There's A Dodge Stratus R/T Jump Scare At The New York Auto Show
The New York International Auto Show is all about the latest and greatest cars the automotive world has to offer, so you can imagine my surprise when I happened upon a picture of a car that history would be better off forgetting. The Dodge Stratus R/T Coupe wasn't a particularly great car when it was on sale in 2002. It's certainly not a good car in 2026, and it's very far from being one of the most important vehicles the Chrysler corporation ever built. Despite this, Stellantis felt it was an appropriate car to include on its wall of history advertising its involvement in all of that "America 250" junk we're doing this year.
For the life of me I cannot understand why the Stratus is on there, and when I noticed it, it stopped me in my tracks. Think of this story as a public service announcement. Nobody deserves to have a second-generation Dodge Stratus sprung on them without warning. I very much took one for the team in this situation.
The Stratus is just so incongruent with every other car Stellantis decided to include on this wall, which is mirrored by an identical wall on the opposite side of it, creating a sort of "America 250" corridor that leads to the Chrysler booth — that means there are actually two Stratuses. All of the other cars it chose to include actually make sense. The Willys Jeep is there, as is the Chrysler Town & Country and the Dodge Charger. The wall, which reads "Every Mile Carries a Memory," is filled with about 25 photos of various Mopar products from the past hundred-or-so years, and none of them means less than the 2002 Stratus R/T Coupe. Nobody has ever made a memory in that car — not a good one, at least.
That's clearly seen in its resale value. Only one Stratus Coupe has ever been sold on Bring A Trailer — a nearly identical and very clean R/T back in November of 2025 — and it went for just $4,700. There's also what must be the cleanest Stratus Coupe in existence currently for sale at a dealership in Pennsylvania. With a manual transmission and just 6,000 miles on the clock, this thing is minty, and probably the best example of a Stratus Coupe left on earth. Sure, it's not an R/T, but this post-facelift car commands an asking price of just $10,900. If there was any nostalgia whatsoever attached to the Stratus, the price would be twice as high.
Barely a Chrysler product
On top of all this, the Stratus R/T Coupe is barely a Chrysler product. Sure, the Stratus sedan was a through-and-through Chrysler vehicle — not that it was anything to write home about, either — but the Stratus R/T Coupe really wasn't. It rode on the Mitsubishi Eclipse's ST-22 platform and shared almost nothing other than some exterior and interior design elements with the Stratus sedan. Hell, the coupes were even built at the same Diamond-Star Motors plant in Illinois that the two companies built the previous Mitsubishi Eclipse, Plymouth Laser and Eagle Talon. On the inside, other than that uniquely early-2000s Mopar radio, it was all Mitsubishi, and the story was exactly the same under the hood. Buyers could choose from either a 2.4-liter Mitsubishi inline-4 or a 3.0-liter Mitsubishi V6. Power was sent through either a five-speed manual or a four-speed automatic, but it's not like either made much of a difference.
It all begs the question, why, oh why, did this car end up here? Who was the person who designed this massive showpiece without considering for a second the repercussions of such a decision? For the love of God, the Stratus is a car that is most known for being the butt of a joke in a 28-year-old "Saturday Night Live" sketch, and I'm fairly certain Will Ferrell is talking about the sedan. It has no relevance to anything whatsoever.
Thousands of children come to the New York Auto Show every year. I want them to live in a world where the Stratus R/T Coupe can't hurt them. Unfortunately, that's not the world we live in. Just make sure to cover their eyes, or be prepared to explain how Dodge R/T models used to make 200 horsepower.