The end has finally come for three of the most iconic muscle cars of the 2000s. After a lengthy special-edition-packed farewell tour, the last 2023 Dodge Charger and Challenger were built at the Stellantis' Brampton Assembly Plant in Ontario, Canada, on December 22. The news was first reported by Automotive News Canada and confirmed by a Dodge spokesperson. The last Chrysler 300 rolled off the line just two days prior.
A Dodge representative confirmed to Car and Driver that the last Charger was a Scat Pack widebody model painted in Destroyer Gray, while the final Challenger was an SRT Demon 170 in Pitch Black. Photos posted to Facebook (later made private), showed factory workers posing with the coupe, which sported flashy gold wheels.

The L platform that underpinned all three burly American machines was first introduced for the 2005 model year with the Chrysler 300. The 300 would go on to become a legend in the hip-hop scene, appearing in numerous music videos and quoted in dozens of songs. It was loved for a look that mixed Bentley-aping decadence with confident, American-gangster swagger.
The Charger followed for 2006, and the Challenger arrived for 2008. Both rear-wheel-drive cars brought V-8 muscle to the masses, becoming the centerpieces of rowdy burnout- and donut-making videos thanks to their 5.7-liter HEMI engines. The Dodge duo became even more hallowed with the introduction of the SRT Hellcat models, which coincided with a refresh for 2015. The Hellcats' supercharged 6.2-liter V-8s produced a sinister whine and more than 700 horsepower at a still relatively affordable price.


While the 300 never received the Hellcat treatment, it went out with a bang with the 485-hp 6.4-liter HEMI-powered 2023 300C. The Charger and Challenger were treated to more fanfare for their send-offs, with a series of "Last Call" special editions that culminated in the Challenger SRT Demon 170, capable of up to 1025 horsepower on E85 gasoline.
The Brampton factory will now retool over the next two years, installing a new paint shop and stamping lines. In late 2025, the facility will start producing the next iteration of the Jeep Compass along with upcoming vehicles that will ride on the STLA Medium platform. These will include both internal-combustion and electric powertrains.
The Charger and Challenger's successor—expected to be consolidated into one model that's previewed by the Charger Daytona SRT concept—will be built nearby at Canada's Windsor Assembly Plant. Two- and four-door versions are likely, and electric powertrains will be joined by Stellantis' latest Hurricane inline-six, which produces up to 510 horsepower in current Jeep and Ram vehicles. The Chrysler 300, meanwhile, won't have a direct replacement, as the moribund brand prepares an electric resuscitation with a series of new EVs in the next few years.

Sometimes a film location deserves to receive equal billing to its stars. With “Ferrari,” the latest movie by US director Michael Mann, Modena, Italy, makes a strong case for itself.

Starring Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz, Mann’s biopic takes on the turbulent life of Enzo Ferrari, founder of the car manufacturer. Set in 1957 in the run up to the Mille Miglia race across Italy, events on track jostle for position with family drama at home, as Enzo and wife Laura grieve the loss of their son, and Enzo contends with his double life as father to a child with another woman. After premiering at the Venice Film Festival in August, Mann’s film arrives in cinemas over the Christmas holidays, with one eye on the Oscars.

Driver, American, and Cruz, Spanish, throw themselves into la vita Italiana, but when it came to location, Mann decided there would be no substitute.

Modena, in the heart of Emilia-Romagna, Italy, is integral to the Ferrari story. Enzo was born in the small city and built a workshop there when the former race car driver started manufacturing automobiles of his own. By the 1950s Ferrari had expanded into the nearby town of Maranello, becoming a force to be reckoned with, and Modena was the heart of Italian motorsport itself, with Maserati also calling it home. But while his cars would hurtle around Italy, and later, the world, Enzo was reluctant to stray far from Modena. So it was only right that when Mann was setting up “Ferrari,” he would bring the production to it.
Mann, 80, has his own deep connections with Ferrari. The Chicago-born director behind “Heat” and “The Last of the Mohicans” had been mulling a film on the founder for many years, and has called Piero Ferrari, the current vice chair of the company, a friend for decades (the young Piero plays an important role in the movie).
Most importantly, Modena is still filled with people who work for and love Ferrari. “Ferrari is the home team,” Mann said. “Many of the people who work at the factory (have been there for) two generations. There’s a very strong motor racing dialect.”
“When you’re there, it becomes painfully obvious what Ferrari means to not only the country but that place in particular,” Driver told CNN. “There’s a homegrown-ness element and attitude to Modena that I don’t think you would have gotten shooting (elsewhere).”
“Our set was populated with the town,” he added. “Most people were gone during August when we were shooting it, but we would have someone starting catering one minute and two weeks later they were in the picture.”

