LEMON? Ownership Of Our 2023 Challenger Redeye Jailbreak Is Not Going Well!

Last week we introduced you to our new long-term 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Redeye Widebody Jailbreak. Unfortunately, the car has started going sideways since that article and video have gone up. As a quick refresher, I ordered this car to my specs and even flew out to Ontario to watch the car get built at the Brampton Assembly Plant. Overall it was an amazing experience, and I am grateful to my friends and Stellantis employees that set it up.

I excitedly waited almost two months to the day from when my car rolled off the line at the assembly plant until it arrived at my dealer. I got it home and started the break-in process as soon as it showed up. Everything was going great until just after I filmed the first video on the car. Since then, it has not responded to the keyfob on three occasions. One time it was parked in my garage and unlocked, so I tried starting it, and nothing. I even pushed the start button with the keyfob and no response from the car either. (Yes, I tried all three fobs). On each occasion, after 5-10 minutes or so, the car would respond to the keyfob as normal, like nothing even happened.

From there, things started to get worse. I started the car up, started driving down the road, and suddenly, it started dinging at me. NO BUS was displayed where the odometer usually sits. The center screen was cycling between service adaptive suspension, service stability control, service TPMS, and service ABS. The fuel gauge was reading empty, but the range was still showing correctly. The wipers were going on high even though they were turned off. I shut the car off, restarted it, and all the errors were gone.

This same issue has now happened on four separate occasions in the last week and is totally random. I thought to myself, maybe it’s just a faulty or weak battery, as that can cause weird electrical errors. The dealer was able to get me in right away to do a battery health test but is booked out for a bit before they can do any in-depth troubleshooting.

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The car did spit out two pages of codes and 14 pages of snapshots. Mostly relating to communication issues. In talking with one of the service advisors I know well, he admitted that finding this issue can be a game of cat and mouse as they are random and only give comm errors. I have to give the dealer credit as they have offered to take the car back with no cost out of my pocket, but I have to make a decision by the end of the month. 

The video above has a lot more information, along with some troubleshooting on my end. The short of it is this. The car is going back. The situation sucks. I flew out to watch the car get built at the plant. It’s my dream spec. It was supposed to be my forever car, and it’s the last year, and irreplaceable. But, at the end of the day, it’s just a car. I need to focus on our project Hellcat and moving forward with that build, not a brand-new car.