The V8 Obituary Writers Don't Shop. Canonize Dodge.

It is the middle of 2026. For two years every man with a microphone has told you the V8 is a museum piece and a moral failing. Dodge did not agree. Dodge just dropped a 392-cubic-inch HEMI® V-8 into a three-row family SUV and made it standard for the first time on the Durango R/T. Standard.

That is not a product launch. That is a resurrection. The industry buried this engine, and Dodge dug it up and put it in the school pickup line, and a company that pulls off a miracle like that gets a feast day. Canonize them. I mean every word.

Now look at what Dodge is claiming. 475 horsepower. Sixty in 4.4 seconds. Best-in-class towing of 8,700 pounds. Those are Dodge's figures, not tested here, and I do not care, because Dodge says the Launch Edition allocation sold out in six hours. Six. The obituary writers never checked with the people holding the deposits. The V8's obituary was written by people who do not shop.

Picture my son Brian. Thirty-one, a leased crossover with a CVT, my grandchildren hauled home from school in it like a hostage transfer. This is the three-row he should have bought. Behind the garage door, Diane has heard me price a family hauler I cannot afford. Dodge calls it the most horsepower per dollar for a gas SUV. That is Dodge's line, not mine. There is no price here, so I put no value on it.

Here is the sentence. I move that July 21 become the Feast of the Standard 392, a holy day of obligation on every gearhead's calendar. A bronze Durango R/T rises on a plinth outside Detroit Assembly Complex Jefferson, concrete I will mix myself. The men and women who built it in the year everyone else quit are hereby canonized. Every year we drive past. Engine running. Before 8 a.m., so Gary hears it.