Traveling a lot for work outside the big cities means I spend plenty of time behind the wheel of rental cars. And if there’s one thing you learn quickly, it’s that your reservation doesn’t mean much. You can book a standard sedan every time, but when you get to the counter, your fate rests entirely in the hands of the rental car gods—and the rental car gods are nothing if not capricious.
Sometimes they frown on you. That’s what happened to me during the 2011 Iowa straw poll, when I spent days crisscrossing the state in a Chevy Aveo. If you’ve never been in one, count yourself lucky. If you have, you know a go-kart is smoother, roomier, and safer.
Other times, they laugh at you. In 2017, I flew to Alabama to cover Roy Moore’s Senate campaign. I asked for a sedan. What I got was a giant, boxy cargo van—the kind of thing you half-expect to see with “FREE CANDY” painted on the side. Pulling up to Moore’s event in that monstrosity, I worried people might mistake me for a supporter.
But every now and then, the rental car gods smile. They really smiled in 2020, when I landed in Des Moines for the Iowa caucuses. The agent looked up and asked, “Would a Dodge Challenger be okay?”
Yes. Yes, it would.
I’d once had a Dodge Charger—basically the four-door sibling of the Challenger—on assignment in upstate New York, and it had left an impression. I’m not a car guy, so I can’t explain in technical detail why the Challenger is the greatest car on the road. All I know is it’s true. The way Caravaggio’s Calling of St. Matthew is the best painting ever painted and Bernini’s David the best sculpture ever sculpted—it just is.
Over four days and nearly 500 miles in Iowa, I stuck to backroads whenever I could. Suddenly, stop signs weren’t annoyances slowing me down—they were invitations. Each one meant another chance to hit the gas and feel the Challenger come alive.
Even the version I drove, which needed more than four seconds to hit 60, felt thrilling. The rumble of the V8 HEMI engine in your chest, the retro design straight out of 1970—this was the soul of the American muscle car. As Jay Leno once put it, “The Challenger is really the last great American road car.”
I’ve driven more than a hundred cars, some pretty nice ones, but the Challenger is the only one I’ve ever loved. So when my wife’s office was ending remote work in 2021 and we still only had one car—a 2011 Hyundai Tucson—I floated the idea of buying a used Challenger I’d found online for $16,000.
“You know your friends will laugh at you,” she said.
“I’ve considered this,” I admitted. Dressed in Gap polos or Brooks Brothers, I didn’t exactly look the part. “But there are more expensive—and destructive—ways to have a midlife crisis.”
In the end, practicality won. Her commute was two hours round-trip; mine was one flight of stairs. She got a Mazda. I put my muscle car dreams on hold.
Then Dodge announced 2023 would be the final year for both the Challenger and Charger. Chevy killed the Camaro. That left only the Ford Mustang limping along, its sales down nearly a third in 2025.
So why is the American muscle car fading? And what are we losing as it dies? Those questions sent me to Pontiac, Michigan, earlier this month—to Roadkill Nights, a daylong celebration of rubber, roaring engines, and legal drag racing down Woodward Avenue.
The first thing you notice isn’t the cars but the smell—burning rubber. Outside the event, Challengers in neon green, orange, and purple line the streets like parade floats. The vibe is more county fair than Fast & Furious: food trucks, families, kids riding around in Power Wheels, a monster truck doing donuts in a parking lot. But the main draw is the drag strip, where thousands cheer from the bleachers.
There I met Mike Sherrow, from Suffolk, Virginia, attending his tenth Roadkill Nights. For him, muscle cars are about family, passed down from his dad. “Building your own stuff, modifying it, making it what you want—it’s part of car culture. And it’s going away,” he told me.
Why the decline? Sherrow pointed to emissions laws, lawsuits, and racetracks closing. “It’s a dying art,” he said. “The greats are passing on, and their knowledge is going with them.”
That cycle—death and rebirth—isn’t new. The original muscle car era kicked off in 1964 with the Pontiac GTO. Ford soon sold a million Mustangs. But by the mid-’70s, rising gas prices, new regulations, and practical family needs ended the golden age.
History repeated in the 2000s. The Fast and the Furious put muscle cars back in the spotlight, and Dodge revived the Charger in 2006 and the Challenger in 2008. Together, they sold more than 2 million before Dodge shut them down again in 2023.
This time, regulations were a big factor. Meeting fleet-wide emissions standards wasn’t just expensive—it was nearly impossible. Dodge tried to replace its muscle cars with an electric Charger Daytona EV, complete with fake engine noise pumped through speakers. Reviews called it “pretty lame.” Sales fizzled. Dodge has since announced it’ll bring back a gas-powered Charger in 2026, but only with a V6.
Whether that revival works is anyone’s guess. Beyond regulations, today’s headwinds include high interest rates, tariffs, fewer young drivers, and shifting tastes.
To some, the muscle car’s death is overdue. They’re loud, gaudy, and inefficient. To others, they’re works of art, outlets for creativity, and—most importantly—vehicles for friendship.
That’s what I heard over and over in Pontiac. Enthusiasts spoke less about horsepower and more about garage nights with friends, problem-solving, beers after failures and victories, and the deep satisfaction of building something with your own hands.
For most, electric cars don’t scratch the same itch. “There’s nothing there to change,” one man told me. “You’ve got batteries and a motor.” Tinkering is the point for him—he’d poured $100,000 into his Buick GNX engine.
Others are more open-minded. Younger generations will embrace EV culture once infrastructure catches up. Maybe. But for now, the sound and feel of a big V8 still defines what it means to love cars.
Before I left Pontiac, one man summed it up simply: “Find a car you love. Start small. Do your own oil changes. Work your way up. We all started somewhere.”
I still don’t know when—or if—I’ll finally buy that Challenger. But as one old-timer told me, grinning as the drag strip thundered behind him, “Don’t worry. It’ll be back.”