2023 Dodge Hornet

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — This is a year of transition for Dodge. As the Charger and Challenger burn rubber into the sunset, dealers are making space on showroom floors for the brand’s first all-new model in a decade. Filling the void left by those low-slung, muscular brutes is the 2023 Dodge Hornet. This lean, mean, all-wheel drive crossover has big tire marks to fill. Can a punchy little runabout based not on a grain-fed German luxury sedan, but a lithe, Mediterranean compact with an Alfa Romeo badge satisfy the cravings of America’s Brotherhood of Muscle? We set off for the hills of western North Carolina to find out. Dodge calls the Hornet its first compact crossover SUV. That alone is worth parsing. At face value, it checks out: The Journey was closer to a midsize crossover, while all of the brand’s older SUVs were either bigger or the Nitro, a sort of missing link between traditional body-on-frame SUVs and crossovers. But while we’re on the subject of forgettable ChryCo products of the 2000s, there was also the Dodge Caliber. Sure, it was a hatchback and a rightfully derided one. But how different conceptually was it from today’s sea of subcompact “crossovers” (or even contemporary vehicles like the Toyota Matrix/Pontiac Vibe twins for that matter)? It offered features that truly crossed over from the old-school SUV segment, including all-wheel drive — something you can’t even get on some modern “crossovers” — and maybe our memories are a bit fuzzy, but we’re pretty sure Dodge was keen on accentuating the Caliber’s cute ‘ute attributes, too. Anyway, it might be a stretch to say that the Hornet is Dodge’s first small crossover, but whatever you want to call it, it came out swinging. The standard Hornet packs 268 horsepower and 295 pound-feet of torque, which is the most you’ll get out of any standard compact SUV engine by a country mile. AWD with brake-based torque vectoring is also standard, along with a nine-speed automatic transmission. If this is all starting to sound familiar to you, that’s because it’s almost identical to what you get in its luxury platform-mate, the Alfa Romeo Tonale. Upgrade to the plug-in hybrid R/T model and the 2.0-liter gets tossed in favor of a 1.3-liter gas-burning inline-four and two electric aids: a 44-horsepower belt starter generator mated to the six-speed transmission up front and a 121-horsepower motor powering the rear axle. Since it's a 2024 model, there's no official EPA range for the R/T yet, but Dodge says it'll be 30+ miles. The real headline here is the system’s combined torque output: 383 lb-ft. Its 288 total system horsepower is made underwhelming because the R/T relies on a gimmick to hit that number. Dodge calls it “PowerShot,” and to use it, you’ll need juice in the Hornet R/T’s battery. The amount of boost you get will be directly proportional to its state of charge. At peak output, it delivers 30 horsepower and helps the Hornet hit its advertised 5.6-second …
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