Detroit has made a lot of great cars and established some very iconic names in the lexicon of America. They have also bastardized many of those iconic names. The Mustang II comes to mind, as does every Dodge Charger after 1974. While the latest Charger has made up for some of the lost years (despite continuing being a four-door), it still amazes us how quickly the Charger fell from muscle car icon to bloated, bland sedan.

Don’t believe us? Check out this vintage 1975 Dodge Charger commercial, which even admits that the only thing that’s the same is the name. Even that couldn’t save this awful car from itself.

1971 was the last year of the HEMI engine, and by 1974, Dodge had placed an emphasis on luxury over performance with most of their models. This was because government emissions standards meant engines could no longer run high compression ratios, and fuel economy standards effectively killed big block engines. In 1974, you could still order the 440 engine, but by 1975 the largest engine available was the emissions-choked B-Block 400 engine.

It gets worse. The emphasis on luxury and styling over performance led Dodge to creating something resembling a brick on roller skates. It was so bad that NASCAR made a special exception and allowed the ’75 Chargers to run ’74 Charger sheet metal, one of the first steps towards the homogenization of stock car racing. It only got worse from there, and by 1978 Charger sales had sunk to a dismal 2,400 cars. The Charger name would disappear until the late 80’s, when it appeared on a sport-compact fighter, and again with the latest four-door Charger in 2005. While the ’75 to ’78 Chargers may not have been the best looking or fastest Charger, at least it had a catchy tune.