Dodge Charger Srt
Problems & Worst Years

Interior build quality, not performance hardware, generates most of the Dodge Charger SRT's complaints. Across 2016, 2017, and 2018 — years with remarkably similar totals of 75, 70, and 72 occurrences — the same two themes trade places at the top. Door panels detaching lead the 2016 file at 36 reports and recur in 2017 (16) and 2018 (7). The UConnect touchscreen leads 2017 at 26 reports — delaminating and registering phantom button presses — and 2018 at 25, joined there by radio and infotainment glitches (12). If you're cross-shopping these years, assume you'll be checking doors and screens regardless.

The mechanical entries are fewer but worth noting. The 2016 stands out for fuel-system complaints: fuel odor inside the vehicle (14 reports) and a fuel pump wiring harness overheating and causing fuel leaks (7) — any gasoline smell in the cabin of a 2016 warrants immediate investigation, not an air freshener. That year also logged drive shaft issues (8). The 2017 adds engine timing issues and misfires (6) plus a handful of reports of random acceleration and deceleration (4), and the 2018 includes steering rack failure (7). The 2019 file is the thinnest at 43 occurrences, but its top item is its most serious: 20 safety-severity reports of airbag recall parts being unavailable. No recall campaign IDs are recorded against these model years in this dataset, but that 2019 complaint pattern makes a VIN check through NHTSA's lookup mandatory anyway.

The inspection routine, then: sniff for fuel on a 2016 and look for evidence of leak repairs; spend unhurried time with the touchscreen on 2017–2018 cars watching for delamination and ghost inputs; tug the door panels on all of them; and verify airbag recall status on a 2019. As always, these counts reflect what owners filed with NHTSA rather than true failure rates — newer cars have had less time to accumulate reports — and a documented service history plus a pre-purchase inspection will outweigh any model-year comparison.