2024 Dodge Charger Coupe vs 2023 Dodge Challenger: Size Comparison

Unless you were one of the lucky few that got to see the recently revealed Charger in person, chances are you’re a little bit curious about the size of Dodge’s new large car. Especially the coupe, with word on the street claiming this new Charger coupe is replacing Dodge’s prior coupe: The Challenger. Worse, it doesn’t look like there will be a direct Challenger replacement coming soon as a result. So obvious question is obvious: How much bigger is the new Charger coupe over the Challenger? Is it close enough in size to justify the worries of cannibalized sales? Let’s find out, starting with the exterior dimensions.

Note: The incoming specs are for the 2024 Charger coupe. Once we get the specs for the Charger sedan, I’ll do an article comparing the new Charger sedan to the previous one.

Exterior Dimensions:

Beginning with Overall Length, it’s a little surprising just how much bigger the new Charger coupe is over the Challenger. I mean sure, 197 versus 206 might only seem like a couple of inches on paper (and in real life), but you’re talking about the Charger nearly being an extra foot longer! That’ll be noticed in some parking situations and when trying to fit the new coupe inside your garage, which it’s even less likely to than its predecessors. Unless where you live has big parking spaces or you have an extra long garage bay.

The wheelbase numbers are equally fascinating too. While I’m trying to abstain from mentioning the previous 4-door Charger (as it deserves its own article), I really can’t omit talking about it here. Why? Because this new 2-door Charger has a wheelbase that’s one inch longer than its 4-door predecessor. You heard… er… read me right! This is one massive coupe! This is interesting for reasons I’ll talk about in a later article, but just know this was done intentionally.

Continuing down the line of interesting specs, width including mirrors (and without) provide a cool little factoid as well. With mirrors, the old Challenger is actually wider than the new Charger (by a hair). Without mirrors, the results are reversed. This seems to imply a couple of things: The new Charger’s body (without the mirrors) is marginally bulkier than the Challenger’s body, the mirrors might be slightly bigger on the Challenger (not so sure about this one), and the mounting point for the Challenger’s mirrors are slightly further to the side on the Challenger than the Charger. That last one possibly being confirmed by photos of the two coupes next to each other, as the Charger’s mirrors do appear to have a closer relationship to the windows than the Challenger’s does.

Moving onto height, there’s a little “disclaimer”of sorts I feel I need to give. No, the R/T and the Scat Pack coupe do not have different body panels. Not to the extent that would cause a difference in height. Those familiar with cars can largely skip this bit, but for those who are newer to the car world, the difference is most likely down to ride height variance. Why that is I’m not fully sure (what’s the benefit of 0.01 of an inch after all), but that is usually what it comes down to in cases like this. The Gen 5 Viper ACR Extreme is lower than the Gen 5 GTS, yet the core body panels are exactly the same.

Perhaps it could also be the result of tire/wheel differences, but that’s more of a stretch to me. Back on topic though, regardless of which trim you go for, both are a bit taller than the Challenger. Personally, this makes sense, as the official images we’ve seen from Dodge kind of depict the Charger as more “upright” than the Challenger. Of course, looks can be deceiving. Take the Viper for example, many people think it’s massive when in reality it’s shorter than most if not all modern compact cars.

Front Interior Dimensions

Hot off the heels of exterior height, we have front headroom, and this is where we run into our first head scratcher. Despite the new Charger coupe being taller than the Challenger, it has 0.2 inches less front headroom. I know, really splitting hairs here, but it’s strange nonetheless. One can only speculate packaging differences, seat differences (mounted higher, more bottom cushioning, something), thicker headliner, or some other discrepancy is the cause for this marginal loss of head space. Heck, perhaps the batteries being under the passengers (yep, on the bottom of the car) are the reason. Who knows.

Back in the land of expected outcomes, front legroom is unsurprisingly better in the new Charger coupe than the Challenger. Not by an insignificant margin either! Four inches of extra front legroom will certainly make taller customers happy.

For front shoulder and hip room, both saw the Charger coupe best the Challenger by an inch.

Rear Interior Dimensions:

Rear headroom brings us the second head scratcher of the article. While the new 2-door Charger gives up front headroom to its Challenger older brother, it trades blows once again by having superior rear headroom. This seems to indicate the new Charger’s roof-line isn’t as steeply raked as the Challenger’s which the photos appear to support.Thus giving the new coupe more roof to give the head room with. And yes, I am fully aware some of you will be cheering and jeering at that wordplay.

Rear legroom is yet another area where the Charger takes the lead over the Challenger. As with front legroom, the Charger has four inches more rear legroom than its predecessor. Making the new Dodge even better suited to carrying passengers in the back.

Speaking of (nearly) four inch improvements, rear shoulder room is yet another area where the new Charger asserts its dominance. This is notable because it should help the rear seating in the Charger feel that little bit less tight than the Challenger. Wider passengers (or those who don’t like tight spaces) will reap the benefits of this the most of course.

However, if you really want to talk about dominance assertion, there’s no better place to look than rear hip room. This is perhaps where the 2024 Dodge Charger shows its biggest improvement. Adding almost 10 inches of extra space to its rear cabin. I’m not sure if this means the rear door panel is further away or if the wheel arch doesn’t cut into the cabin nearly as much, but I think it goes without saying this should lead to less arguments about who gets the back seat, haha.

Other Metrics

Before we end, there’s two more measurements I need to mention: Passenger Volume and Cargo Volume. Let’s start with the latter first…

Cargo Volume (with the seats up) for the 2024 Dodge Charger (R/T & Scat Pack) Coupe is listed at 22.7 cubic feet (644 liters). The 2023 Dodge Challenger’s cargo volume (still with seats up) is listed at 16.2 cubic feet (458 liters). It’s not exactly easy to visualize, but having been in a Challenger trunk before, I can say this makes an already spacious trunk that much more cavernous.

And, for those curious, the cargo volume of the Charger with seats down is 37.3 cubic feet or 1,059 liters. Edmunds doesn’t have this metric for the Challenger unfortunately but I’d guess it’s around 19 to 25 cubic feet (19 being a worse case scenario), or 538 to 707 liters.

Next we have Passenger Volume, and this is where things get a little tricky. See, Edmunds uses EPA Interior Volume for the ’23 Challenger, whereas Dodge says “Passenger Interior Volume” for the ’24 Charger. This leads me to question if Edmunds and Dodge, by way of their verbiage, measure interior volume slightly differently.

What brought me to the question of semantics to begin with? This: Dodge says the 2024 Charger has a passenger interior volume of 103.0 cubic feet (or 2,919 liters). By contrast, Edmunds –and or the EPA– says the 2023 Challenger has a volume of 110.6 cubic feet (or 3,131 liters). Odd, right? The Challenger did indeed claim victory over the Charger in a handful of areas, but never by a large amount. Certainly not by a large enough amount to cause such a gap with interior volume. That is what led me to question how they measured the volumes (thus the different wording mention a moment ago). Guess only time will tell here…

So In conclusion: Yes, the new 2024 Charger Coupe and the Challenger are close enough in size to justify the fear of cannibalized sales.

In any case, those are the dimension differences between the new guard and the old! Let me know which one surprised you the most in the comments below. Stay tuned for more ’24-’25 Charger content coming up!