The Australian car market is exceptionally diverse, with a staggering number of brands competing for around a million sales every year. But while we have a bevy of brands here, we still miss out on myriad vehicles which would likely do well here – you need only look at Ford’s global product portfolio for proof of this. Looking back at the past 20 years, there are various vehicles which stand out for being particularly well-suited for our market but which we sadly missed out on.
Here are a few. After a brief run of converted right-hand drive Mustangs between 2001 and 2003, Ford finally introduced a factory right-hand drive pony car in 2015 with the sixth-generation model. But there’s one Mustang rival (well, there’s the Chevrolet Camaro too, but we’ll cover that in a separate article) that was introduced before the sixth-generation Mustang and which could have been a star in Australia: the Dodge Challenger.
The Challenger was never offered in right-hand drive from the factory, which is disappointing as it could have been a powerful halo model for the Dodge brand globally. It also rode a platform closely related to that of the Chrysler 300 sold in both left-hand drive markets and right-hand drive markets like ours. Unlike the 300 or related Dodge Charger and Magnum, you could get a V8 engine with a manual transmission.
Actually, there were two V8s available with a manual: the 5.7-litre in the R/T, and the 6.1-litre of the SRT8.
The base engine was a 3.5-litre V6. Does.
