Video: We Drive the Twin-Turbo 2026 Dodge Charger Sixpack: Review

And I really wanna find out, is this new engine a suitable replacement for the Hemi you could get in the old Charger. So let's find out. So with 550 horsepower, the new Charger Sixpack makes a lot more power than the old Hemi RT and the Hemi 392 that were available in the old Charger. But it also sounds a lot different too. You don't have that Hemi rumble here. It's much more of a mechanical, kind of higher pitched European performance car sound when you get on the gas. (engine revs) But when you do get on the gas, it moves very quickly. Dodge says it goes zero to 60 in 3.9 seconds. And when you're in sport mode, it really knocks off shifts quickly and gets you moving fast. But right now, we're gonna be heading into some technical roads. We're right before the Tail of the Dragon, if you're familiar with that section of road, tons of turns and not a lot of distance. So we're gonna see how this muscle car handles. So right off the bat, the new Charger is just a much more athletic-feeling car than the old one was. Not just in terms of its nimbleness, its turn-in, it does have good body control and good composure. But on some of these tight roads and tight turns on the Tail of the Dragon, you definitely feel, really the width of the car and just its size in general. So even though this car is pretty buttoned down, even on these tighter technical turns, one thing I would've liked to see more of in it is more steering feel. Because even though in the sport setting, you do get more heft and more weight, just through all these turns and all these corners, you don't have a really great feel for what's happening down at the tires. But one of the nice things about it with this brake package, it's got six piston Brembo calipers in front, so a pretty beefy setup, and it hauls this heavy car down really well. It's very predictable. A very unnatural response and feel to the pedal really gives you a lot of confidence that you're gonna be able to slow this car down when you need to. So while the Charger will tolerate the tighter turns of Tail of the Dragon, where it really comes into its own is when the road opens up a little bit. Either you're on somewhere with longer, sweeping turns, it's really nice to drive there, feels really confident. And the same can be said too when you get on the highway and you're just cruising. It's comfortable enough that it doesn't beat you up in the automatic mode and it's thanks to that longer wheel base and just general suspension tuning. It's still a firm-riding car, but on the relatively smooth roads of Eastern Tennessee where we are right now, very livable. In the cabin of the Charger, you face a pretty modern design. There's a screen for the instrument cluster. This car has the optional 16 inch digital IP. It's the larger screen. All cars though, get a 12.3 inch center infotainment touchscreen that's running Uconnect 5, which is Dodge's familiar infotainment system. And there are a lot of nice trim elements in this up-level version. You have suede style fabric on the interior, but there are some elements in the cabin that seem out of place for a car with an as-tested price of nearly $70,000. And that includes some lower grade plastics on the dash and on the doors. And also these capacitive climate controls that are right under the center screen, they're just not always the easiest to use. If you're gonna take your Charger Scat Pack Sixpack to the drag strip, there are some performance features it has to help you out there. There's a line lock feature that'll lock the front brakes and allow you to spin the rear tires, do a pretty nice burnout to help clean them off and warm them off before a run. And when you're ready to run, the launch control feature will raise RPMs up to a preset level. You can adjust it up or down depending on conditions, and then lift off the brake and down the track you go. And with all-wheel drive, it's all pretty uneventful. The car launches cleanly and the transmission shifts quickly as you get down the track. And this was even with temperatures in the low 40 degrees. So we opened this video trying to assess whether the Charger's Sixpack is a good performance replacement for the Hemi V8 that the Charger in prior generations used to offer. And I think it really comes down to what you want out of your muscle car. If you want that deep, distinctive V8 noise, the Charger Sixpack is not gonna give you that, it has a totally different character, totally different sound. But if you want a pretty quick car that handles reasonably well, that is also fairly comfortable to drive on the highway, I think this could work for you. If you wanna read more about the 2026 Dodge Charger, be sure to check out cars.com/news for my full review.