But surely one of the most recent own goals has to be the new Dodge Charger Daytona. Despite being launched less than a year ago, the company has just axed the entry-level R/T version thanks to sales numbers that are roughly a tenth of the combustion model it replaced.

Why has it sold so poorly? Good question.

Here is a name so steeped in testosterone, tyre smoke and general bad behaviour, if it was a person it would be locked up for life before it reached the age of four. A staple of the all-action smoke-and-wing-mirrors Fast & Furious franchise, not to mention holding the record for the first NASCAR car to top 200mph, the Dodge Charger Daytona is one of the most coveted and revered models in muscle car history.

So you’d expect any new version to pick up where the last one left off. Satanic looks, big wing, vast power output, reasonable price tag. It’s not like Dodge hasn’t got all of those things in its vast, oil-stained Brotherhood of Muscle toolbox, is it? To do anything else would be crazy, no?

Dodge didn’t agree. In defiance of pretty much everything the badge stands for, the 2025 Dodge Charger Daytona is an EV. And that’s a pretty big clue to the sales plunge.

The resultant wave of outrage among the Dodge faithful would make a tsunami look like a trickle from a hosepipe. What on earth, they say in words much stronger than that, is Dodge, the OG bad boy muscle car brand, doing building an electric anything, never mind one of its rowdy, storied, Bullitt-famous name plates? Did someone at Dodge drop the product plans and history books into the shredder by accident?

A lot of traditional Dodge keyboard warriors are ready to go on cultural and purchasing hunger strike until Dodge sees what they call sense and re-installs a vast petrol-powered V8. Do it now and do it quickly, they threaten. Or we’ll desert you.

And they mean it. It’s got so bad Dodge has a near-complete inability to get anyone to buy or even lease one. Dodge is blaming the Trump tariffs – Chargers are built in neighbouring Canada so are subject to 25 per cent price hikes. But the reality is they are superglued to the showroom floors for other reasons.

Thanks to a unique distribution system, no one prices reality into their cars like US dealers. If they have a hot model, they’ll charge you way over MSRP to take it home. But, equally, if salespeople feel they are sitting on a lemon, there really isn’t a number they’ll refuse. There are several on sale near me right now with more than $25k off the asking price, which says it all. Leases are now $289 a month with $2k down – the same as a Honda Accord.

So, is this Dodge’s Bud Light moment? Has the car maker just committed commercial suicide? Just doesn’t make any sense.

Or does it, in some non-obvious way? That’s what I’m hoping to find out. As a UK expat of two decades reared on Steve McQueen movies, I have fully embraced my inner muscle car child here in the US. I have not one but two Dodge Demons – the fastest, most absurd, wheelie-pulling Dodge Challenger ever made.

One is the 840bhp 2018 OG model, complete with drag racing crate engine. The supercharger on that is so big it takes 160bhp to spin it. The other is the run-out, last-chance-for-gas 2024 model that has more than 1025bhp and is so mean it can make your lawn die just by looking at it.

We could also talk about my Fords: a ’78 Bronco with the 460 transplant, the Lightning pick-up with the same block as the original Ford GT remake. But let’s leave those for now. I’m a big Dodge fan, so I’m technically the exact audience for this newfangled Charger Daytona.

Where do we start? How about: what constitutes a true muscle car? Even though there are inevitable arguments about the very first usage of the term, dating back to the late 1940s, the car that popularised the phrase was the Pontiac GTO.

It launched in 1964 into a post-war US buzzing with car culture, when petrol was cheap and performance was paramount. It caught the zeitgeist so well that Ford, Chevrolet, Plymouth and, yes, Dodge, quickly followed suit. The formula was simple: American-made, mid-sized saloons with oversized powerful engines. They prioritised power over luxury or handling, and offered accessible performance for everyman.

So, it’s a simple formula. And one that doesn’t necessarily demand a particular type of fuel. Bearing that in mind, I have a leftfield take for you. There is another brand offering exactly that mix of US-built cheap power and performance with luxury-free functionality today. But it’s not from the Detroit Big Three.

It’s Tesla.