The production hired former Ferrari Formula One chief mechanics for Michael Schumacher and Niki Lauda for small parts in the film, said Mann, and sourced engine blocks from the Ferrari Classiche restoration department. The barbershop Enzo would visit daily features in the movie, with its second-generation owner playing his father, shaving Driver.
“It was very, very local in this wonderful way,” Mann said. “You came to understand the wit, this kind of tough-minded attitude, that’s not too different from inner-city Chicago, where I grew up.”


Given all this, did shooting on location help Driver slip into character? And did the Modenese – not backward in coming forward – offer their own two cents on Enzo? “Yes and yes,” the actor swiftly replies.
For Cruz, Modena offered a more disquieting picture. The actress plays Laura, Ferrari’s wife and equal partner in the company at the time the film is set. Deep in grief after the loss of their son Dino to muscular dystrophy, she learns about her husband’s infidelity and seeks to leverage her assets while the business is threatened with insolvency.
“There was not a lot of information about her,” said Cruz. “I spent some time in Modena with Michael, with Adam, and Michael took me to a lot of places where she spent time. I just didn’t like the reaction from people. They just wanted to dismiss her and say she was difficult, she was a witch.
“Nobody talked about the pain that this woman went through, losing a child out of an illness when he was 20,” she added.

In the film, Laura is a force of nature. Cruz gives full voice to her grief, including scenes shot in the Ferrari family mausoleum (where Enzo is also buried today). “Ferrari” also wades into Laura and Enzo’s complex and ultimately enduring relationship. The director said he and Cruz met Laura’s doctor, who showed them never-before-seen love letters Enzo was writing to his then estranged wife up to two years before her death in 1978.
After her death, Enzo would give his name to son Piero, who he’d fathered with Lina Lardi, played by Shailene Woodley. Woodley met Piero, now in his late 70s, to discuss his mother. “The thing that was most affecting for me actually wasn’t the stories he shared or his testimony of her, it was the way that he teared up,” she said.
“That his mom was so protective of him and so able to keep him grounded, despite the chaos of what his childhood could have been, was a wonderful thing,” she added.


Mann says his research dug so deep he learned from Lardi’s niece how her aunt would prepare food, and had Woodley replicate it on camera.
“We were so enmeshed in everything,” he said. “There’s so much verisimilitude that there’s a kind of wonderful organic osmosis that seep up into you …. You start truly believing, ‘I’m there, it’s 1957 and I’m in this world.’
“That creates that spontaneity and performance that I think audiences really sense. They believe this is true and it’s happening, and they can transport themselves into it – which is, for me, the ultimate objective.”
In the film, Enzo, teaching his son, says, “When a thing works better, naturally it looks more beautiful to the eye.” He’s talking about his cars, but it could also be Mann discussing one of his films. Engineered to the finest degree, they hide a lot of work beneath their ease and grace.
Modena was Enzo’s inspiration, as so it has proved for the director. “There’s poetry in the drinking water,” said Mann. “I can’t really explain it.”

Another day, another reimagining of the Porsche 911 but when it’s Tuthill that are having a crack at it, you know it’s going to be special. And indeed, the company that teamed up with Singer to create the insane ACS off-road monster, is now bringing us this, the 911K. Summed up? The classic look, but at 11,000rpm. Yes really.
Indeed, while Singer and many others have taken the approach of massaging the classic 911 look with bigger muscles, hot rod touches and in some cases, modern tech, the Tuthill Porsche 911K stays very true to the originals in terms of looks. It also doesn’t use a newer 964 as a base but a genuine earlier car.
This isn’t to say it’s low-tech either. According to Tuthill, the priorities for the 911K were simplicity and lightweighting. Those original-looking body panels for instance, are actually remakes in carbon fibre. These include the bumpers, bonnet, roof, doors, wings and engine lid. Likewise many parts of the chassis, which were originally steel, have been remade in titanium. In all the 911K weighs just 850kg. For some context to really ram it home, that’s in the region of half the weight of the current 992-generation Porsche 911 Turbo S.
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The real kicker though is that shifting its slender mass up the road will be a screaming flat-six engine good for an 11,000rpm redline. Rather than going big on swept capacity, this motor is a short-stroke 3.1-litre four-valve mill. Exact power numbers aren’t available just yet but we’d expect it to comfortably clear 350PS (257kW) at a very rough estimate. That power goes to the 15-inch carbon fuchs rear wheels via a six-speed, magnesium-cased version of the manual gearbox native to 911s from 1972-1986.
You’ll be able to properly hear that engine from the inside too. The scant weight figure shouldn’t be too much of a giveaway to the fact this cabin is if not spartan, quite minimalist. Certainly compared to the bling of Singer and co’.  What is there is nicely trimmed and uses quality materials but it’s very pared back. There’s a titanium half cage where a rear bench might be and a carbon dash, while the enormous hydraulic handbrake is a tell-tale as to Tuthill’s regular rallying remit. Buyers will in the process of ordering their cars be able to specify trims and all but dictate not only the aesthetics but certain aspects of mechanical spec too.