just different.
Is the Hellcat a one-off? Or are you going to keep this as an incredible, top-of-the-line trim level? Is it going to stick around?
Why do you build a car like that? Is it profitable, does it make sense? Why do you do it? Why do you build a car like a Viper that's handmade and hand painted and extremely expensive to produce and only sells in low volumes? Why do you build cars like Hellcats?
We had record breaking Challenger sales last month. We'll have record breaking Challenger sales again this month. Hellcat is a very small percentage of what we sell in Challengers.
If we show you 6,000 to 7,000 Challenger sales in a month, it'll be a few hundred Hellcats. That's the inherent value and benefit of a halo car. If you look back at how we launched that car and how we staggered the launch over a five-month period, you'd say "This is ridiculous. Why are they doing all this? Why are they talking about this so much? They'll never sell that many of them, they'll never be able to built as many as they need for the demand that they're building for the car."
Look at the excitement that that generated. Look at all the media impressions that it generated. We went back and did the math. That launch of that car, again a low volume, small production car. It generated 22.6 billion media impressions. Translates to half a million dollars in media value. There's the value of a halo. We did it to sell the fact that we had a brand new Challenger.
That's why you do it. That's the business case, the ROI of a Hellcat or or a Viper or an ACR. Why are we launching an ACR? You have a Viper that's a very low-volume car. Now you have a niche inside a niche. But it's the ultimate Viper. It's the ultimate track version of the car. It gives me that ultimate halo muscle car. The ultimate halo track car that people can point to. The guys that are driving the V6 Charger are very quick to point out that the bones of that car are the same as in the Hellcat. That's great.
Talking about the ultimate track day car, Dodge got out of NASCAR a while back. Is that something that you're looking to get back into? Is the Viper ACR going to become a World Endurance Car?
Nah. I get a lot of questions about racing. I like racing. But, from a business standpoint, I'm trying to position our products in places where I don't have a built-in, natural audience. I'm not saying anything against NASCAR, but the fans, people at a NASCAR event, they know Dodge. I like to go places where maybe they don't know us right now.
For example, we sponsored Carey Hart's supercross and motorcross team, RCH Racing. It fits very well with the Dodge brand, his personality and attitude match Dodge's. And, if you look at the fan base of supercross and motorcross, their fan base is 18-34 year old multicultural males that are into performance.
Could you find a better growth area for a performance brand that's trying to bring in youth? Absolutely not. The more I can associate myself with places like that, and become known to that customer or future customer, the better off we will be as a brand.
You talked a lot about the US. Now you're part of this global Fiat Chrysler company. Are Dodge's muscle cars going to be selling in China and emerging markets? China doesn't have a sports car culture like they do in the US or Britain.
Dodge is mainly a North American company. We do sell internationally. It's not big numbers. But in certain pockets we're very strong. If you go to the Middle East, Dodge and SRT are really strong. Really Strong. Right now that's probably our strongest market outside of NAFTA.
What's interesting though, I was recently at a launch event for Furious 7. It has a lot of Dodge product in it. That movie has exploded globally. It is the biggest movie that that franchise has ever had. I was at this event and there were two young gentlemen there from Japan. They came over and started talking to me. They said that they have an aftermarket parts business where they build performance parts for American muscle cars. I don't mean little parts. They do a widebody kit for Challengers. I asked them where is their business was based and I was assuming they'd say LA. But no, it's in Japan.
I said that we don't even sell cars in Japan and they said "we know, it's really tough to get them." But there is an underground performance movement there. People are getting these cars on the grey market and of course, that grey market enthusiast is your hardest-core enthusiast. They're looking to modify them and make them faster. So, never say never, I guess.
