Dodge Was Right About Four-Door Muscle Cars

If everything goes right, pony cars are about to get really interesting. Ford is reportedly working on something new and Chevrolet is reportedly bringing back the Camaro. However, The next generation of mainstream American performance cars is going to look much different than the recent era of Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro and Dodge Challenger that many of us are fond of, and all signs point to Dodge being right 20 years ago. Even if some of the discourse at the time was offended by the then-new LX-body Charger’s form factor.

That’s right! After being told the sedan was dead and the muscle car was dead, the industry shrugged its shoulders and asked the important question: porque no los dos?

Meanwhile, the venerable Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana gain something significant for 2027, Gordon Murray is set to reveal another hypercar, and the Land Rover you probably forgot about it set to end production this year. Welcome back to The Morning Dump, where we slice and dice the car news of the morning into tasting-sized portions. Matt is at Monterey Car Week this week along with most of the crew, which means I’m holding it down on desk duty. Let’s get cracking.

The Mustang Sedan Is Reportedly Real

Last year, Ford filed a trademark application for the model name “Mach 4,” which sent the internet into a frenzy of rumors. Could we finally be getting a Mustang sedan, or perhaps even an all-wheel-drive model? It turns out that the former is far more probable, as Automotive News reports that a full-scale prototype example was recently shown to dealers.

Ford also brought an early prototype of a four-door Mustang onto the stage, giving dealers the clearest view yet of a product first revealed at a 2024 meeting and reported by Automotive News. Multiple people who saw the prototype likened its size and design to a Porsche Panamera. The people asked not to be identified because the meeting was not open to the public. Executives promised that the four-door Mustang would have a price tag of less than $40,000, a 0-to-60 mph time of under 4 seconds and more rear-seat space than the Panamera, according to two of the people. Ford did not discuss a name at the meeting but previously has identified it to dealers as the Mach-4.

If the purported Mustang sedan is indeed the size of a Panamera, it’s going to be huge. Porsche’s large sedan measures 198.9 inches stem-to-stern in standard-wheelbase trim and 204.8 inches long in long-wheelbase Executive form. The former figure’s more than 10 inches longer than a Mustang coupe and the latter’s merely 1.8 inches shorter than the new Dodge Charger. That ballpark would make sense given the limited rear seat space in the current Mustang coupe, but it’s still quite the departure for one of America’s most iconic nameplates and it might not be alone.

A few days prior, GM Authority dropped a new report on the forthcoming seventh-generation Camaro. If it pans out, GM’s pony car could also adopt additional doors.

One of the most obvious changes for the new Camaro will be the body style, with GM Authority sources indicating the new Camaro will boast four doors, rather than a traditional two-door layout. The four-door model would reportedly feature dimensions comparable to the Chevy Malibu or Chevy SS.

So what’s with the shift? Well, unlike in the ’80s, coupes just don’t work for most people anymore. As soon as you have kids, you have rear seat access and car seat fitment and all that to worry about. Not to mention stroller and diaper bag storage. Once those kids get a little bit older, they’ll go to school and make friends which means a middle seat in the rear—a rarity in modern coupes—becomes an enormous convenience. As your kids grow up, they might get too tall for the tight rear headroom of many modern coupes, and by the time they’re through college, your knees might just say no to daily-driving a low-slung two-door.

For the most part, this relegates modern coupes to second-car status, sometimes even third-car status. And that’s hard to justify. When the median house price in America is $410,700 and the average new car carries a transaction price of around $49,000, the prospect of another new car payment is often just too much for the personal spreadsheet. However, add a pair of rear doors and suddenly, you have a far more justifiable daily driver. One that you can easily do the school run, the airport run, or the lunch run in.

