A professional car buyer put the 2026 Mustang GT and the 2026 Charger SIXPACK Scat Pack back to back and called the result “Not Even Close.” The Dodge has more power, all-wheel drive, and a legendary badge on the fender — and it still lost on the criteria buyers actually care about. That badge turns out to be part of the problem.
Dodge did the math and decided horsepower would settle it. The 2026 Charger SIXPACK Scat Pack makes 550 horsepower — a full 64 more than the angriest Mustang GT on the order sheet — and it puts every one of them down through all four wheels. On paper, that should end the conversation before it starts. It doesn’t. When Car Help Corner lined the two up for a back-to-back drive, the verdict was sitting in the video title before a single mile was covered: “Not Even Close.” And the thing that sank the Charger wasn’t the engine at all — it was the word Dodge stamped on the badge.
The Comparison Wasn’t Won at the Drag Strip
Car Help Corner is run by Shari Prymak, a professional car buyer and auto consultant with over a decade of experience walking consumers through purchases, and the video is built like consumer advice rather than a shootout. The chapter list tells you where the weight of the argument lands: the Charger gets its walkaround at 0:30, the Mustang at 3:48, and then the runtime shifts to reliability at 6:50, interiors at 7:55, pricing at 9:15, and the verdict at 11:00. More than half the video is spent on the things you live with rather than the things you brag about. That framing is a deliberate choice, and it’s why the conclusion lands harder than a stopwatch result would.
It’s aimed at a very specific viewer, too. The description spells it out plainly: if you are buying a 2026 Mustang GT or a 2026 Charger SIXPACK Scat Pack, watch this first. Viewers took that framing and ran with it. The comment section barely mentions quarter-mile times — it’s dominated by talk of long-term repair bills, resale, dealer discounting, and whether either car makes sense at current transaction prices. Several longtime Mustang owners turned up with maintenance histories instead of dyno sheets. When the audience for a muscle car comparison starts arguing about cost of ownership, you can feel the ground shifting under the whole segment.
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“Six Pack” Never Meant Six Cylinders
Here is where the new Charger’s name gets it in trouble with the exact people most likely to defend it. In 1969, Chrysler released the A12 package: a 440-cubic-inch big block wearing three two-barrel Holley carburetors on an aluminum Edelbrock intake, with raised compression, moly piston rings, and Hemi valve springs. Dodge called the setup Six Pack. Plymouth called the identical engine Six Barrel. The “six” was always a carburetor count — six barrels of induction — and never a cylinder count.
It was also a bargain. The 440 Six Pack was rated at 390 horsepower and 490 lb-ft of torque, and it cost $119 on the order form. The 426 Hemi cost $700. For 1969 the package was limited to the Dodge Super Bee and Plymouth Road Runner; in 1970 it spread to the Challenger R/T, Charger R/T, Coronet R/T, ‘Cuda, GTX, Sport Fury GT, and the Superbird. Across three model years, just 13,883 cars were built with it. If you want the deeper version of that story from the Plymouth side, our 1970 Road Runner buyer’s guide covers what Chrysler’s own salesmen were trained to say about these cars.
So when Dodge revives that badge for a twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six, the joke writes itself — and not in Dodge’s favor. Commenters on the video did the math out loud: six cylinders, not six barrels, on a car that no longer offers a V8 at all. Marketing borrowed the emotional weight of a Hemi-era option package and bolted it to the exact engine configuration muscle car buyers were being asked to accept as a substitute. That is a hard sell no matter how good the engine turns out to be.
550 Horsepower and a $54,995 Asking Price
None of this means the Charger is slow. The Hurricane-based Sixpack in Scat Pack tune makes 550 horsepower at 6,200 rpm and 531 lb-ft at 3,500 rpm, routed through an eight-speed automatic with all-wheel drive standard and a selectable rear-drive mode. Car and Driver clocked the Scat Pack coupe at 3.7 seconds to 60 mph and 12.1 seconds at 116 mph through the quarter, with a top speed of 177 mph. Those are numbers that would have read like science fiction to anyone ordering an A12 Super Bee in 1969.
The problem is the window sticker. The Charger SIXPACK R/T opens at $49,995, the Scat Pack coupe at $54,995, and the four-door Scat Pack at $56,995. A 2026 Mustang GT starts at $46,560 with the 5.0-liter Coyote V8 making 480 horsepower and 415 lb-ft — 486 horsepower and 418 lb-ft with the active valve exhaust — and it still offers a six-speed manual alongside the ten-speed automatic. Dodge is asking roughly $8,400 more for 64 extra horsepower, two fewer cylinders, and no third pedal. Stated that plainly, the comparison stops being close.
The street is already telling on those numbers. Viewers describe Chargers sitting on dealer lots while clean used Mustang GTs move in the low $40,000s, and more than one pointed out that Dodge stores will come down several thousand dollars without being asked while Mustang discounts stay thin. That gap between sticker and transaction price is its own kind of verdict — the market is quietly pricing in the same uncertainty the video devotes an entire reliability chapter to. A muscle car that needs a discount to move is a very different proposition from one people line up to pay full freight for.
Why the Mustang Keeps Winning Fights It Shouldn’t
Context matters here more than usual. The last V8 Charger and Challenger left Brampton Assembly in December 2023, the final car down the line being a black Demon 170. The last Chevrolet Camaro was built on December 14, 2023. That leaves the Mustang GT as the only mainstream rear-drive, naturally aspirated V8 pony car you can still walk into a showroom and order new. Scarcity is worth horsepower the car doesn’t have.
Add a proven engine, an available manual, and a far longer track record for the drivetrain, and the Mustang wins on the exact criteria the video spends most of its runtime on. The Charger has the bigger number and the louder name. The Mustang has the one thing that badge on the Dodge is actually referencing — a V8 — plus a simpler ownership story. Whatever the Charger becomes when Dodge finally puts a Hemi back in it, right now the argument is not the close call the spec sheet promised.
Watch the full video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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