Speeding Bullitts: Dodge Charger Scat Pack vs Ford Mustang GT

From the March/April 2026 issue of Car and Driver.

Even if you've never seen Bullitt, the 1968 Steve McQueen crime thriller, you've probably still heard of its car chase, which uses San Francisco's dramatic topography to great effect. McQueen himself does a lot of driving, notably in a scene where he understeers wide and misses a corner in his Mustang, smokes the tires in reverse, and takes off down the street doing a one-wheel peel. The adversaries are bad guys in a Dodge Charger, and there's an exciting 10 minutes or so of trading parries until the chase concludes in explosive fashion.

In the movie, both the Charger and the Mustang are two-door coupes. The Mustang has stuck to that formula, but 1978 was the last year for a two-door, rear-drive Charger, a frustration to would-be Bullitt pilgrims looking to re-create the vibe of the movie in contemporary machines. But with the return of the two-door, internal-combustion Charger, we figured it was time to make like Frank Bullitt and prowl the streets of San Francisco with these two not-quite-natural rivals.

Just as in 1968, the modern-day Charger is a hoss of a car. It's a bit over 17 inches longer than the Mustang and nearly wide enough to require the cab-marker lights you see on heavy-duty pickups. If the two-door Charger looks like it's the size of a well-fed sedan, that's because it is—the Charger sedan is basically the same car with four doors instead of two. In Scat Pack form, a twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six sends 550 horsepower to all four wheels through an eight-speed automatic, with a rear-drive mode available for tire-smoking shenanigans (lesser trims get a 420-hp version of the turbocharged six). Oh yeah, and the Charger is a hatchback. This automotive platypus is also available as an EV, the Charger Daytona. After subjecting Mopar fans to a Charger drought when the previous generation ceased production in 2023, Dodge now seems determined to offer a new Charger for everyone.

The Mustang GT is a lot easier to surmise. It's rear-wheel drive, with a 480-hp 5.0-liter V-8 that's hooked to either a six-speed manual or a 10-speed automatic transmission. The optional active exhaust brings the horsepower total to 486 while delivering a thunderous rumble in Track mode. Although Lieutenant Bullitt would surely prefer the manual, we opted for the automatic to try to keep our competitors as similar as possible. There's also a Mustang GT convertible for those who want to roll in their five-point-oh with the ragtop down so their hair can blow, but we went with the hardtop, like a hard-boiled detective might drive.

A well-paid detective, that is. Our Mustang GT Premium wore a base price of $53,075, with options bringing the as-tested total to $69,580. It's tempting to say, "Well, you don't need all that stuff," but Ford packs the Mustang's goodie list with choice hardware such as the GT Performance package ($5660, including Brembo brakes, 19-inch wheels with summer tires, a Torsen limited-slip differential, a higher top speed of a claimed 155 mph, and a number of suspension tweaks), the active exhaust ($1595), superb Recaro seats ($1995), and magnetorheological adaptive dampers ($1750). Fine, we could live without the Race Red seatbelts ($495).

The Charger Scat Pack Plus carries a higher base price—$63,135—but doesn't stretch too far from that, landing at $70,455. Standard equipment includes heated and ventilated front seats, heated rear seats, a power liftgate, and inductive phone charging. The Carbon and Suede package ($2095) features carbon-fiber exterior mirror caps and carbon and suede interior finery. The full glass roof ($1395) adds weight but does brighten up the cabin. A 20-inch-wheel package ($1195) is the major performance upgrade, since Dodge wraps those 11-inch-wide wheels in 305/35ZR-20 Goodyear Eagle Sport All-Season rubber. One option conspicuously unavailable: summer tires, which is an odd omission given that they're available on the electric Charger Daytona.

To ensure that our two-car battle was appropriately cinematic in scope, our San Francisco showdown was preceded by a drive from Los Angeles, where we returned once our stunts were wrapped. But even before we reached Northern California, we'd discovered a few clues about where this chase might lead.

"One thing these cars have in common," said managing testing editor David Beard, "is that they both looked better in the previous generation." That observation rings true, as the Mustang used to be sleeker, and the two-door Charger used to be the Challenger, which had the advantage of being, you know, its own car. But public sentiment was strongly in favor of the Charger's new look, with San Franciscans constantly asking us, "Is this electric?" (Who knew the Charger Daytona had such a high Q rating?) Black lower-body cladding helps disguise the Charger's height, as does a roof that comes in dark glass or black paint. The broad snout looks menacing in the rearview mirror, especially when framed by Alcatraz in the distance. A black exterior would've evoked the bad guys' ride from the movie better, but the $695 Redeye red is a pretty hue under a Bay Area sunset.

The Mustang didn't attract the same degree of attention, but chalk that up to familiarity. This seventh-generation car debuted for 2024 and looks much like a more angular and buff version of the sixth-generation Stang. The big wheels and staggered tires of the GT Performance package help give the Mustang the stance it deserves, but the GT is ultimately a restrained design. If you want racetrack looks, you need to step up to the Dark Horse.

