Dodge Five-Year Plan: Musclecars Rule, Grand Caravan A Goner

Dodge will lose its place as Chrysler's mass-market brand, according to the new five-year plan for the brand announced today in Auburn Hills.

The Dodge nameplate will become something more of a niche player for the Fiat Chrysler group, upending its status as the volume brand for most of the past two decades.

However, it's still in line to gain new sedans and new crossover SUVs as a part of its lineup--along with new powertrains like a supercharged version of the HEMI V-8.

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The new products coming to Dodge over the next five years include the following:

2015: This will be the transition point for the brand, as both the Dodge Grand Caravan and the Dodge Avenger are successively pruned from the lineup. The Grand Caravan will be eliminated so that the Chrysler Town & Country can thrive; the Avenger simply won't be replaced.

The 2015 Charger gets a mild reskin this year. The Viper sportscar will get a refresh--and it will go back to being a Dodge-branded vehicle, instead of an SRT-branded one, as the SRT badge is subsumed into the Dodge brand.

2016: A refreshed Dodge Dart appears, with all-wheel drive and new turbocharged power options, as well as an SRT edition.

Dodge also will get a replacement for the Journey crossover, and it will likely move up slightly in size, as the Grand Caravan goes away.

2017: The Journey adds an SRT variant.

2018: A busy year for Dodge, as it adds a new subcompact hatchback and sedan to its lineup--vehicles that will likely draw heavily on Fiat architectures.

In the same year, the Charger and Charger SRT sedan, and the Challenger and Challenger SRT two-doors, are replaced. There's no word yet on which platform they will ride on, since their current underpinnings date back to the 2005 model year.

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