Our good friends over at Popular Mechanics have been on a fuel-saving tear as of late, putting the brand-new Jetta TDI up against the reigning mileage champ, the Toyota Prius, and following that comparison up with a test of Chevy's Cobalt XFE. What's the next obvious choice for a mileage run? None other than the Dodge Challenger. Wait... excuse me? The Challenger was created to burn rubber and gas, right? Sort of, as one of the reasons people will buy one is for that "I live my life one quarter-mile at a time" Vin Diesel image, but that doesn't mean that all Challengers are equipped with a gas-guzzling Hemi V8 engine. In fact, there is a perfectly decent 3.5-liter V6 engine option for the base-model, though it's saddled with an ancient four-speed automatic transmission.
So, if there is a Challenger out there that isn't exactly being marketed towards the racer crowd, how does it rate on its fuel mileage merits? Eh, we've seen worse. It's EPA rated at 17 mpg in the city, 25 on the highway. All right, we've seen better. But, how did it do in real-world testing? After 669-miles of mostly highway driving, the pony car managed 23.4 mpg. For what it's worth, we got 24 mpg in our own testing. While that's certainly better than what you're likely to get in a V8 powered model, it's not exactly miserly. In any case, now you know.
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