HIGHS: Big power, big cabin, big personality. LOWS: Big weight, big absence of V-8 noises, big need for summer tires. VERDICT: A fast luxury SUV dressed as a Charger.

In Bullitt, the title protagonist buys his frozen dinners at VJ Grocery in Nob Hill, so when we needed snacks for the road, that was the obvious destination. A mural of McQueen doing his burn-out looms over the aisles, but we opted for bananas and energy bars rather than period-correct bachelor chow. If you were stocking up on foodstuffs, though, the Charger is the better grocery getter, with its power liftback and 23-cubic-foot cargo volume to the Ford's 13-cube trunk.

In fact, the Charger could function very happily as a family car, and a luxurious one at that—heated rear seats and a full glass roof are features you might expect in a luxury SUV, not a muscle coupe. The Mustang feels cramped by comparison, but it's a purposeful form of cramped, the Recaro seats hugging you tight and the stubby trunk declaring its highest and best purpose as a mounting point for the rear spoiler. As senior editor Elana Scherr put it, "This is a single person's car. Which is fine, and historically accurate."

Given the cars' vastly different powertrains, it's remarkable how similar they are in straight-line acceleration. Both the Mustang and the Charger hit 60 mph in 3.7 seconds, and their quarter-mile times are nearly identical—12.1 seconds at 116 mph for the Charger and 12.2 seconds at 118 mph for the Mustang. On a straightaway, neither car puts the other in the rearview mirror. But those numbers reflect the aptitude of the Charger's launch-control system, which allows the inline-six to build boost before timing commences.

The Mustang's quick-witted transmission and more responsive naturally aspirated V-8 make it quicker in every rolling-start test. It beat the Charger's 4.8-second 5-to-60-mph time by 0.8 second and won the sprints from 30 to 50 mph and 50 to 70 mph by a half second. The high-output Hurricane is a strapping six, but ultimately, the Charger is a heavy car with a small engine, and you feel the Dodge's 4889 pounds in the perceptible delta between throttle application and the arrival of boost.

You also feel that weight when you're hard on the brakes and in corners, where the Mustang's trimmer 3984-pound curb weight and Pirelli P Zero PZ4 summer tires confer huge advantages. This Charger might escape the Mustang out on the Bonneville Salt Flats—it's got a 0.8-second lead to 150 mph, and its claimed 177-mph top speed handily beats the Mustang's 155-mph governor—but on the crazy-quilt streets of San Francisco, the Ford is a much easier tool to wield. The GT posts 0.97 g of grip on the skidpad to the Scat Pack's 0.90 g, and braking from 70 mph requires just 149 feet for the Mustang versus 177 feet for the Charger.

Throw some snow into the equation, and yeah, you might prefer the all-seasons-shod Charger, but the last time the Bay Area got measurable snowfall was 1976, so long ago that Frank Bullitt might've still been on the force.

We've got to admit that we're still getting accustomed to the Scat Pack's howling straight-six soundtrack, which is overlaid by huffs and chuffs from the twin turbos exhaling their 30 psi of boost. You're surrounded by this huge, luxurious coupe, and it's making BMW M3 sounds. To achieve this level of cognitive dissonance, you'd have to swap a Toyota Supra's 2JZ into a 1985 Chevy Monte Carlo SS. Sound is just one subjective aspect of a driving experience, but we'd guess that nine out of 10 cops and 10 out of 10 criminals prefer the sound of the Mustang's Coyote V-8 when you drop two gears in one of San Francisco's tunnels.

HIGHS: Lightning reflexes, NASCAR soundtrack, you can still get a manual.LOWS: Cramped back seat, expensive performance options, doesn't get the Dark Horse exterior swagger.VERDICT: Long live the pony car.

At the intersection of Larkin and Chestnut, where McQueen blew the corner and improvised his legendary burnout, we retrace the path with the Mustang (minus the speed and the burnout), and the dominant impression is that McQueen wouldn't have understeered off his line if he had been driving a 2026 GT with the Performance package. This car sticks and goes, and it's tidy and agile next to the 905-pound-heavier Charger. The Mustang feels more responsive than the Charger, and the numbers bear that out. It's not that the Charger lacks poise, but its limits are lower, and you're never unaware of its lane-filling size.

On the fast rural roads farther south, in farm country, the Charger is unexpectedly deft considering its nearly 5000-pound weight. But when the Mustang is flowing from corner to corner, V-8 booming across the hills, it feels like it's right where it belongs, nothing unexpected about it.

This was a close contest between conceptually similar cars that are ultimately playing different games. The Charger is a sophisticated luxury coupe that happens to put up sports-car numbers. It's got its goofy Dodge side, with the tire-annihilating rear-wheel-drive mode and Attitude Adjustment interior lighting motifs, but the dominant themes are polish and practicality. Compared with the Mustang, this is more car for the money, and also just more car. If you need one vehicle to serve as your sports car, family car, and year-round haul-stuff SUV, this is it.

