So it came to pass that there were fresh layoffs announced on the final day of production before summer break at the Windsor, ON plant that makes all the Dodge Charger EVs that nobody wants. ICYMI, several years ago Stellantis decided to curb stomp their bread and butter best-selling old-school Charger and Challenger for 2025, instead shifting to all-EV models… no gasoline nor even hybrid available, basically shitting on their core customer. Oh and instead of blue collar, cheap muscle, the 2025 electric starts at $60K for the base model. Meanwhile, you can still buy a Durango with a Hemi-V8 for ten grand less, and you will never have to plug in. What could go wrong?
The handful of workers who spoke to CBC Friday outside the Windsor assembly plant said they expect workers to be back on the job before long. “Could be a couple weeks,” Emanuele Caruana said. “Right now things aren’t looking too good, but they’re going to be good soon.” Dave Lumley isn’t worried at all, and predicted the workers would be back on the job before Christmas. “It’s just temporary,” he said. Lumley attributed the layoffs to changes in Dodge Charger production at the plant. “We have a battery area, and … we’re not building batteries,” he said.
So why are these workers so cheery upon getting their pink slips? Because the future is bright. Today’s layoffs promise tomorrow’s overtime pay… very, very soon. But why? Aren’t they afraid of tariffs? What could possibly be the good news?
The good news is that the climate hoaxers who made all the bad decisions are gone, and the new muscle smells like napalm in the morning. While the old Hemi won’t fit into the new car, they cooked up something even better, less two cylinders. 2026 brings high-tech gasoline and screaming performance, standard. The BASE MODEL makes 420HP, for $10K less than the current model. I will end my commentary here, and simply cut and paste the bullets points from the press release last week. Smells like… victory.
All-new 2026 Dodge Charger Scat Pack Drops the Hammer With 550 Horsepower, AWD Fury and Gasoline-powered Old-school Attitude as Most Powerful Car Under $55,000
- 2026 Dodge Charger Scat Pack, powered by the turbocharged SIXPACK high-output (H.O.) engine, clocks a 3.9-second 0-60 time and runs the quarter-mile in 12.2 seconds with a top speed of 177 mph
- 420-horsepower 2026 Dodge Charger R/T AWD available at a starting U.S. MSRP of $49,995, the most standard horsepower of any muscle car
- 550-horsepower 2026 Dodge Charger Scat Pack available at a starting MSRP of $54,995, delivering the most horsepower under $55,000
- Dodge launches award-winning 3.0-liter Hurricane Twin Turbo I-6 engine as SIXPACK, offering standard-output and high-output versions
- SIXPACK standard-output (S.O.) engine delivers 420 horsepower on 2026 Dodge Charger R/T
- Twin turbo-powered SIXPACK H.O. engine reaches 550 horsepower on Dodge Charger Scat Pack, and is the most powerful version of the Hurricane in production
https://media.stellantisnorthamerica.com/newsrelease.do?id=26969&mid=1
“Beyond the palace, hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard” or “barefoot girls sitting on the hood of a Dodge drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain” wrote no one ever about an EV.
And who knew the boy who was born to run down thunder road would turn out to be such a Marxist.
We didn’t even know he was a democrat until Reagan’s team (stupidly) tried to use “Born in the USA” in an ’84 campaign ad. The first six albums and his best years were almost completely apolitical (apart from some songwriting about the loss of manufacturing jobs in Jersey).
The entertainment business echo-chamber will do a number on you if you let it.
Before Born in the USA, they were anthems, a veritable right of passage… not a pop song in the bunch. I will never forget Veterans’ Stadium sold out five nights in a row that summer. Unheard of.
Summer of ’85. 40 years to the day. We were in the middle of moving during those Vet dates and I couldn’t go. I was bummed.
I didn’t get to see him until ’88 at the Spectrum on the Tunnel of Love tour. The tour where he decided to scrap everything from his old sets and start from scratch with a bunch of songs nobody’d ever heard before. It had its moments (the acoustic “Born to Run” was great), but I remember walking out feeling like I’d been robbed.
Springsteen is a fraud. Faked an injury to get out of Vietnam, adopted a phony working class persona which culminated in his screech fest anti anthem “Born in the USA”.
Too bad he wasn’t as brave as the man in the song. He had nothing to complain about. Someone took his place.
“The Boss” is the biggest wimp around.
In retrospect, I don’t care much about the draft stuff. The fact that there was a draft at all for a needless and unjust war that the American government lied their way into is disgusting enough. Casting the anti-war movement as pro-communist through the manufactured hippy movement was just more dialectical nonsense to drive patriotic Americans into the arms of the endless war machine. The fact that he got out of going to Vietnam doesn’t bother me… but writing a protest song in the first-person as if he did go is admittedly lame.
Putting that aside, I think we all realize that Bruce Springsteen is a lost soul and the consummate ticket-taker. But there was a time when he wasn’t that, when he was just a talented kid from Jersey who wrote songs about a loss of identity in his part of the world after the Great Migration and the sabotage of the American manufacturing base. He probably didn’t even recognize why those things were happening, and he certainly didn’t know who caused them (he still doesn’t)… but his reactions to what was happening around him felt sincere, and the art was legitimately worthwhile. It had a romantic, cinematic quality to it in the early days, and the musicianship of the E Street Band was top-notch compared to what most American rock bands were putting out there. Listen to songs like “New York City Serenade” or “Meeting Across the River/Jungleland” if you want to hear the Springsteen we’re talking about.
“Born in the USA” is the dividing line in his catalogue. That’s when the false religion of American politics started working its way into Bruce’s music and his persona, and the creative spirit in him began to die. Because that’s the way it always goes with these people. American politics destroys everything it touches.
CJ,
My guess is if you knew someone who got drafted and served in that unjust war and suffered immensely for it or died your view of the draft would be quite different.
Every war is unjust save very very few. I would have more respect for Springsteen if he had shown remorse for what he did or said simply “I was scared”. But he’s unashamed.
Springsteen’s music was always political. It’s just that Born in the USA was so big that’s when most people started paying attention.
He actually did say he was scared… in the opening monologue to “The River” on the ’75-’85 Live album.