Thieves broke into a Philadelphia Dodge dealership and escaped with three muscle cars worth a combined $228,000 last weekend, local police say.
The Northern Lancaster County Regional Police Department was called to Zartman Dodge in Warwick County at 3.30 am on Sunday to find a crew had forced entry to the lot and taken a trio of V8 machines leaving nothing but the scent of smoked tires behind.
The cars stolen were an orange 2020 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat worth $77,998, a black 2022 Dodge Charger Scat Pack Widebody valued at $65,992 and a 2021 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat with a tasty set of brass monkey wheels that would have cost an honest Dodge fan $83,991.
Northern Lancaster County PD’s website says the incident is “connected to numerous other ongoing investigations” and is asking anyone with information to get in touch, but says nothing to suggest any arrests are imminent.
Related: Dodge Rolling Out More Security Features To Curb Thefts Of Chargers And Challengers
Thefts of high-powered Dodge and Jeep cars have reached epidemic proportions over the last few years, with thieves particularly keen to get their hands on supercharged Hellcat models, which are popular among street racers. A 2019 study by the Highway Loss Data Institute in the U.S. found that the Dodge Charger Hemi and Dodge Challenger Hellcat were five times more likely to be stolen than the average vehicle, and we’d put money on that figure having grown in the intervening years.
We reported in August how three children aged 11,12 and 14 had been arrested in Detroit trying to steal Charger and Challenger Hellcats from a Stellantis storage lot in Detroit, and earlier this month a story emerged of a Challenger Hellcat being stolen by thieves who pushed it down the road with a Dodge Durango.
Does the constant stream of stories about Dodge muscle car thefts put you off from buying one of the last cars before Stellantis retires its high-horsepower combustion cars? Leave a comment and let us know.
