If any premium-fuel-swilling, straight-line-gobbling sedan can find a place in this day and age, it’ll be the Dodge Charger SRT8

Never before have I wished to be older. My body has always held an elderly curmudgeon, but I’m only now on the cusp of that age after which no one can be trusted.

Cars for me have always been smaller, more fuel-efficient and sorta boxy. Driving fun has always been more about handling and maximizing momentum than straight-line, tire-smoking speed. I’d rather be down on power and make up for it with attempts at finesse.

When my father came home with a brown-on-brown Oldsmobile, my mom likes to recall, she went out the next day and bought the first Honda Prelude. We all know the punchline by now: It was the beginning of the end for that marriage. But my earliest memories of driving joy are of riding in the backseat of that sporty-looking but underwhelming little coupe. My older brother always got shotgun, but that meant I got to straddle the rear seats and stick my head up through the sunroof, feeling the wind on my face, watching the curves whip around. It was a simpler time.

But not the even-simpler time of the baby-boom generation. Guys of my dad’s era grew up on cheap gas, pre-statistics insurance and plentiful power. They were molded in a time before handling had anything to do with what went on in the front seat of the car. They knew cars by numerical identifiers: 309, 429, blah, blah, blah. I can’t relate.

All of which means I don’t get this new 2007 Dodge Charger SRT8, not in the least.

Here is a traditional rear-wheel-drive American sedan. It’s big, taking up every bit of a Santa Fe parking place — length and width. It’s brutishly exotic, all big wheels and wings and scoops. It’s mind-meltingly powerful: Under the hood is an even bigger version of the iconic Hemi V-8, 6.1 liters and 425 horsepower eclipsing the run-of-the-mill Hemi’s 5.7 and 340. It also gets eight more valves, up to a still-underwhelming 24 for a V-8, and loses the cylinder-deactivation technology available on the lesser V-8. It also requires premium fuel — an unsettling amount of premium fuel.

So this car is stupid. But it’s the right kind of stupid, the kind that makes me wish I could live a week or so in the innocence of the 1960s and grasp all those things the songs of the time ranted on about: Pasadena grannies who couldn’t keep their feet off the accelerator, 409s that were so very fine, why driving a GTO meant you were the coolest thing around.

Hitting the streets

But time travel isn’t ready yet, and I’m 29 in a world where greenhouse gases are a problem, where fuel prices are fixed by some bored sociopath in the central office, where cops have no patience for feeling out a car, even in a safe, controlled way.

Then again, maybe it’s not age but interest: I got more attention in the Charger around Santa Fe than I have in any car I can remember, outside Porsches and such that cost much more.

I came up on one guy who had to be younger than I as he was cruising in his own Charger, tricked out with huge rims and a spoiler just like the one on my SRT8. He waved for me to pass, and then we met up soon after at a stoplight. We rolled down our windows, and I’ll paraphrase:

Me: How big are those wheels?

Him: Twenty-twos. That SRT8 is hot!

As the light turned, we revved away, listening to each other’s cars, revving and letting off. That’s a car-guy moment, an understanding. We never got near the speed limit, weren’t going to race, but there was an unmarked cop somewhere behind, and he blipped his siren. Ah, for the ’60s, when men were men and cops had something to do. Maybe he was just jealous that he had to motor around in an old Impala when Dodge makes a police Charger.

That happened more than once around town: the exclamations of the other drivers, not the sirens.

Power to the people

Any Charger is a uniquely American sedan. It’s big inside, with stretch-out room front and rear. The trunk is huge. The interior is a sea of undistinguished gray plastic. You can’t make out the deep-set gauges bathed at night in a sickly green. You can’t see out of the Charger, not in front or back, nor to the sides; parking is a nightmare. In the SRT8, the hood scoop and rear spoiler cut down visibility to curb-feeler dimensions.

But the SRT8 has plenty of modern tricks up its sleeve. It has huge low-profile tires that offer up scads of grip. It can take corners with a sense of purpose that would blow the boomers’ minds. The five-speed automatic transmission is seamless in action and lets you choose gears for yourself through the shifter. There’s satellite radio and keyless entry and all that. The huge red-painted brake calipers say Brembo on them.

The highly sculpted front bucket seats are covered in something that looks like vinyl but smells faintly of leather. Inserts are said to be “performance suede” but feel like cloth. No matter, they look racy and hold driver and passenger well without being overly constrictive.

Being a patriotic American again, now that Chrysler’s German overlords are dumping the company into the lap of a domestic private-equity concern, the Charger lets you fully turn off the traction control by holding down a button on the dash. Then, the SRT8 will kick out its tail as if it didn’t have a care in the world. It would take guys in its target generation right back to their heydays, when they had hair where they wanted it and their bodies hadn’t yet gathered all around the middle.

In this day and age, though, the Charger SRT8 makes no sense as a car. It’s EPA-rated at 14 mpg city and 20 on the highway, but it slurps the pricey premium unleaded at a rate far more indecent than that. The federal government slaps on a $2,100 gas-guzzler tax, but the highly optioned test car still stickered for a shockingly low $42,675. And that’s the Charger SRT8’s ultimate American trait: To have this much raw power, this much performance equipment, this much room and utility in any other car would otherwise cost you at least twice as much.

And it would all be wrapped in a decidedly pretentious German wrapper. There’s nothing precious about this Dodge. Keep down the options — lose the navigation system and heated seats and sunroof — and you could be abusing the road for under $39,000. And people would feel inclined to chat you up at stoplights. Try that in a Porsche.

This car might not make any sense in the modern world, but it’s a wonder that it exists at all. Maybe it’s a symptom of the thinking that led Chrysler to its current poor state or maybe it’s proof there’s still life in the company. If nothing else, what an extreme addition to a wealthy fogy’s garage, the kind of car he would wash and wax on Sundays after a healthy romp.

There are plenty of other, less-macho, more parking-lot-friendly cars to drive the rest of the week. But there’s nothing else like this SRT8. Just don’t get the Super Bee package that comes in Detonator Yellow; those days are past.

Jay Binneweg is automotive editor at The New Mexican. E-mail him at drive@sfnewmexican.com.

2007 Dodge Charger SRT8

• Base price: $38,695
• As tested: $42,675
• Type: Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive, five-passenger full-size sport sedan
• Drivetrain: 24-valve 6.1-liter V-8 producing 425 horsepower at 6,200 rpm and 420 pound-feet of torque at 4,800 rpm; five-speed automatic
• EPA mileage: 14/20, premium unleaded
• Length: 200.1 inches
• Wheelbase: 120 inches
• Weight: 4,160 pounds
• Built in: Canada