A Model 3 – especially the Performance model – or a secondhand Model S can be seen as effectively the muscle cars of the early 21st century. They are absurdly cheap for the power and performance they offer. Could hardly be called luxurious. And the handling isn’t always the most engaging. Just to complete the picture, they are not terribly well made. So maybe electric muscle cars are already a thing, we just haven’t recognised it.

With that thought rattling around in my mind I have my first proper look at the electric Charger Daytona sitting there broadcasting its soothingly pleasant sci-fi pulse, vibrating gently at what we’d call tickover. It looks arresting in dark blue. There are all sorts of angles and references that shout Dodge DNA, but it doesn’t overtly borrow from the past.

Well, not directly. One of the key standout features is the trademark R wing on the bonnet of all Charger Daytonas, which is a nod to the original NASCAR-winning Charger Daytona that was fitted with a comically vast, eat-your-lunch-off-it rear aerofoil. Just to be clear, all electric Charger models are called Daytonas; the later straight-six – and the possible V8 – petrol-powered models will just be badged Chargers. Those will not get the R wing.

Open up the bonnet and you’ll see why. Dodge will need all the space they can get to make the lid close on a proper petrol engine and associated technical gubbins. As it is, there is a small, fairly useless space which frankly no one is going to use. Such are the compromises of multi-model platform strategies.

The platform in the Charger’s case is STLA-L. Slated to underpin everything from Dodges to Maseratis to Ram trucks, the only other car on sale that currently uses it in a similar spec is the electric Jeep Wagoneer S. While this might not bode well for the Charger’s saloon sophistication, let’s not forget that my two beloved Demons sit on the Chrysler LA platform that is a derivative of the LX platform that dates back to the 20th century. They work just fine, for a muscle car.

So that’s nothing to get upset about. Neither is the power available from the twin 335bhp motors – one front, one rear. With 670bhp and 627lb ft available from zero mph, even the Charger Daytona’s elephantine two-and-three-quarter-tonne kerbweight isn’t enough to dull the performance. A 0-60mph time of three seconds and a quarter mile in the low elevens is bang on the muscle car money.

But the ride isn’t. It’s much better. The Charger Daytona can scythe through a succession of switchbacks in a quiet, stable and controlled way that is in a different universe from the previous-gen cars. I know this test car is fitted with the optional Track pack with its active dampers and the Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperCar 3 tyres, but it’s properly GT-style smooth.

Especially since you can choose a suitable mode for the power delivery and chassis. In Sport the handling is reliably assured and predictable, if a little killjoy. As an all-wheel-drive car – the front motor goes to sleep when it’s not needed – it has major understeer unless you really provoke it. And that, you’ll discover as the road tightens, is not strictly advisable.

With the big car dialled up into Race mode – a theatrical, Ready Player One-style audio-visual fantasia that conjures up a dirty electro V8 soundtrack and gives the Charger the reactions of a preying mantis, albeit a rather large and heavy one – a couple of increasingly spirited passes through some precipitous mountain bends make it quite clear this is not the car’s preferred mode/location combo unless the intent is to end the session with a flying lesson or welded into the rock face.

That’s exactly what you’d expect of a Dodge muscle car, but what comes as a bit of a surprise is its flat, Computer-Says-No refusal to do a burnout. As mindless as it is, being able to fry your rear tyres in a cloud of smoke at will is Job One of any car wearing the Charger or Challenger name.

So not having that on demand feels strange. UnAmerican. Like something’s broken. It tries to make it up to you with Donut mode and Drift mode, shutting down the front motor and letting you hang the back out on the throttle once you’re moving. But it still feels wrong, like something’s missing.

And you have plenty of time to ponder that while you search for a charger for your Charger. Unlike most of the major brands, Dodge has yet to strike a deal in the US with Tesla to use its network – a game changer for any electric vehicle – so you have to get in line behind the flocks of VW IDs and Hyundai Ioniq 5s.

Our test car has the optional carbon and suede interior spec – along with pretty much every other optional available – which adds flashes of colour and the black weave to various surfaces. But it’s the proportions that are the most interesting. Despite being more than five metres long and more than two metres wide, the cabin is surprisingly high yet space, particularly in the rear seats, is quite small.

