First look: production Dodge Charger is a gas!

DAIMLERCHRYSLER brand Dodge dusted off one of the most famous names in performance motoring when it presented the production version of its 2006 Charger, complete with 254kW/525Nm 5.7-litre Hemi V8, at January's Detroit motor show.

Sharing many components with the Chrysler 300C large sedan that will go on sale here in late 2005, the reborn Charger sedan will also be available with a 186kW V6 when it goes on sale in the US mid-year.

True to Charger form, it’s a four-door rear-driver with 50/50 weight distribution, but this time offers high-tech systems like stability control, All-Speed Traction Control, ABS, Brake Assist and Multiple Displacement System (MDS, which deactivates four cylinders in 40 milliseconds to reduce fuel consumption by up to 20 per cent when full power is not required).

Charger will be built alongside Dodge Magnum and Chrysler 300C at the Brampton, Ontario plant in Canada and will also be sold in Latin America and the Middle East.

Before then, however, the Charger name will make its return to NASCAR racing after a 30-year absence in February, when it succeeds Dodge’s current Intrepid race car on the US oval tracks it dominated in the late '60s and early '70s.