Ever since Dodge unveiled the electric successor for the Charger and Challenger sedan and coupe, it’s seen a less-than-rosy reception. No problem, there’s one reliable old trick manufacturers can pull from their sleeves to grease the sales wheels: incentives. Dodge is currently advertising a special on the Charger Daytona, a lease payment of $325 per month for 24 months. If you dig the idea of a large electric liftback coupe, that might sound like an attractive proposition. The problem is, you’re gonna want to read the fine print and do a little math.
Granted, the catch isn’t the trim level, because this offer applies to the high-output Charger Daytona Scat Pack rather than the regular R/T model. That means you get a 670-horsepower full-sized coupe with dual-motor all-wheel-drive and properly quick straight-line performance. Sure, it might not be able to do a burnout, but zero-to-60 mph in a claimed 3.3 seconds puts this thing on the level with two-wheel-drive Lamborghini Huracans and Ferrari 458 Italias.
Sure, the Charger Daytona might have other flaws, like some weirdly cheap interior bits, an aggravatingly slow power seat mechanism to get into the rear seats, reports of disappointing real-world range, and a cargo area that gets weirdly shallow towards the back, potentially leading to crushed groceries, but none of those are catches here either. I’m talking about the actual terms of the deal.
The first questionable part is that Dodge requires a strong $3,604 downpayment on the lease. Add in the lease disposal fee of $395, and that balloons the effective payment to $491.63. What’s more, although putting money down on a lease gets a customer to a desired monthly payment, it comes with a certain amount of risk. Let’s say the car you lease gets totalled soon after leaving the lot. Your insurance company should pay off the remainder of the lease, but that downpayment you spent is gone.
Oh, and this is a conquest offer, so you have to show proof that you already own or lease a non-Dodge vehicle, but that shouldn’t be a problem for many customers. The traditional Charger and Challenger crowd has loudly voiced their collective opinion on the Charger Daytona, and I don’t think we’re going to see as much overlap as Dodge might’ve hoped for.
While an effective payment of $491.63 is pretty far from the headline figure of $325 per month, it’s not a terrible payment for a 670-horsepower car that’ll run from zero-to-60 mph in the threes, right? Well, not quite. See, this 24-month lease deal comes with the insane stipulation of a ridiculous mileage cap — you can only drive one of these Chargers 5,000 miles per year without incurring any overage charges. Oh, and with overage charges standing at 30 cents per mile, not minding the mileage is going to cost people big time.
Keep in mind, 5,000 miles per year for two years is 416.6 miles per month, or just 13.69 miles per day. Even with a second vehicle in the household for road trips, 13.69 miles per day isn’t going to cover many commutes, but at the same time, we aren’t exactly looking at a weekend car here. This isn’t a Mazda MX-5, a gloriously impractical roadster best enjoyed when the sun is shining and the traffic’s clear. It’s a big electric five-seat liftback coupe meant to be used as a daily driver.
Considering the average American drives around 13,000 miles per year, this lease special on the Dodge Charger Daytona is objectively a bad deal. Remember, always read the fine print before you get hooked in on a lease deal, because the actual terms of the contract could prove costly indeed.
Top graphic image: Dodge
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I mean, I drive 3.4 miles a day, so that’s 4 times the normal distance I drive.
Would I do it? No, because I don’t want to lease. But that mileage is something I could totally deal with.
Considering it will spend most of it’s time in the shop with High Voltage issues it will be difficult to accrue more than 5k miles a year anyways.
There are two people in my house with three cars, and we both work from home, so we don’t commute. Our general purpose vehicle gets maybe 5000 miles a year on it maximum, and the other two less than that. So, technically, this lease limitation would be fine for us. However, and it is a big however, There is zero chance I am going to pay $500/mo for something I drive so little. It is almost $1.20/mile at best, just in payment, and in the end, you get nothing.
I bought a nice, low-mileage ND Miata a few years ago for about $24k. It is still in perfect shape, has relatively low mileage, and is worth about $21k. It ends up being about $.40/mile. Meanwhile, the CRV family truckster has dropped about $6000 in value over its use which puts its cost per mile at around $.38. Both were purchased with full warranties for 3 years.
I’m not saying either of those vehicles is a comp for the Charger, just that there are much better ways to get good, reliable transportation, whether you want something fun or practical.
Do miles on your repair loaner car count towards the lease total?
It can’t do a burnout, but can it do donuts? Thirteen miles of donuts every day should just about get your money’s worth out of it by the time the lease runs out.
The Scat Pack does, indeed, have a Donut drive mode.
I have less than zero interest in one of these heaps, but there are plenty of people who don’t drive a lot of miles. I rarely put more than 5K a year on any of my cars, and most of them are under 2K a year. There is little point in paying for more miles in a lease than you will actually use. It’s a lousy deal, but the mileage cap is the least of it.
“Add in the BULLSHIT lease disposal fee of $395”
There… fixed it for accuracy. Seriously… this is just a bullshit tacked on nickle-and-diming fee that is 100% profit.
If they wanted me to pay a fee like that, I feel like I should counter with my own $795 ‘I-drove-to-your-dealership’ fee to bill them with.
