“With the Magnum, we owned the station wagon segment,” says Ralph Gilles, the Chrysler design chief who helped create the wagon. “A lot of people in the company still like that vehicle — a lot.”
Even if the Dodge Magnum wagon proved a sensation with tuners and urban dwellers when it arrived in showrooms in 2004, it was quickly spiked when Chrysler hit the financial skids and restructured under bankruptcy a few years ago. Still, it remains a source of pride inside Chrysler.
Ralph Gilles, the Chrysler design chief who helped create the wagon, told The New York Times: “With the Magnum, we owned the station wagon segment […] It was always a pleasure to go to car shows and trade fairs and see the number of Magnums that owners had personalized with such obvious loving care.”
Ralph Gilles said the Magnum “was single-handedly killed by one executive who is no longer with the company. He’s retired. A lot of people in the company still like that vehicle — a lot.”
R. Gilles, who is now in charge of jump-starting Chrysler’s high-performance SRT unit, in addition to leading design, may be just the insider to champion Magnum II.
“A lot of things that weren’t possible back then, now are. The Dodge Viper, certainly, is a likely choice for an SRT version,” he also added for the Times. “Also, we know we need an entry-level vehicle of some kind.”
Considering that when asked whether a design for a second-generation Magnum might be found in one of his sketch pads, Gilles took a pass, we can hope that this isn’t that imposible as we thought before.
“Stay tuned,” he told the Times. “Great things are coming. That’s all I can say.”
This could means that another muscle wagon is in the works. Early rumors that the Magnum nameplate would be used on Dodge’s big new crossover never panned out; it hit showrooms as the Durango.
Source: Autonews
