Buy it for the hood, keep it for the 485hp HEMI. If you’re sitting low in the seat and flooring it, those are the two things you notice anyway. Outside, your street cred with ratchet up when the locals get a load of the body’s two-tone paint with heavy-metal metallic glam and Mopar badging. Go ahead, give them a burnout and a nice second-gear power shift. We did, and both impressed the yoga pants at the local Trader Joe’s and the moody Mopar cognoscente after FCA loaned us a Challenger Mopar ’17, a car designed as a nod to the 80th anniversary of Mopar.
If you don’t know, Mopar started in 1937 as Motor Parts, selling antifreeze in the Midwest. In the 1960s, the brand evolved into performance marketing and sold speed parts under the name Mopar Performance Parts. Today, Mopar is a global brand selling everything from Fiat radiators to Hemi spark plugs. Part of that evolution is the Mopar Custom Shop program that provides a network of facilities located near Chrysler Group assembly plants to add appearance parts to the car before it is delivered to the dealership, allowing buyers to order a custom, one-off vehicle with factory support and a warranty.
As part of Mopar’s 80th, 160 Challenger Mopar ’17 vehicles will be available specially modified by the Mopar Custom Shop. Eighty will be offered in hand-painted two-tone Pitch Black over Contusion Blue and another 80 will be Pitch Black over Billet Silver. The package also includes a Pitch Black treatment to the Mopar Design badge, Shaker Hood, and the rear decklid spoiler with a custom hand-painted Mopar 392 logo on the fenders. The wheels are 20×9-inch aluminum alloy with semi-gloss black accents and Dodge logo center caps. The standard exhaust tips were replaced with chrome versions from the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat.
Inside, Tungsten Mopar logos adorn the seatbacks with stitching that follows through to the rest of the interior. Under the hood, a special badge indicates where in the series of 80 the car was built. Each Mopar ’17 comes with an owner’s kit featuring a welcome letter, a birth certificate with the vehicle specs, date of manufacture, proprietary vehicle number, and some collectible tchotchkes like Mopar valve stem caps and a Mopar ’17 keychain.
The Mopar ’17 has the 6.4L 392 Hemi that makes 485 hp and 475 lb-ft of torque with the Shaker package and the headlight air-catcher from the SRT Hellcat feeding the cold air system. Also under the hood is a Mopar Shaker strut tower brace powder-coated silver. The transmission is the six-speed manual.
The Mopar ’17 Challenger follows a tradition of limited edition vehicles modified by Mopar. Starting in 2010 with the ’10 Challenger, Mopar has created eight limited production vehicles: the Mopar ’11 Charger, the Mopar ’12 300, Mopar ’13 Dart, Mopar ’14 Challenger, Mopar ’15 Dodge Charger R/T, and Mopar ’16 Ram Rebel. The Mopar ’17 will be available in both the U.S. and Canada with a Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) of $55,790.
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