Dodge brings its electric and twin-turbo Chargers to Europe

27 October 2026

Trying to get a wide American performance car through a multi-story parking garage in Europe is an exercise in patience and hand-eye coordination - your head swings from side mirror to side mirror like your life depends on it. Buying a proper Detroit muscle in Europe used to mean dealing with gray-market importers, confusing paperwork, and cars that were out of scale with local roads.

Dodge is changing all that by officially bringing the eighth-generation Charger lineup across the Atlantic to celebrate the nameplate's 60th anniversary. Working with official importer KW Automotive across more than 200 retail locations in 20 countries, Dodge is making both the battery-electric Charger Daytona and the gasoline-powered Charger SIXPACK available directly to European buyers, with customer deliveries expected to begin around the first quarter of 2027.

The footprint of this Windsor, Ontario-built machine is the first thing you have to come to terms with - the new Charger is 206.6 inches long, 79.8 inches wide, 59 inches tall, and rides on a 121 inches wheelbase. In electric Daytona form, it tips the scales at 5,838 lb. A homegrown rival like the BMW i5 M60 is “only” 199.2 inches long, 74.8 inches wide without mirrors, and 59.3 inches high on a 117.9 inches wheelbase - and it weighs 5,247 lb. The Charger sits right in the middle between the i5 and the much longer i7 - it's a lot of a car, especially for a two-door coupe version.

The gas-powered versions get plenty of nostalgic attention, but the battery-electric Charger Daytona is apparently the real centerpiece of this transatlantic strategy. It has a 100.5 kWh battery pack operating on a 400V architecture, feeding two electric drive modules. In the range-topping Daytona Scat Pack, this setup delivers 670 horsepower and 627 lb-ft of instant torque, launching the (very) heavy car from 0 to 60 mph in 3.3 seconds and clearing the quarter-mile in 11.5 seconds. The BMW i5 M60 delivers 601 horsepower and 605 lb-ft of torque, meaning the big American coupe outmuscles one of Germany's quickest electric sedans (at least in a straight line) - and it'll cost a lot less.

Of course, Dodge knows its traditional customer base is skeptical of silent drivetrains, which brings us to the car's most questionable features. The Daytona Scat Pack comes with a PowerShot button on the steering wheel that adds a 40-horsepower boost, alongside dedicated Drift and Donut modes and a Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust system that plays synthesized sound through external speakers. Theater? Yes, absolutely. An artificial exhaust note is never going to fool anyone, and no one actually needs a dedicated button for parking lot donuts. But at the Balocco Proving Ground in Italy, where Dodge hosted European testers, the chassis hardware proved much more convincing than the marketing gimmicks. That instant torque metered out precisely across both axles gives the car genuine corner-exit traction that old rear-wheel-drive muscle cars simply did not understand.

There is an interesting wrinkle in how Dodge (and its parent Stellantis) positions the entry-level electric variant for European buyers. In North America, Dodge dropped the standard Charger Daytona R/T after the 2025 model year, leaving the 670-horsepower Scat Pack as the only electric choice. The official European launch lineup through KW Automotive explicitly includes the Daytona R/T alongside the Scat Pack. With the Stage 2 upgrade package from the factory, the European Daytona R/T puts out 536 horsepower and 404 lb-ft of torque despite sharing the exact same battery and dual-motor hardware as its pricier sibling. Keeping the R/T alive for Europe makes a lot of sense - strict emissions taxes and company-car benefit rules in countries like France, the Netherlands, and the UK penalize combustion engines, so offering a slightly more accessible electric Charger gives buyers an easier way to get their "Americana" fix.

Bringing the Charger Daytona to Europe also means adapting its charging hardware to local infrastructure. The 2027 model year cars sold in North America are switching to the Tesla-style NACS port, but every European Daytona will arrive with the mandatory CCS2 connector. Because the STLA Large platform in this configuration uses a 400V system rather than the 800V architecture found in a Porsche Taycan or Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, charging speeds are acceptable rather than class-leading, taking a bit under half an hour to go from 20% to 80% on a fast charger. Stellantis says it is a pragmatic setup that prioritizes reliable compatibility across 20 different countries. It's a bit of a marketing spin, but it works - just.

If you still want mechanical pistons and the smell of unleaded fuel, Dodge is bringing the Charger SIXPACK right alongside the EV. The old 5.7-liter and 6.4-liter Hemi V8 engines are gone, replaced by the Stellantis 3.0-liter twin-turbocharged Hurricane inline-six engine paired with an 880RE eight-speed automatic transmission. In the entry-level SIXPACK R/T, the standard-output engine generates 420 horsepower and 468 lb-ft of torque, good for a 0 to 60 mph run in 4.6 seconds and a quarter-mile pass in 12.9 seconds. Stepping up to the SIXPACK Scat Pack brings the high-output version of the straight-six, delivering 550 horsepower and 531 lb-ft of torque to drop the sprint time to 3.9 seconds. Yes, the gasoline models are slower and more expensive to run - for true hardcore fans only.

Dodge talks about reintroducing American authenticity and standing apart from the crowd, and launches a seven-part cinematic video campaign comparing the cars to awakening creatures. You can safely ignore the dramatic advertising spin. Every automaker tries to sell a lifestyle, and Matt McAlear and Fabio Catone are simply doing their jobs by talking up sixty years of heritage. What actually matters is that Stellantis spent money to engineer a single platform capable of holding both a 100.5 kWh battery pack and a twin-turbo straight-six without ruining the proportions of either car. Both versions share the same wide stance, the same clean roofline, and the same driver-focused cabin. As long as we conveniently ignore the overall size, of course.

Bringing the eighth-generation Charger to Europe is a brave piece of variety in a market that has become quite uniform. European roads are packed with electric crossovers and sensible compact hatchbacks that do everything efficiently without ever raising your pulse. The Charger Daytona and SIXPACK are too wide for narrow medieval village lanes, and the combustion models will face stiff registration taxes in several capitals, roughly pushing on-the-road prices well past $87,900 in high-tax regions. But for drivers who want a long-legged, distinctively styled grand tourer with serious straight-line shove, having an official factory warranty makes this American outlier a really tempting alternative.

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