- Dodge was not bashful about endorsing the 710-hp 2021 Durango Hellcat SUV, telling potential shoppers they had only “a single shot” at obtaining behind the wheel of the quickest workforce bus idling in the dropoff lane.
- Buyers ended up understandably annoyed when Dodge reported past year that it would carry the Durango Hellcat again as a 2023 product.
- Seven initial consumers have now filed a class-motion lawsuit versus the enterprise, asking for damages in surplus of $5 million.
A course-motion lawsuit was filed previous 7 days in opposition to the idea of the 2023 Dodge Durango Hellcat. Ok, technically, the lawsuit alleges that Dodge made use of “bogus and misleading advertising and internet marketing” again in 2020 when it told possible customers that the 2021 Durango Hellcat would see the only 12 months of generation but then reversed course in late 2022 when it announced the 2023 Durango Hellcat with just about equivalent specs.
The lawsuit is asking for in excessive of $5 million in damages, citing a couple instances wherever Dodge associates manufactured promises that sounded like there would not be any additional right after that year. The major a single? Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis explained in a Dodge promotional video clip that “the Hellcat Durango will be a solitary-model-year operate. When we switch the purchase publications around to the ’22 model calendar year, the Durango Hellcat will be gone. So you’ve only bought a single shot [to buy one].”
Hellcat of the New Previous
The lawsuit also offers from a Dodge push launch that attributes this to Kuniskis: “The 2021 Durango Hellcat is only a one-design-calendar year operate, ensuring that it will be a incredibly special, sought-just after overall performance SUV for decades to come. Based mostly on expected need, all seller allocations have previously been reserved, but there is however some time to secure an unsold vendor get.”
2023 Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat.
Dodge
Mad Sufficient to Sue
Centered on people rates, the circumstance seems to have at least some advantage. Dodge promoted this as a minimal-edition, electrical power-mad SUV, and some people today paid out the nose for them. The lawsuit suggests some compensated nearly $115,000 for their Hellcats. Now, all of a sudden, Dodge is creating more of what is mainly the very same automobile, and people individuals are litigiously offended.
Of course, you will find another facet to this: why Dodge reported it would only develop a year’s worth of Durango Hellcats.
Let’s commence with a short timeline. The “a person shot” video talked about above was aspect of the Hellcat Durango’s introduction in July 2020. That same thirty day period, Kuniskis advised Muscle Cars and Vehicles that the Durango Hellcat would not be a serialized, constrained-edition auto. Rather, Dodge was only setting up a tiny quantity mainly because of the pandemic:
“With all of the changes we built in the plant to occur back up [to production] post-COVID with the sequencing and spacing in the plant, it is adjusted the range we can create . . . I you should not have an genuine amount but it will be considerably less than 2000. I do not know how significantly significantly less than 2000. It will be established by consumer need and how a lot we can create in that six-month period,” he was quoted as expressing.
No Restrict on 2023 Creation?
COVID was aspect of the trouble, but it turned component of the remedy. The world wide chip scarcity authorized Dodge to make a lot more Durango Hellcats by altering the output of other styles. The final nail in the coffin was that the fuel-gulping Hellcats have been not aiding Stellantis meet its emissions targets. COVID-relevant disruptions are on the decline, and Dodge engineers had been ready to meet emissions laws by changing the gasoline tank, gasoline filler and carbon canister, in accordance to Motor Authority, which also cited a Dodge spokesperson as declaring the 2023 Durango Hellcat will not be a quantity-restricted design.
Dodge did not respond to Auto and Driver’s request for remark ahead of publication. The corporation did convey to other media retailers it does not remark on pending litigation.
Contributing Editor
Sebastian Blanco has been crafting about electric vehicles, hybrids, and hydrogen autos due to the fact 2006. His articles or blog posts and car evaluations have appeared in the New York Moments, Automotive Information, Reuters, SAE, Autoblog, InsideEVs, Vehicles.com, Motor vehicle Communicate, and other outlets. His 1st eco-friendly-motor vehicle media function was the launch of the Tesla Roadster, and given that then he has been tracking the shift away from gasoline-run automobiles and getting the new technology’s value not just for the vehicle business, but for the globe as a whole. Toss in the latest shift to autonomous automobiles, and there are more exciting adjustments happening now than most persons can wrap their heads all-around. You can obtain him on Twitter or, on very good days, driving the wheel of a new EV.