Dodge Challenger GT Review! | Is It A Proper Muscle Car?

Dodge builds an all-wheel-drive Challenger, but the only engine you can get with it is a V6 — so EddieX asks the obvious, slightly provocative question: does that still count as a muscle car? The answer that comes back from actual GT owners in the snowbelt has almost nothing to do with horsepower, and everything to do with why they bought this exact car in the first place. What does “muscle car” even mean once winter tires enter the conversation?

An all-wheel-drive Dodge Challenger sounds like a contradiction until you watch enough of the comment section to realize how many owners drive one every single day, through weather that would put a rear-drive muscle car in storage for months. EddieX borrows one from a Michigan dealership to answer a single loaded question: does bolting all-wheel drive to a V6 disqualify a Challenger from calling itself a muscle car at all? The replies split fast, and not in the direction you’d expect — actual GT owners from the snowbelt push back hard, citing real mileage numbers and stereo upgrades instead of horsepower bragging rights. Somewhere in that argument, a purely semantic dispute breaks out over whether “muscle car” was ever the right label to begin with. So which side is actually right, and does it even matter to the people who own one?

A Snow-Weather Pony Car Gets Its Day in Court

EddieX built this review around a genuinely unusual proposition: Dodge now sells an all-wheel-drive Challenger, badged GT, but the only engine available with that drivetrain is the 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 — no V8, no manual, none of the traditional muscle car signifiers. Borrowing the loaner from LaFontaine Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram of Saline, EddieX frames the entire review around one central question stated directly in the video’s title: is this actually a proper muscle car, or something else wearing muscle car styling? That framing set off exactly the debate you’d expect once the video reached Challenger owners, many of whom came into the comments not to defend horsepower numbers but to explain why they specifically sought out the AWD GT for reasons that have nothing to do with drag strip performance. The review’s premise, in other words, generated more interesting content in the replies than almost anything covered in the video itself.

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The Muscle Car vs. Pony Car Fight Nobody Asked For

A surprising amount of the pushback in the comments wasn’t about performance at all — it was about vocabulary. Several viewers corrected EddieX’s framing directly, pointing out that the Challenger, regardless of engine or drivetrain, has always technically been a pony car rather than a muscle car, a distinction rooted in body size, platform-sharing, and market positioning rather than raw power. Pony cars like the Challenger, Mustang, and Camaro were originally defined by compact, affordable, sporty coupe platforms aimed at a broad buyer base, while muscle cars referred more specifically to mid-size sedans and coupes stuffed with oversized V8s for straight-line performance. That distinction might sound pedantic, but it’s a long-running argument among enthusiasts, and the fact that it flared up so forcefully in response to this particular review suggests EddieX’s chosen title touched a nerve that has little to do with the AWD system at all and everything to do with decades of contested terminology.

Why Dodge Built an All-Wheel-Drive Challenger At All

Dodge introduced the all-wheel-drive Challenger GT for the 2017 model year specifically to reach buyers in regions where a traditional rear-wheel-drive muscle car spends half the year parked in a garage. The GT pairs the 3.6-liter Pentastar V6, rated at 305 horsepower and 268 lb-ft of torque, with an eight-speed automatic transmission and a full-time AWD system — no manual gearbox is offered, and no V8 has ever been paired with the AWD drivetrain. That combination was a deliberate business decision rather than an engineering afterthought: Dodge recognized that a segment of pony car buyers in the Northeast, Upper Midwest, and mountain regions wanted the Challenger’s styling and interior without sacrificing daily usability every winter. The commenters defending this exact car in the Northwest and South Dakota are effectively the target market Dodge had in mind when the GT trim was greenlit, using the car exactly as intended rather than as a compromise.

