Rental Car Ruckus 2: Electric Boogaloo

[Jake]

I had some credit card points to burn up and a weekend full of driving ahead, so I decided to see what the nice folks at Avis could do for me this past weekend. I get "Avis Preferred" membership through work, which meant I could skip the line at the airport when I arrived to get my car. I booked a "Chevrolet Malibu or similar" for three days, as my weekend had me putting about 400 highway miles on the car and I figured a longer wheelbase (compared to say, a Focus or whatever) would be more comfortable.

The Avis app lets you pick your vehicle before you arrive, so I logged on while riding the Metro to Reagan Airport (aka my pickup location). My choices on the app were a Passat, Kia Sportage, or (oddly) Infiniti QX60. I decided to hedge my bets and selected none of them, which meant I had to check in with the guy at the airport.

I wandered over to the Preferred booth and the Avis rep offered up a Sportage, RAV4, or Malibu. Sitting next to the silver Malibu was a white Dodge Charger with a "HEMI" badge on the fender. I kinda glanced that way and was like "what about that Charger? They're about the same size and all, right, and I don't need an SUV." He looked at me and goes "well, they're not in the same pricing class, but for this weekend, it is, go take it."

The white Charger's keyfob had gone MIA, so I went back to the desk after getting mildly excited about V8 gurgles, now resigning my fate to a silver Malibu with an exciting 1.4L turbo four. Somehow, he found another Charger a few rows over, in This Is Definitely Reckless Driving, Officer Red. The key was in that one, so I threw my bag in the trunk, hit the brake and pushed the starter button. "crankcrankcrank BLARGHGHRHRHRHRHUGHRUGHHH" Goodness this thing sounds awesome, especially backed up against a concrete wall.

Anyway, after a few minutes of listening to a glorious racket of an idle, I finally made it out of the airport parking garage and onto the George Washington Parkway, with my destination 2.5 hours away at the Omni in Bedford Springs, PA. 

Basic impressions of the 2018 Charger R/T after a weekend of driving:

• Dodge spent all their development money on the engine, transmission, steering wheel, and UConnect system, then scrambled to build a car around those bits
  
• The steering wheel is nice and thick, with paddles and good button placement
  
• The transmission is an 8-speed and is pretty responsive, either left to its own devices or paddle-shifted. It'll sit and bang against fuel cut in manual mode!
  
• The engine sounds fantastic and is torquey down low. It makes 385 HP (ish) but does feel a little out of breath if you push it, prolly because...
  
• It weighs 4200 lbs. And you notice it. This car does not "handle"
  
• Alpine sound system was pretty good and UConnect was easy to figure out
  
• The dashboard claimed I got 24 mpg, which sounds good given I was definitely not driving it very hard
  

I also managed to get behind the wheel of another 2018 Charger RT that was definitely not owned by a rental car agency and explored some performance driving abilities. I can confirm that the not-rented Charger RT will leave some sick 11s away from a stoplight if you hit Sport mode, turn off the traction control, and brake-boost it away from the light. It'll do it through the top of second gear. And that same not-rented Charger can be plopped in 1st gear in an empty parking lot behind the Marriott in Chantilly and rip some pretty good donuts.

Mmm, donuts.