But versatility comes with compromises, and the two-door Charger's stem not only from its broad mission but also from the lack of differentiation between coupe and sedan. Credit Dodge with honesty: It didn't call the two-door Charger the Challenger, because it's not. It's a two-door Charger, all 17 feet and change of it.

The Mustang, by way of contrast, has little concern for practicality. This car is built for fun, and if you want all 486 horsepower, you gotta rev it to 7250 rpm. Decades of work tuned the Mustang GT to the enthusiast frequency, and its distilled purity of purpose makes it akin to an everyperson's Porsche 911—the modern iteration of a classic and deeply compelling concept.

Back in 1968, it's unlikely that anyone involved in Bullitt thought that 58 years later, its car chase would have more than 4 million views on something called "YouTube." And Ford might not have guessed that in 2026 it would still build a V-8 Mustang, and an excellent one at that. The guiding philosophy of the winning Mustang GT is summed up by a scene where the movie's seedy senator, Walter Chalmers, tells McQueen's Lieutenant Bullitt, "Frank, we must all compromise." To which he replies: "Bullshit."

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Specifications

2026 Dodge Charger Scat Pack PlusVehicle Type: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 2-door coupe

PRICE Base/As Tested: $63,135/$70,455

ENGINEtwin-turbocharged DOHC 24-valve inline-6, aluminum block and head, direct fuel injection Displacement: 183 in3, 2993 cm3 Power: 550 hp @ 6200 rpm Torque: 531 lb-ft @ 3500 rpm

TRANSMISSION8-speed automatic

CHASSIS Suspension, F/R: multilink/multilink Brakes, F/R: 15.0-in vented grooved disc/14.2-in vented grooved disc Tires: Goodyear Eagle Sport All-Season305/35ZR-20 (107Y) M+S

DIMENSIONS Wheelbase: 121.0 in Length: 206.6 in Width: 79.8 inHeight: 59.2 in Passenger Volume, F/R: 57/46 ft3Cargo Volume, Behind F/R: 37/23 ft3Curb Weight: 4889 lb

C/D TEST RESULTS 60 mph: 3.7 sec 100 mph: 8.8 sec 1/4-Mile: 12.1 sec @ 116 mph130 mph: 15.6 sec 150 mph: 23.2 sec Results above omit 1-ft rollout of 0.3 sec. Rolling Start, 5–60 mph: 4.8 sec Top Gear, 30–50 mph: 2.8 sec Top Gear, 50–70 mph: 3.2 sec Top Speed (mfr claim): 177 mphBraking, 70–0 mph: 177 ft Braking, 100–0 mph: 353 ft Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 0.90 g

C/D FUEL ECONOMY Observed: 18 mpg

EPA FUEL ECONOMY Combined/City/Highway: 19/16/23 mpg

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2026 Ford Mustang GT PremiumVehicle Type: front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 2-door coupe

PRICE Base/As Tested: $53,075/$69,580

ENGINEDOHC 32-valve V-8, aluminum block and heads, port and direct fuel injection Displacement: 307 in3, 5038 cm3 Power: 486 hp @ 7250 rpm Torque: 418 lb-ft @ 4900 rpm

TRANSMISSION10-speed automatic

CHASSIS Suspension, F/R: struts/multilink Brakes, F/R: 15.4-in vented disc/14.0-in vented disc Tires: Pirelli P Zero PZ4 F: 255/40R-19 96YR: 275/35R-19 101Y

DIMENSIONS Wheelbase: 107.0 in Length: 189.4 in Width: 75.4 inHeight: 55.0 in Passenger Volume, F/M/R: 55/30 ft3Cargo Volume: 13 ft3Curb Weight: 3984 lb

C/D TEST RESULTS 60 mph: 3.7 sec 100 mph: 8.7 sec 1/4-Mile: 12.2 sec @ 118 mph130 mph: 15.7 sec 150 mph: 24.0 sec Results above omit 1-ft rollout of 0.2 sec. Rolling Start, 5–60 mph: 4.0 sec Top Gear, 30–50 mph: 2.3 sec Top Gear, 50–70 mph: 2.7 sec Top Speed (mfr claim): 155 mphBraking, 70–0 mph: 149 ft Braking, 100–0 mph: 299 ft Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 0.97 g

C/D FUEL ECONOMY Observed: 17 mpg

EPA FUEL ECONOMY Combined/City/Highway: 19/16/24 mpg

C/D TESTING EXPLAINED

Ezra Dyer is a Car and Driver senior editor and columnist. He's now based in North Carolina but still remembers how to turn right. He owns a 2009 GEM e4 and once drove 206 mph. Those facts are mutually exclusive.

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