And an Acceptance Fee equal to any other BS fee that gets added on. And a Buyer’s Fee to offset the Dealer Fee or VIN etching fee.
Are they trying to claim a lot of interest in this thing. From what I’ve seen is it’s giant weird and not a great driver. The lease has to have some wild speculation about residuals. Maybe they are afraid of a 20k mi bev. The Italians came in decided they knew best for the American market even when the engineers and consultants told them what they needed to do they would say no they knew best. Maybe they they will learn there lesson. Stalantis is doing ok in Europe but not in the US. If they had listened about the ram 700 they probably would have something to sell now but they knew best.
Still, that’s 10,000 passes down the drag strip (and back up the return road).
Crunching the numbers that really matter here, bravo
Ah the lease deal for those who want the prestige of owning the newest Charger without the desire to actually drive it. Sure your nosy neighbor will be jealous as they eyeball it from over the fence but at least the HOA won’t be on your ass for firing up that fake engine noise at 7am.
Dodge is making some interesting decisions these days.
*Carlos Tavares made some interesting decisions
Guarantee you, the management at the US division was not on board with the vast majority of the decisions made since the formation of Stellantis. And would be making the parent company a lot more money if they had been allowed to run things their own way.
Next CEO of Stellantis should have to swear an oath similar to the King’s at coronation, that he’ll govern all his peoples according to their own laws and customs, eg, let Stellantis North America run themselves based on the demands of the local market, just sign their POs and stay out of the way
not pictured above**
Sorry had to lol
It would almost work for me. We are only putting 7k a year on our ioniq 5, but hell no to any FCA product.
I happened to walk through the demo route for these when I was at the Toronto car show last weekend, and there just happened to be a Charger pulling up to a light with it’s fancy noise generator on.
It was WAY louder than I ever would have imagined. Pretty close to the volume you would get from an actual car with an actual V8 pulling up to a light. It didn’t sound like a V8, but there was a loud cyber-rumbling that was weirdly cool at first, but would get properly annoying really easily. And if these things actually sell well? People will hear this all the time.
Look at the bright side… if you only drive it 13.64 miles a day, you’ll only have to charge it once every couple weeks!
There is no way to justify a crappy lease on a crappy car. How do you even use the power and performance? I guess the 5,000 miles a year gets you a cheap Harrgerty insurance policy at a stated value but this is horrible no matter how you look at it. This article requires a comment from Stellantis, why is that not here?
I knew the range would be bad, but 13.6 miles? That’s just terrible 😉
I fail to see the point of this arrangement. I don’t need a lease to experience this, or worse, with some of my cars already.
I am sure the deals are just to get potential customers in the door..
I’m not sure I’d even own a car if I drove so few miles, I certainly wouldn’t lease and I wouldn’t have something that expensive and new—it would either be a dirt cheap old beater, something completely impractical, or a combination.
5000 mi per year. Including wheelspin, that’s like 4500 actual miles covered.
But think of the tire replacement costs
Range anxiety that you pay for, because boldly snatching defeat from the jaws of defeat is the Stellantis way.
This car is DOA. Bring on the Hurricane.
Which is a shame, it’s actually really nice, just too expensive for most. Also, the ICE should have come out first or at the same time. It will be interesting to see the price point they put the base Sixpack at.
They were supposedly targeting $40,000 for the base ICE model originally, so that will put it around $50,000 with tariffs, I’m going to say that’s going to be DOA, unfortunately
At this stage I’m not sure how much of the tariff BS is just the administration peacocking. I have doubts that they’d actually slap Canadian made muscle cars from an American company with tariffs, but then again nothing this administration does is coherent or makes sense so who knows.
The tariffs are right out of Peter Navarro’s playbook, he’s been given a complete and total free hand in formulating the administration’s economic policy, and he’s a completely irrational ideologue on this. He’s the rare economics professor who seems to have somehow never passed a remedial economics class himself
I once passed a remedial economics class for someone without reading any of the material, at age 18. Economics is a pseudo-science, much like witchcraft.
Yeah but not a good idea posting that here. Got to yell and scream orange man bad. Otherwise you will be shunned
Im quite openly left wing and Trump aligns with none of my values but I also think I’ve screamed into the void/these comments enough that continuing to do so isn’t going to add anything to the conversation.
Honestly, if he was on his own, that probably is exactly what Trump would do – that is his established negotiating style going back decades, and first term Trump probably would have just used tariff threats in order to get some sort of concessions he was looking for and then backed down, but second term Trump is different, and he’s surrounded by very different people. Navarro was around in the first term, but he’s been given far more power and influence than he ever had before
But you do add to the conversation. Consider the implications of the Butterfly Effect. I’m not a Trump fan either, but I loathe the so-called “Democratic” party even more.
No matter who you vote for, you get increased technocracy, a loss of civil liberties, more hands reaching into your wallet, lower real wages, and decreasing individual human autonomy, even if a majority of people oppose this unfair and unjust trend. Does that sound fair to you?
100,000 Luigis is the solution. Death is the great equalizer.
Lol what this place is chock full of sanctimoneous liberals.
And those who barely passed Remedial English with a D-.
