During a recent interview at the 2013 Detroit Auto Show with the autoblog gang, Ralph Gilles was asked about the upcoming Dart SRT and his response was a little underwhelming for the masses of people that were waiting on news about the car. The conversation began with a note from Ralph concerning this picture of an SRT4 Dart design sketch, in which he replied that it was indeed a legit design sketch, but that he thought it was too conservative so he tossed that particular design idea.
He then went on to say that a new Dart SRT4 is of course “being considered” but they have to take their time and do it right. In between multiple references to 350 HP, he said that the car has such a high standard to live up to because of what the mighty Neon SRT4 has set for it. Although the Neon SRT4 only had 230 HP when it was killed off, a large percentage of them have been modified to a point far higher and the new car must meet those standards, not the 230 HP standards.
He then went on to say that when the worlds align and when they can make a proper business case for it, it’ll come. Its just going to take some time in order for that to happen.
We’ll go ahead and speculate that what he said more or less translates into Chrysler not having the drive line parts to do the car right at this time. We all know that a MultiAir 2.4L Tigershark with boost will easily make 350 HP, but as far as we know they don’t have a 6-speed manual transmission that can take that sort of abuse, nor do we think they had the all wheel drive system that could handle it either. Older reports suggested that it may have been coming out with no stick option at all, just the 9-speed ZF, which certainly wouldn’t have resonated very well with SRT4 buyers.
If you are one of the ones impatiently waiting for the Dart SRT4 we say keep a keen eye on the development of new FWD/AWD Alfa Romeo cars (Mito and Giulietta), as those will be the ones co-developing the parts in our opinion that will end up in the SRT4 Dart. And all of that is currently in the works, its just unlikely we’ll see anything until 2015 at the earliest.
