Yeah,
a stock Challenger will not hold up to a real drag car. But they do make an awesome everyday car. I have the RT, an automatic.
My best at one strip is a 13.21 and a 13.35 at another. (two magazines gave a 13.5 for the RT, and one a 14.0- that magazine needs a new driver mod. although to be honest its plenty easy to mess up your launch on the street tires and run high 13s and even 14s) RTs with bolt ons and mods and tune or drag radials will hit high 12s, with both mid 12s.
I can't get better than a 1.95 or so 60 foot on the factory street tires. An SRT should be good for a quarter second faster or so
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CeDd75UJPs While a new Challenger might not be a challenger for a real drag car, a stock low 13s car off the lot is no joke.
And man is it comfortable and conveinent for an everyday car. Not a lot of musclecar era cars came out of the showroom running low 13s at 105. Maybe more would have with modern radials instead of polyglass of the era, but not most. Most of them were 14 and even 15 second cars stock. They may have been easier to modify with bigger carbs, headers, etc. than a modern car, and with gas so cheap who cared. But for basic mods from stock, remember most of the magazines ran times from cars they already ditched the spare and jack, advanced the timing, pulled accessory belts, etc. So a stock magazine time in our modern articles would have to do the equivalent of a computer tune to get the "stock" times of the musclecar era.
And the new Camaro SS and Mustang GT are low 13 cars stock, and Mustang GT 5.0 coming out high 12s I think also. We are living in some awesome times for new musclecars and ponycars. It will probably be short lived, but it is awesome. The late 70s early 80s had nothing by a longshot on this. The mid 80s to mid 90s either, even though our TPI 5L and 5.7L GM cars and 5.0 Mustangs were on the right track. The LT cars were not here. The LS cars very similar but with much lighter cars. Hell, we have V6s putting out over 300 crank HP now. I'm pretty excited over these cars- stock V8s putting out 370, 425, etc. crank HP.
All I can say is I wish Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Plymouth, and AMC were here with modern performance versions!