I'm hopeless at cooking. I really am. My culinary expertise extends to microwaving frozen chicken patties from Costco and warming up Easy Mac. Even if I carefully followed the simplest Rachael Ray Recipe (30 Minute Meals!), those I served it to would vomit violently and copiously. On the other hand, if Rachael were to follow a recipe prepared by some Iron Chef contestant, carefully spiced and diced and drizzled with a light hint of something exotic, you would drown in your own saliva before you could eat it.
Besides that I'm terrible at it, it is that fact that fascinates me about cooking; that two different people can follow the same recipe the exact same way and end up with two completely different meals.
The fact that the ingredients and preparation are extremely similar yet produce genuinely different results never fails to astonish me. And it is this that brings me neatly into the world of four-door sedans.
There is a perfect recipe for a great four-door sedan. It consists of interesting looks, a spacious and comfortable interior, rear-wheel drive, and solid steering. When put together, you end up with something awesome, something like a BMW 5 Series, Lexus GS430, or a Mercedes E-Class. As with cooking, however, even the simplest recipe can be turned askew by clumsy hands, and it is here that we arrive at the topic of this column: the Dodge Charger.
You may have seen this thing cruising around; some of our police cars are Chargers, and they are quite unique. I went on a tour of the Boston College police station last year and someone inquired about the car. The officer giving the tour proudly said, "Yeah, it's a Hemi. That thing smokes."
Ah, the Hemi. There have been lots of advertisements about this in which a manly sounding man espouses the merits of the Hemi while manly men in hard hats covered in grime run around driving manly pickup trucks and Chargers and grunting. It's all very manly.
The Dodge Web site says, "Legendary HEMI V8, equally aggressive style." What "Hemi" means is that the combustion chambers of the engine are in the shape of a hemisphere (in reality, they're in the shape of kidney beans). Hence the name "Hemi." When this was introduced in the 1950s, it had a few advantages over the standard engine of that time, such as increased power output with reduced fuel consumption. The advantages over a modern standard engine? None. It's actually more expensive to produce and uses more fuel.
So, the "Legendary HEMI V8" is as useful as a snooze button on a smoke alarm, taking something meant to improve the quality of your life and rendering it worthless. But what to make of the "equally aggressive style"?
You might say that they look "cool." I have to admit that they certainly are distinctive, but so is pink hair and you don't want that either. You soon realize that the styling is quite ostentatious; there's too much chrome, the lights are too slanted, and the whole face is a bit too much. There's one in the parking lot next to the Mods that's bright yellow with a black spoiler, a black hood, and lots of red letters. The last time I saw something that vulgar, it had an "X" rating. But if you have pink hair, you might like it.
Then you move to the interior, and it gets worse. It's not pretty in there. I will say that the seats are comfortable; the driving position is quite good as well. There are also far fewer panel gaps than what used to be the case in cars from the Chrysler group. Unfortunately, due to the styling, the windows are quite small and the pillars are quite large. This means that driving a car this big (and it is enormous) is a bit like steering an aircraft carrier while looking through your mailbox in Mac. Furthermore, the buttons are far too gray, the center console is bland, the dials are a bit too italicized and mid-life crisis, and the plastics - well, the last time I felt plastics like that, they contained Tic-Tacs.
I haven't finished tearing it apart yet. The bottom-of-the-range engine, the 2.7-liter V6 is so slow that you would get to your destination quicker if you got out and pushed. The one you should be interested in is the top-range SRT8 with a 6.1 liter Hemi (man-tastic!) V8 that produces 425 horsepower. I know that sounds like a lot, but BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Volkswagen, and even Mitsubishi have been able to produce more horsepower with smaller engines that are easier to maintain and more fuel-efficient. Speaking of which, the 6.1-liter HEMI (grrr) will do 13 miles per gallon. To add insult to injury, it is granted a gas-guzzler tax. Finally, the SRT8 is over $40 grand. By all measures, this is a terrible car. Big, vulgar, cheaply made, over-priced, poorly designed, and nowhere near as good as its European rivals. There's no logical reason to buy this car.
And yet … propel yourself into the gigantic driver's seat, heave shut the heavy, man-sized door, slam the chunky gear lever into "D," floor the gas, and the nose of the car boosts upward as a rising roar comes tearing out of the engine while you are shoved back against the seat. It sounds like all 425 horses are trying to escape the bonnet with a ferocity only matched by the movements of this beast; it rattles and shakes and rumbles as it tears down the road, making you feel as though you are in control of something wild and feral. Then you realize that the steering is heavier than the car itself, and as you tightly grasp the massive steering wheel and lug it around, you feel like a horse of a man. Everything about the aptly named Charger, from the Tonka-toy style gear lever to the ludicrously huge wheels makes you feel 5 years old. You are reduced to wide-eyed wonder as it blasts forward.
Cars like the BMW 5 Series, the Lexus GS430, and the Mercedes E-Class are like exquisite dinners from the Olive Garden. Fine, delicate, seemingly perfect in every way but a bit formal, a bit staid, and to be honest, a bit boring. The Dodge Charger is like a giant McDonald's burger; simple, crude, over-the-top, and quite unhealthy (and therefore very American). Something from a fine restaurant is technically better, but what would you prefer more of the time? Sitting next to a Toyota Prius (Lean Cuisine) this car looks fantastic. What's more, as you are plastered onto the seatback doing 0-60 in five seconds, and about 30 gallons of fuel, you realize that you don't care about the cheapness of the interior or the fuel consumption or that you can't see the pedestrian you just ran over. The visceral thrill is intoxicating. There is nothing like this for putting a huge smile on your face. There's nothing else that makes you feel so happy to be alive.
And there's no recipe for that.
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