OK, pausing the video to add my running commentary.
Off to a bad start here...
18-22 second..."It was breed from the SRT8". Wrong. The wagon is an L car, and is derived from the Charger/300 sedans. SRT8 is a top performance trim level in those years. Now if the video title was "Magnum SRT8", then you could perhaps say that, but the video title is "Dodge Magnum". They should fix one of those two things.
43-45..."to supplement the Dodge Charger". Partially complete. Few remember, and I may not even have this 100% right. But in '78 IIRC you could get a Charger SE (Cordoba twin that most people think ended in '77), or a Charger (non-SE - most forget this car existed - a body style that was alternately marketed as the Dodge Coronet and Dodge Monaco in the '75-'78 years...it had a TRUE identity crisis), or a MAGNUM! Yes, 3 B-body derived cars, all on the showroom floor at the same time. The SE was quickly phased out, and only produced for a few months in '78. I honestly could not tell you if the Charger (non-SE) made it through the full year or not. For my money, as the up-level trim, I'd say Magnum replaced the SE, and supported the Charger?
'78 Charger
'78 Charger SE
1:25-1:31: Somewhat factually true, but I'd have to add a few asterisks here to their "was actually a complete failure with only 80k units sold in the two years of production". I will fully concede that Dodge almost assuredly had higher sales hopes for this car, as it did for ALL of it's cars in this era. But, with the Charger SE having started it's first year with 30k sales and tapering off from there, and assuming '78 Magnum production was 50k-ish and '79 was 30k-ish, then I'd say first year sales were a nice improvement. Again, Cordoba is sucking up most of the oxygen in this room (Mopar mid-sized personal luxury car buyers), though the '78 Cordoba restyle was not as popular as the earlier cars, and sales for it were down. This was also the year GM downsized all of it's cars in this class (Monte, Cutlass, Regal, Grand Prix), and the "metric cars" were a big sales success. Add in high gas prices and interest rates, and a corporation in financial trouble, and I'd say the Magnum did pretty nicely. I'm sorry I don't have more accurate numbers on some of this. My reference manual for sales data seems to be missing at the moment.
1:31-1:35: "It was a muscle car that back in the day had no muscle". Now this is a point that many won't agree with me on, but it's one that grinds my gears at times. If you want to do a review of an old car, and draw comparisons to a modern car, that's fine. Say that's your goal, and do it. If you are reviewing a car that is an antique, and commenting on it's performance "back in the day", then discuss that performance in comparison to other vehicles of it's era. I would not write a serious comparison between a Model A and a '70s Magnum (mid-30's to mid-70s equals roughly 40 years) any more than I would right a serious review comparing the '70s Magnum to one of today's muscle cars (another 40+ year leap forward). As a look back, to see how far we've come, sure. As a serious criticism of the cars performance back in the day, poppycock. I would argue that comparisons of muscle cars even 5-10 years prior, while much fairer, miss the point. That era was dead and gone. NO ONE was building those cars anymore.
If you can accept that line of thinking, then I would suggest that the '78 Magnum in GT form was a very competent performer compared to it's peers. The P-code 400 (220+ horse with big block torque) was still available, as was the E58 360. The E58 was the 360 that was used in the Little Red Express pickups, which were top performers in the market at the time...faster than a new Corvette. With 195 h.p., the E58 looks like a weakling today, but kept in the proper perspective, it was a good running car in it's day.
2:05: "The last true Mopar muscle car was the 3rd generation Dodge Charger". Well, not I'm going to piss some of YOU off. Certainly true for the earlier cars. But is there a true mechanical difference between the average '74 Charger SE and a '75 Charger SE? Same chassis, same suspension, same powertrains. The '75 probably weighs a little more with it's govt. mandated bumpers, and perhaps a touch more sound insulation than the '74, but they are mechanically largely the same. We won't be able to settle the argument here as to what year the muscle car officially died, but my guess is the paper copy of your title would not cover the difference in performance between these two cars. This was a decades long downwards spiral of performance, not an overnight crash. I will acknowledge that a handful of 440 cars were built in '74...a nice upgrade that the 2-door later B-bodies never enjoyed.
3:35: So they are finally touching on some of the sales numbers, dogging the '78 SE for only selling a few thousand units, without the full disclosure that it was only a partial year of production, and that it shared the showroom with the all-newly-styled Magnum.
The whole subsequent argument that the Magnum was brought out so that The King would have a Dodge to drive in NASCAR competition is, to me, wrong on all kinds of levels. I won't even go into them all. I thought they just stated that SE sales sucked (they did), so this refresh would not have been to solve that? To bring Dodge B-body sales more in line with Chrysler B-body sales, while drawing a dramatic styling difference between the two for once? Could it be that as Mopar teetered on the brink of bankruptcy that spending money on racing was priority zero? That any aero advantage to the Magnum front end was a nice byproduct of the restyling, and not the racing purpose for it? Could it be The King, with no factory support other than a few parts, was lured away by factory money from GM? If the Magnum was such an aero train wreck, how does Richard qualify second and finish 2nd in his 125 qualifying race in '78? How did he run to 6th place in the 500 with it? If it's such an aerodynamic brick, how does Kyle take the same car and win his first ARCA race? There was no factory support for racing with the small block....go watch the Petty Brothers Racing YouTube channel, and listen to them talk about their Dad Maurice (Richards brother) going to junk yards to find 340 T/A blocks to build into race engines. There was a time in NASCAR when everyone built race engines from junk, but that era had died decades before. Yet this is what the Petty's were reduced to trying to keep a Mopar competitive. It was a great partnership while the factory money and support lasted, but for the teams to remain competitive, they HAD TO move on from Mopar in the late '70s.
I sure wish some of these folks would do their homework. Regurgitating stereo types and misconceptions provides a skewed view of automotive history. Look at the comments for this video...all the pats on the back...good job guys...great video. People who don't know will watch this, and then think that they DO know. It just makes me shake my head.
I swear, I'm really not the ogre that I probably come across as when I watch these things. I'm an automotive nobody, and I can quickly and easily spot numerous errors in their thinking here. If someone puts forth a product like this setting themselves up as knowledgeable on the subject, they really should do their homework.