The V6 Numbers Nobody Wants to Brag About

On paper, the Challenger GT’s numbers won’t excite anyone shopping for a Hellcat or even a base V8 R/T: 305 horsepower and 268 lb-ft of torque from the naturally aspirated Pentastar V6, moving a curb weight north of 4,000 pounds once the AWD hardware is factored in. Those figures put the GT well behind its V8 stablemates in outright acceleration, and it’s exactly the gap EddieX’s review title is needling. But several commenters flip the framing entirely, treating the modest power output as a feature rather than a shortcoming — a V6 Challenger with AWD isn’t trying to win a stoplight drag race, it’s trying to survive a Northwest winter or a South Dakota ice storm while still looking and feeling like a Challenger every day of the year. One Charger R/T AWD owner even weighs in to confirm that Mopar’s AWD system puts power down cleanly on snow with no wheel-spin, a real-world data point EddieX’s review doesn’t have the mileage to test firsthand.

Destroyer Grey, a Dealer Loan, and What That Signals

The review car’s paint, a shade Dodge calls Destroyer Grey, became its own small punchline in the comments, with multiple viewers finding the name amusingly over-the-top for a car built around all-weather practicality rather than outright aggression. The car itself came as a loan from LaFontaine Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram of Saline, a Michigan dealership credit EddieX gives directly in the description — a detail that matters because it places this review squarely within dealer-supported content rather than an owner’s personal car, which can shape both the access EddieX gets and the tone of the coverage. Loaner-car reviews like this one tend to focus more on everyday livability and feature walkthroughs than on aggressive performance testing, which lines up with how much of this particular review and its comment section revolve around daily-driving considerations — mileage, stereo quality, all-weather grip — rather than track numbers or quarter-mile times.

27.5 MPG and a Subwoofer: The Daily-Driver Case

The most compelling pushback against the “not a real muscle car” framing comes from owners who simply describe how they use the car. One GT V6 owner reports averaging around 27.5 miles per gallon, a figure no V8 Challenger owner could credibly claim, and specifically praises the available Alpine premium audio system with its factory subwoofer as a reason the car earns its keep as a daily driver rather than a weekend toy. That kind of testimonial reframes the entire debate EddieX set up: rather than asking whether the GT is fast enough to be a muscle car, these owners are asking whether it’s practical enough to be driven year-round in climates that would sideline a Hellcat from November through March. For buyers in that position, the AWD Pentastar V6 isn’t a compromise on the muscle car experience — it’s the only version of that experience they can actually use for most of the year without a second, more practical car in the garage.

How the GT Stacks Up Against Its V8 Siblings

Compared to the Challenger R/T’s 375-horsepower 5.7-liter Hemi, or the Scat Pack’s 485-horsepower 6.4-liter, the GT’s 305-horsepower V6 is unmistakably the entry point of the lineup, and no amount of AWD grip changes the acceleration gap in a straight line. But the GT occupies a role none of its V8 siblings can fill: it’s the only Challenger trim offered with all-wheel drive, and by extension the only one Dodge sells that’s genuinely engineered for year-round use in snow and ice without winter tires and careful throttle management. That positions it less as a rival to the Mustang GT or Camaro SS, and more as a rival to all-weather sport coupes and crossovers that buyers in harsher climates might otherwise cross-shop instead of a traditional pony car. For a shopper who has already ruled out a RWD V8 because of where they live, the GT isn’t competing against the Hellcat at all — it’s competing against staying out of a Challenger entirely.

A Small But Loyal Following Built on Practicality

What this review, and especially its comment section, reveals is a small but vocal ownership community that doesn’t feel the need to defend the Challenger GT on muscle car terms at all. These are owners in the Northwest, South Dakota, and other snowbelt regions who bought the car specifically because it lets them keep pony car styling and presence without giving up daily usability for a third of the year. EddieX’s review, framed around a somewhat provocative “is it a proper muscle car” question, ends up generating a more interesting answer than a simple yes or no — it surfaces an entire pocket of Challenger ownership defined by climate and practicality rather than horsepower. As EddieX’s channel continues building a reputation for consistent, dealer-supported reviews across the Chrysler and Dodge lineup, videos like this one, which spark genuine debate rather than uniform agreement, are likely part of why the channel keeps growing even outside strict muscle car purism.

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