In the recently-released film The Dilemma, Vince Vaughn's character, Ronny Valentine, and his best friend Nick (played by Kevin James), run an automotive supplier business that has to create a "sound-alike" system for hybrid-powered muscle cars.
Using a 2011 Dodge Charger as the guinea pig, the duo tries to give the fictional hybrid-electric sedan the sound and feel of a Hemi-powered unit.
Dodge sells no such Dodge Charger Hybrid, of course, although a Chrysler 300 Hybrid is said to be on the way for 2013.
In the movie, our fictional duo uses amplifiers and sound systems--but the hybrid part would be simplicity itself.
Dodge Durango Hybrid
To be build a Charger Hybrid (or even more unlikely, a Challenger Hybrid) requires a very specific donor vehicle.
That would be one of the rare 2009 Dodge Durango Hybrids or Chrysler Aspen Hybrids that Chrysler built for only a few weeks before canceling the entire model line amidst the spiraling financial troubles that ended in the company's bankruptcy early in 2009.
When the company canceled a planned Dodge Ram Hybrid pickup truck last March, that marked the end of its cooperation with General Motors on the Two-Mode Hybrid system designed for large rear-wheel-drive and four-wheel-drive vehicles. (Future Two-Mode Hybrid systems will be developed and used by GM alone.)
The few hundred Aspen and Durango hybrids all used 340-horsepower, 5.7-liter Hemi V-8 engines, so we have to think a powertrain swap would be pretty easy.
chrysler aspen dodge durango hybrids 011
And the Challenger Hybrid we're envisioning wouldn't have to have all-wheel-drive (though it could). Losing the transfer case for the driven front wheels would simplify the swap.
The movie, incidentally, got itself into hot water when producers released a trailer in which Vaughan's character said, "Electric cars are gay." Much dismay ensued, and Universal removed the line from the trailer--but not the film.
chrysler aspen hybrid motorauthority 012
Regardless of their odd attitude toward advanced technologies, we have to wonder if the screenwriters actually know anything about hybrid vehicles.
'Cause pretty much anyone we know would have thought of the rare Hemi Hybrid swap in about a nanosecond.