Yeah, that’s not me, I’m a pragmatist first, and a conservative second, and, so far, Trump is not appearing to be either of those things one month in. We will see if things change, but it would appear he’s getting bad advice from some bad staffing appointments (maybe that’s intentional, and he just decided he doesn’t want anyone that will give him alternate perspectives), and is going to eff things up for himself and his party for no good reason. Nothing done so far will translate to more take-home pay in my pocket or an increase in my living standards, renaming the Gulf of Mexico does nothing to me, but a trade war with the entire world certainly will, and none of it good.
It will be DOA but tariffs will not have anything to do with it. An old platform poorly equipped designed car for $50k? Forget about it.
How is it an old platform? STLA only entered production in 2023, and the Charger is the first vehicle to be built on the STLA Large variant of it (with more from Alfa Romeo and Maserati planned for the next few years)
It would’ve been rad if it came out 3-4 years ago. Today it’s just another overweight (even by EV standards) BEV with lousy range. If it weighed 1,000 pounds less, cost $10,000 less, and had 300 real world miles of range I’d legitimately be interested. Unfortunately as is it’s an exercise in woulda, coulda, shoulda.
The inline six is mighty intriguing though. I’m anxiously awaiting all the numbers and the initial driving impressions. But if the Mustang sedan rumors are true (and there sure is a lot of smoke there) I’m not even sure if the Six Packs are going to have all that much appeal either unless they’re way faster, way more efficient, or way cheaper.
Which nobody will buy because they’re waiting for the Hemi – whether or not that actually arrives.
Im definitely interested in the straight six. It’s apparently a great engine and an all wheel drive, inline 6, 5 door sports sedan sounds like a Bimmer in a Lynyrd Skynyrd short and jorts to me. There are dozens of us! DOZENS!
A great engine that melts catalytic converters, has thermostats that chronically fail in the closed position, plus oil leaks and turbo failures. There’s been a lot of problems with them, fortunately almost entirely under warranty so far, but this is not shaping up to be a successor to the old Slant Six, Chrysler flathead six, or AMC/Jeep straight six in terms of reliability and durability. It seems like it might be overboosted to hit the targeted horsepower numbers, which may be the cause of the cat and thermostat problems, just running way too hot in its standard configuration
If you drive the average amount of miles per year, that’s an extra $100 per month, putting the monthly cost at ~$591.63
I haven’t driven more than 5000 miles a year in 6 years (thanks to full-time work from home), I’m *currently leasing* one of these cars, and even *I* think it’s a terrible deal.
20% more cost gets you twice the usage? Seems like a fair deal to me. 30 cents a mile matches the depreciation portion of the standard business mileage rate.
I predict a lot of these will be totaled/torched/stolen right before the lease end.
I’m the guy, there are probably dozens of us (dozens!), who got this car. It’s fantastic to drive, and anyone upgrading from an older car like me probably wouldn’t notice some minor imperfections in the interior. No problems with the cargo area or range so far, although I will admit the power seat mechanism when you want to open up the back seat is slow.
That said, that lease deal is terrible. I’m paying more per month for my 36-month/10k miles a year lease, but I paid 0 down and the residual value is set at a point that I’ll probably buy the car if I still love it 3 years.
You might be the first owner of these I’ve encountered in the wild but I’m glad you like it!
It’s my midlife crisis fun car! To be fair, I have the R/T, not the Scat Pack, because all the Scat Pack gives me is more incentive to do stupid things with it, and the more-than-double-the-horsepower-of-any-car-I’ve-ever-owned in the R/T is more than enough for the casually fast driving I do.
According to my dealer, they’ve sold 12 Daytonas total (at my dealer, not everywhere) so far. I also have yet to see another in the wild, and I was the first to ask USAA to insure one, they had to manually key me in because the model didn’t even exist in their systems yet.
I’ve seen one, which is better than the “new” Z in terms of how many I’ve seen since they first went on sale.
I got my GR86 just a month after they started taking orders (such that Toyota does) and I had some weirdness with my insurance company where I got a letter saying my VIN didn’t match their records or something along those lines when the VIN they had printed on the form was correct. Cleared it up and got a second letter saying the same thing a few months later.
That’s the one stipulation I wondered about, is what the buyout is on the cheap lease, if it inadvertently ended up as a good deal for someone looking to buy.
I would have to imagine the buyout is much higher than mine, what with the lease only being 2 years and a 5k/year mileage limit.
They are really hoping their customers don’t shop around for alternate lease deals on an EV because there are plenty to be had for less money and for a better vehicle. I leased an Ioniq5 for just under $330 a month for 24 months with 12000 miles a year allowance. Granted, I’m in CO, but that’s more than double the allowable mileage per year for a car that can almost be guaranteed to be more reliable, have more range, and charge faster.
I test drove the Ioniq 5 when I was shopping last month, and it is a great car. It was definitely #2 on my list after the Charger, but the fun factor won me over despite it being more expensive and having less range. I don’t have much in the way of range anxiety, though – I drive more than 200 miles from home maybe 3 times a year. If it’s longer than a 4 or 5 hour drive, I’m probably flying.
The Honda prologue is $249 a month by me