One of the previous-gen Challenger and Charger’s real USPs is their ability to seat four Big Gulp-swigging, In-N-Out burger-eating humans in all-round comfort as the driver terrorises them with the car’s performance. This Charger Daytona changes that – it’s great in the high-set chairs in the front. But it’s a proper squeeze to get someone in the back. This is largely due to this Charger Daytona being a two-door. A four-door version is joining the range later this year, which will make things easier – while also further confusing and enraging the Dodge faithful. Let me explain.

For anyone who doesn’t know, since its launch in 1966 there have been seven generations of Dodge Charger. This one you’re looking at is the eighth. Even though it has been through more wardrobe changes and plastic surgery than Madonna and Cher combined during those seven iterations, it remained a two-door car.

Then, in 2006, towards the end of the appalling DaimlerChrysler years, something odd happened: the Charger was relaunched as a four-door only. Just pleased to have the name back in the range, the Dodge faithful shrugged their shoulders and carried on. But then, in 2008, Dodge relaunched the long-dead Challenger name – initially used as a budget version of the Coronet – as a two door. That was odd, too.

Fast forward a decade and the Dodge brand re-found its mojo under Sergio Marchionne’s FCA. Both Charger and Challenger got the supercharged Hellcat treatment and much more besides. But one thing remained clear: Charger is the four-door, Challenger the two-door model.

Join me now in the present day and, after we’ve fallen in love with and bought our Chargers and Challengers, Dodge asks – no, demands – us to forget everything we know like some pier-end hypnotist. The Challenger has disappeared – there are some airy words about a possible reappearance later this decade – and the Charger, this Charger, is now the two-door and the four-door car.

That in and of itself is disappointing and a middle finger to the Challenger-owing masses. But it’s not the end of the world if the car that replaces it is great. It’s what comes next that is mind melting.

When you’ve spent the past two decades at the core of the whole Fast & Furious franchise, almost single-handedly relaunched street drag racing and become the blue-collar hero brand, surely – surely! – you understand better than anyone that your customers want high-drama, high-value, high-performance cars. So that’s what you’d serve up first, no?

Nope, you launch the gen-eight with an electric car costing twice as much as they are used to paying and expect them get on with it. Looked at like this, it’s surprising there isn’t more bile online or burning effigies on the corporate lawn. Imagine a steak restaurant going solely vegan overnight and wondering why its customers have got upset and disappeared. You can see why dealers are treating them like yesterday’s newspapers.

I know there are 500bhp-plus twin-turbo six-pack petrol-powered cars coming soon. And I’m sure they will be great. Really. This Charger has good bones and, weighing a tonne less, it should be a proper laugh. But it’ll now be fighting a battle from day one because Dodge bet on red but the ball has settled on black.

Of course, the world looked like it was going all electric when the Charger Daytona was conceived and its launch planned years ago. And, in that rose-tinted bubble, being the first proper electric muscle car – the Mustang Mach-E doesn’t count – almost makes sense. Especially with all those millions of Tesla owners potentially looking for something more fun and interesting to trade up into.

Dodge will get over all this. But it will be a struggle for us Dodge fans. Because perhaps the really shocking news is: this Charger Daytona is an excellent car.

I would still be more than happy to line it up in the garage next to my Demons. Ideally, I’d like it to be the 800-volt electric Banshee model – the real head-banger of the Daytona range that may well have been delayed indefinitely now. Just to keep the insanity level high.

But what l will probably do in this new Drill Baby Drill era is what the other Dodge faithful are doing – wait for Dodge’s black ops to finish shoehorning the rumoured supercharged V8 Red Eye engine in there and get one of those instead.

Bit of a shame really. If Dodge had just re-opened the model line with a screaming petrol-powered model and snuck the electric Daytonas in later, everyone would have been overjoyed. As it is, the Dodge muscle car faithful are scattering and the Charger Daytona has joined the list of misfires. Precisely because it couldn’t.