In an moment of crossovers and soul-crushing efficiency quotas, the name Dodge Magnum still manages to trigger a strong response in anyone who remembers what a real car feels like. Most of us cherish the 2005–2008 era, when the Magnum was essentially a Chrysler LX platform station wagon that decided it wanted to be a brick with a rocket engine attached.
It was the ultimate “dad’s car” for the father who hadn’t quite given up on life, especially in the SRT-8 trim. It was loud, thirsty, and American. But before that, the nameplate wandered through a desert of identity crises, from the B-platform coupes of the late ’70s to strange, turbocharged K-car experiments in Mexico and Brazilian Dart derivatives.
Now, nearly two decades after it was unceremoniously killed off, a digital artists is trying to resurrect the beast. Take Nihar Mazumdar, for instance. This Texas-based designer has imagined a new Dodge Magnum for the Stellantis era, but here is where things get uncomfortable.
In this CGI-fueled parallel universe, the new Magnum isn’t a hulking full-size monster. I’s a mid-size station wagon built on the bones of a Peugeot 508 SW. A Dodge with a French accent. It wears the face of the eighth-generation Dodge Charger, looking sleek and aggressive. But underneath that digital paint, it feels like a Frankenstein experiment born from a corporate merger board meeting.
The real “miracle”, however, is what the artist imagines under the hood. We aren’t talking about the thirsty V8s of yore. Instead, we’re presented with a “fourth-generation Hemi V8” that embraces the electric shock. Taking a page out of the new Jeep Cherokee playbook, this hypothetical Magnum would pair a downsized 5.0-liter V8 with a hybrid powertrain.
The idea is to keep the weight down with a small battery pack while maintaining the high-output street cred of a muscle car. It’s an utopia, sure. But in a world where we’re being forced into silent appliances, even a French-American hybrid V8 sounds like a symphony we’d be lucky to hear.