Dodge figured this out two decades ago with the reborn Charger. Purists were up in arms about it having four doors, but guess what? It sold, and sold well throughout that generation’s entire production run. In 2019, the Dodge Charger outsold the Ford Mustang and more than doubled the sales figures of the Camaro. And that’s with the two-door Challenger alongside it. Understandably, Dodge still offers a four-door version of the new Charger, and while sales of the LB-generation car hasn’t exactly picked up where the old model left off due to a controversial EV-first launch and premium pricing, the four-door option opens that model up to those who simply couldn’t make a coupe work.

A Touch Of Modernity

It’s an unusually exciting time for the Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana vans. GM’s oldest vehicles are getting their first big standard equipment addition in years. The previously-fitted old-school head unit with no built-in Bluetooth is going in the bin in favor of a modestly-sized touchscreen infotainment system. As first reported by GM Authority:

The updated system, identified by RPO code IOR, will feature a seven-inch HD color touchscreen in the Express, along with Bluetooth phone connectivity and Bluetooth audio streaming. The upgrade will apply across the Express lineup, including Cargo, Passenger, and Cutaway models.

This is essentially the same infotainment system as in a base Chevrolet Trax, although its feature set in the Express and Savana hasn’t been confirmed yet beyond bluetooth audio streaming. It might still have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto stripped out of it, but at least GM van drivers should now be able to wirelessly listen to their favorite podcasts on the go without the need for a phone dongle to split charging and AUX duties. While photos of the new unit in the Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana haven’t been released yet, don’t expect a whole new dashboard. It should still be fairly simple in there, as you’d expect for vehicles with their roots in the ’90s.

A New Gordon Murray Car Is Coming

It’s just about the eve of Monterey Car Week, and Gordon Murray Special Vehicles is looking to make a splash. It just released this teaser photo of a new hypercar that seems to sport a roof scoop and NACA ducts and a delightfully flat deck. Is there a whiff of S1 LM to the silhouette? Certainly, but it’s not that few-off limited-run special that broke the internet last Car Week.

So what could we be looking at here? It’s safe to assume it runs a Cosworth V12 and features a carbon fiber tub, although beyond that it’s anyone’s guess. Just figure it’s going to be rare, it’s going to be expensive, and with several members of The Autopian on the ground for Car Week, we’ll be there with photos of it in the sunshine.

Wait, They Still Make That?

Quick, can you name every model in the current Land Rover lineup? There’s obviously the Range Rover and the Range Rover Sport, along with the Defender. The Range Rover Evoque and Velar are still with us, as is the Land Rover Discovery, but one of the marque’s seven distinct lines is coming to a close in its current form. The entry-level Discovery Sport is set to roll off into the sunset. As Autocar reports:

A JLR spokesperson told Autocar: “Discovery Sport production will end in December 2026, in line with normal product lifecycles. As part of this transition there will be a managed sunset of manufacturing ahead of this date for certain markets.”

The compact, unibody Discovery Sport is a car that I legitimately forgot Land Rover still made. Not because it had been memory-holed for any particular reason, but because it’s both the slowest-selling car in the range and it’s very difficult to tell the difference between a 2025 model and a 2020 model. It’s the Ann Veal of the Land Rover lineup [Ed note: her?], present but not massively memorable. Believe it or not, the model’s discontinuation was actually announced two weeks ago, only to be met with the equivalent of a shrug. Truly, you heard it here third, but someone could tell you again in another two weeks and you’d probably have completely forgotten the news. Either way, it’s the natural end of the Discovery Sport’s model cycle, so it doesn’t make sense to update it to meet GSR2 requirements. If you want an entry-level Landie, there’s always the Evoque.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

Last weekend was a bit hectic. Several big car shows, places to go, people to see, but I kicked it all off with a bucket-list concert: Broken Social Scene, Metric, and Stars. Hearing “Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl” live is simply sensational, especially on a warm night as the sun sets on the city skyline. Sing it with me now, “Park that car, drop that phone…”

The Big Question:

All these rumored four-door pony cars beg a question: What’s the least-practical car you would actually daily drive?

Top graphic image: Dodge

The post Dodge Was Right About Four-Door Muscle Cars appeared first on The Autopian.