Kuniskis left Dodge around the same time Dodge left its buyer base – by cancelling the popular Charger and Challenger and replacing both with a battery powered device that requires charging. It has not gone well for Dodge since then. Nor for Ram – which had a hot-selling truck until it was decided to replace the V8 with a turbo-hybridized six. It has not sold well since then – and that is why Kuniskis is back. He is seen as the guy who turned Dodge into the go-to brand for buyers who wanted engines rather than devices and – more than that – big V8 engines, because it was the only brand still offering them before management decided to stop  offering them.

But it wasn't because Stellantis had gone "woke" – as the New York Post put it. It was because Stellantis was going broke paying Elon Musk (via Tesla) for carbon credits to offset the "carbon footprint" of its V8-powered offerings. The sums involved were so enormous – in the hundreds of millions of dollars – that it had to offset the losses by increasing the prices of models such as the Charger and Challenger and Ram trucks and Jeeps equipped with V8 engines. This made them harder to sell because they became more expensive than many of the people who'd have loved to by one could afford to spend.

Also less profitable.

This is why then-Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares decided it made more sense to stop offering V8s, in order to stop having to pay Elon. The fly in the soup was most people had no interest in what Stellantis wanted to sell them, especially as regards the Dodge Charger device and Ram trucks with small sixes rather than big eights. It was a textbook study case of not knowing one's market. More finely, of believing the market – its buyer base – was malleable. That bueyers could be sold anything – so long as the badge said Dodge or Ram.

It didn't pan out. See New Coke.

See Bud Light.

"When Ram made the decision to discontinue production of the iconic HEMI V8, the internet erupted, and lifelong loyalists voiced their outrage across social media," admits Lindsay Fifelski, who is head of Ram brand advertising. 

"We own it. We got it wrong. And we're fixing it," Kuniskis said. Well, sort of. The V8 is coming back – and the Charger will, apparently, be turned back into a muscle car rather than a device made to look like one (and emit the fake sounds of one). The Ram 1500 will once again be available with a V8 as well.