Rippin' It!

David Stanley Dodge.  Or as the advertising jingle goes… “David Stanley leads the way”… to lies, lies and more lies.

So June 2009 I decide I’m going to buy a Dodge Challenger.  I shop around and on the Internet I find a stripped down R/T advertised at $33,000, give or take a little.  I call the dealership and ask about the price and sure enough the confirm, $33,000.  I decided to go test drive the car so I called again and verified the asking price was $33,000.

I drive to the dealership where I meet a salesman and I tell him, “you have a Challenger for $33,000, I want to drive that car” and after a few minutes of searching he finds it “in the back”.  We drive the car and during the test drive I ask several times, about the $33,000 price.   He confirms the price all the way.

So, arriving back to the dealership I’m sold on the car.  I tell the salesman to see the best price that can be made.  After a few minutes some greasy headed guy comes out and with a smirk says, $38,000 is the “best we can do”.  Wait, $38,000?  What happened to $33,000?

After a short discussion he informs me he can only sell the car for $5,000 over sticker and there was no way he could sell the car for $33,000.  So, apparently anything your told either on the phone or in person is not necessarily the truth at David “leads the way” Stanley.

A quick Internet search reveals much of the same, here’s some examples I found in just a few minutes:

I will rate this company below poor. Do not give them your phone number they will call you several times a day. Worse than a telemarketer. They tell you several price quotes for the same car. I would rather walk then to buy a car from this place. The are liars. Do not trust David Stanley Dodge.‎..

After getting back home that same night, which was a Saturday, I got on the computer and started looking at David Stanley’s website. To my surprise I found the same exact truck, I know this because the VIN and stock numbers on the website were the same numbers that were on our purchase and finance paperwork. But the price they had advertised on the truck was $35,872.00, almost a $10,000.00 difference…

Went to purches a new Ram 2500. the trip prior I had asked for the best price they could give me, Chris the manager lied and didn’t tell me of all the discounts…

And the reviews go on and on and on.  I have little doubt this is a high volume dealer, they are in a good location.  I bet a million suckers a day drive by that slap joint.   Google reviews has their ratings at not more than 2 (out of five) for all categories.  The satisfaction rating is 1.1 (out of five).

I wonder who the .1 was?

David Stanley is representative of all that is wrong with the American made cars.  With dealerships like this Dodge could build the best car in the world and the overall rating would still be 1.1.

This is a dealership that should be closed.  Well, investigated and then closed.

So here we have one beautiful black R/T for sale at a Texas dealership. This car is not only stunning it is loaded. I has the Nav system, iPod controls, heated leather seats with inserts, steering wheel controls and its a Hemi six speed.

This car is listed for $40,000+.  No question whoever buys this car is going to be one proud owner.

But I can’t help but wonder how proud and happy they are going to be when the walk around behind the car and find the dealer has placed a dealer advertising sticker on the back bumper.  Not only a dealer

I mean seriously, what is wrong with these dealerships?  If I bought, or even worse, ordered this car and walked around behind it and saw this I would go ballistic! This car isn’t a Chevy Cobalt or a Hyundai Accent, this car represents a $ amount equal to many of our first homes.

Dealerships like this only prove they don’t care about the cars they are selling, the don’t care about the person buying the car and they have no respect for $ you are going to pay to support their salary.

Personally, I think this practice of pasting advertising on the back of YOUR car is something the consumers should absolutely not allow.  Next time you walk into a car lot to look at cars and you find this type of advertisement tell the salesman you might be willing to buy the car if they have one without a dealer billboard on the back.

Tell them you’ll continue to negotiate if you can see what the car looks like without an advertisement on the back.  If they won’t take it off during negotiations, walk away.

Okay so you’ve decided you want a Challenger, and you’ve decided on a Hemi version. The next question becomes should I get an automatic or standard? Dodge has a “Track Pak” option. Dodge’s official statement reads like this:

The available Track Pak features the Tremec TR-6060 six-speed manual transmission with “pistol-grip” shifter for $995. When the six-speed manual transmission is paired with the 5.7-liter HEMI V-8, it produces an estimated 375 horsepower (280 kW) and 404 lb.-ft. (548 N*m) of torque. The Track Pak also includes Hill-start Assist, limited-slip differential, bright pedal covers and performance steering.

In addition, if you order the 20″ wheels you also get 3.92 gearing as opposed to the 3.06 gearing for the automatic and the 3.73 gearing for the 18″ wheel standard transmission options. We can talk about rear gears for several pages but the condensed version reads like this…

A higher number, like 3.92 vs 3.06, means the car will have more launch capability and feel more powerful on acceleration. The trade-off is higher RPM at cruising speed and probably less gas mileage. In the old 4 speed days the top gear (4th) was generally a 1:1 gear. Today’s 5 and 6 speed transmissions usually include a 4th gear 1:1 and then 5th and 6th are overdrive gears.

So what does all that mean?  Well it means the Track Pak cars are going to feel more powerful, and they actually are, although only slightly over the automatic cars.  The question becomes how much gas mileage do I give up and does the relatively low 3.92 mean I’ll have less top end.

Lets answer the top end question with this video.

embedded by Embedded Video


Here we have a 2010 Challenger Track Pak car with a 3.92 rear gear.  From a slow rolling start and easing through the first two gears the acceleration becomes pronounced in 3rd and 4th gear.  The car reaches 130mph after having just barely shifted to 5th gear.  6th was never used.

Short of planning on racing at the Sunday Nextel Cup the car retains plenty of top speed with the low gear.

Gas mileage, according to Dodge, is 16 / 25 for the automatic, 16 / 25 for the manual so that’s pretty much a wash. However, reading further into the Dodge propaganda reveals the manual transmission car is slightly more powerful, at 375hp rather than 370hp and 404 lb-ft of torque versus 398 ft-lbs of torque in the automatic.

The Track Pak Challenger R/T also comes with a “full off ESP” button meaning if you find yourself with an excess amount of money you can roast up some Goodyears. The sales brochure also says the Track Pak has enhanced steering and a sportier less restrictive exhaust.

It is interesting to note the Track Pak R/T has 404 lbs-ft of torque versus the SRT’s 420 lbs-ft. The R/T weighs 130lbs less than an SRT with the same options. That makes the cars awful close in acceleration performance. The SRT wins the breaking competition hands down with those big Brembo’s though.

Welcome to Rippin’ It.com. This is a new site (as of February 19, 2010) dedicated to the Dodge Challenger. I am a Challenger owner (on the 2nd one), a muscle car enthusiast and have enough experience to build a useful Challenger site (hopefully). I currently own a 2010 Dodge Challenger R/T with the Track Pak option.

This is my second Challenger.  I bought a 2009 Inferno Red S/E Challenger on June 30, 2009.  At that time I needed a car to use for my job and the 6 cylinder S/E was perfect.  However, three months later things changed when my agency began providing vehicles (hallelujah!)

Since I had a work car issued to me I was free to choose the car of my dreams which was an R/T with a manual transmission and preferably a “Track Pak” optioned car.  For the $10,000.00 difference between the R/T and the SRT I can buy a really nice blower should the horsepower and torque thing really get to bothering me.  I’ll wait until I feel like I don’t want Dodge to honor the warranty anymore.

I have a lot of plans for this site, including a cgi-database of Challengers, a Challenger Owner’s Gallery and, maybe one day, a forum.  There are forums already, a couple of which are good forums, loaded with advertisements and “memberships”.  My motto is, and always has been, free is better.

Stick around, you never know what you might find.