1978 Dodge Challenger - What's In a Name?

What's in a name? Only as much as you want it to be and to most people Dodge festooning "Challenger" on a Mitsubishi Gallant Lambda meant nothing to them. To fans of the ground pounding original Challenger, however, it was akin to sacrilege. Even if the Mitsubishi sourced Challenger could run rings around the originals. Our subject is a 1978.



Chrysler sold these cars as "captive imports". That term being a marketing strategy to sell foreign-built vehicles under the name of an importer through its own dealer distribution system. It's a cost-effective way for the importer to establish a footprint here since they don't have to go through the expense of building a dealership network and the importer gets to sell a vehicle type they previously didn't have. Dodge first sold rebadged Mitsubishi's as the Dodge Colt starting in 1971 after Mitsubishi sold Chrysler 15% of their company. Later, after Mitsubishi updated the model they were exporting, Dodge badged the two-door versions as the Challenger.

Chrysler named these cars "Challenger" as a gimmick to make what they had been calling "Colt" more appealing and to ape any marketing mojo the original may have had. It was an odd move considering the original Challenger did not sell very well and the two cars couldn't have been more different from each other. 

These original Challengers didn't sell well because Chrysler introduced them in 1970 just as the performance car market, which, despite what you may have heard, wasn't that great in the first place, was drying up. It was also, like many performance cars from "back in the day", too big, heavy, thirsty expensive to insure and was generally panned by critics. The damn things couldn't do anything right except, on certain models, go fast in a straight line. That and look just utterly fantastic. These were some fine looking automobiles. 

Speaking of insurance, we blame the insurance industry more than anything else for clubbing muscle cars out of existence. Brokers slapped heavy surcharges that could exceed monthly payments for the cars themselves on anything they deemed sporty or racy. These little Challengers with the power to weight ratio of golf carts were far more "insurance friendly".

Think about it...what if GM put "Camaro" on an offshoot of their Cruze or worse an SUV crossover instead of a sporty coupe like they did when they brought the nameplate back after 7 years out of the market? That would have been unthinkable, wouldn't it?

Granted, "Camaro" was around far longer than "Challenger" was years ago but the analogy fits. It wouldn't make the vehicle any better or worse just as Dodge could have named the original Challenger anything and the design of the car would still have had the same visceral appeal.

What's in a name, then? Only as much as you want it to be.

The current Dodge Challenger, which emulates the original, has been sold by Dodge since 2008.