Over the course of its nearly a century of existence, Chrysler and its various associates — Dodge, Plymouth, Jeep, et al. — has produced some of the best named cars in the business. You can’t argue with vehicles called the Challenger, the Daytona, the Prowler, the Magnum, the Dart, and the Wrangler. Along with its legendary cars, the company has also produced some of the best trim package names around, like Swinger, Hellcat, and Warlock. Honestly, when it comes to names that capture the imagination, Chrysler is one of the best to ever do it.
Of all the names that Chrysler has used over the years, Scat Pack is one of the most famous. It’s also possibly one of the most contentious names out there and has been fodder for passionate discussions among gearheads for half a century. Is it a model? Is it a trim package? Doesn’t “scat” mean poop? Where did that name come from, anyway, and what does it mean?
As is the case with a lot of the coolest things in the automotive world, the answer to all those questions lies in the Mad Men-era of advertising. Let’s travel back to the heady days of the muscle car era and take a look at how the Scat Pack came to be, shall we?
Oh God, bees!
In 1961, Chrysler engineer and Ramchargers racer Dan Mancini stuffed a 361 B big block V8 into a ’61 Valiant and took it to the drag strip. This feat of mechanical chicanery kicked off a near decade-long wave of shadetree mechanics and pro racers alike stuffing big, fire-breathing Chrysler V8s into lightweight Mopar A body cars. It wasn’t until 1967, however, that the big brains at Chrysler decided to get in on the big mill/small car action themselves with the release of the 383-powered second-gen Dart GTS.
In 1968, Dodge released the all-new Charger R/T and Coronet R/T, and with them came the Scat Pack name. Penned by the Ross Roy ad agency out of Detroit, MI, Scat Pack was, allegedly, a combination of the old-timey word “scat” meaning “get lost” or “get outta here” and a reference to the Sinatra-led Rat Pack. What made the Scat Pack unique was that it wasn’t a specific brand or trim package, but a collective name for Dodge’s three performance models — the aforementioned B-Body Charger and Challenger R/T and the previous year’s big-bore Dart GTS. Relatively quickly, these three were joined by the Coronet-derived Super Bee.
To set them apart from other, more pedestrian Chrysler products, the Scat Pack cars wore “Bumblebee Stripes,” a pair of contrasting color racing stripes (typically black or white) that ran horizontally over the deck lid and down the side of each quarter panel. In addition to their trademark stripes, the Scat Pack cars got their own mascot — a grinning, biomechanical bumblebee wearing a white helmet and black visor equipped with Cragars, redline tires, and a big V8 on his back. There was even a combination owners’ group/fan club called the Scat Pack Club that published a monthly newsletter containing all the Scat Pack news fit to print.
Fly away, little bee
While it was wildly successful, tastes and models changed and Dodge shelved the Scat Pack after the 1971 model year. The fastest bee in the west was absent from Dodge advertising, and from the cultural zeitgeist at large, for more than four decades. Then, in 2013, the Scat Pack name — complete with a more aggressive, facelifted racing bee logo — returned at that year’s SEMA trade show and Mopar heads lost their collective minds.
The new Scat Pack, like its predecessor, encompassed the Dart, Charger, and Challenger (history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme). In 2014, the Scat Pack was much like it was in the old days, just a collective noun for a particular set of fast Mopars. In 2015, however, it became a full-fledged trim package. Eventually, after the neo-Dart’s demise in 2016, the Scat Pack moniker was used to describe the 392-powered Chargers and Challengers slotted in between the R/T models and the fire-breathing Hellcats.
With the death of the Hemi L-series in 2023, the Scat Pack name once again disappeared from Dodge’s lineup, but only briefly. When Dodge unveiled the new Charger Daytona EV last year, it presented the muscle car in two different trim levels: R/T and Scat Pack. The electric Charger Daytona Scat Pack has a whopping 670 horsepower, way more than any Scat Pack before it, and it even comes with a redesigned bumblebee logo. While the version of the new Charger with a gas six-cylinder won’t use the Scat Pack name, if the rumors are true and the Charger gains a V8 variant, maybe the bee will find its way onto that car’s fenders as well.
