Dodge Trivia
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48 free Dodge trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Dodge started as a machine shop that built almost the entire chassis of Henry Ford's first Model A, then outlived its founders, saved Chrysler twice and became the home of the Hemi. These Dodge trivia questions cover the brothers John and Horace, the 1916 Pancho Villa expedition, the 1928 sale to Chrysler, the muscle-car years, the minivan that created a market, the Viper and the Ram split. Every answer is sourced, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What were the first names of the two Dodge brothers who founded the company?
John and Horace
John and Horace. Before cars, the inseparable brothers built bicycles around a dirt-proof ball bearing Horace had invented, then sold up to open the Detroit machine shop that became Dodge.
Q 02In which Michigan city, surrounded by Detroit, did the Dodge Main factory stand?
Hamtramck
Hamtramck. The plant drew so many Polish immigrant workers that a village of about 3,500 people in 1910 had grown more than tenfold by 1920.
Q 03Roughly how much did Henry Ford pay the Dodge brothers for their Ford shares in 1919?
About $25 million
About $25 million. The stake had cost the brothers $10,000 in parts and cash sixteen years earlier, and it had already repaid them many times over.
Q 04Which part of Henry Ford's first production car did the Dodge brothers build?
The chassis
The chassis. It came complete with engine and gearbox, so Ford's own men added little more than bodies and wheels, and the Dodges took a tenth of his new company as part of the deal.
Q 05The first Dodge car nearly doubled the horsepower of which Ford?
Model T
Model T. Dodge offered 35 horsepower to its 20, and the brothers knew its weak points well, having built Ford's engines and gearboxes for a decade.
Q 06Which feature, still rare at the time, did the first Dodge car make standard?
All-steel bodies
All-steel bodies. Most cars still hid a wooden frame under their panels, and the Dodges became the first big backers of Edward Budd's welded steel shells.
Q 07Which electrical system, rare for its day, did the first Dodge use?
12-volt
12-volt. Most cars then ran on six volts, and Dodge itself fell back to six for 1926; the industry only settled on twelve in the mid-1950s.
Q 08Which name does Dodge give the supercharged 707-horsepower V8 it launched for 2015?
Hellcat
Hellcat. After engineers certified it at 707 horsepower, Dodge's parts arm began selling the same engine in a box for hot-rodders, as the Hellcrate.
Q 09Why did the Dodge brothers sue Henry Ford in 1916?
He stopped paying stock dividends
He stopped paying stock dividends. The brothers won: Michigan's top court ruled in 1919 that Ford had to run the company for its shareholders, a case law students still study.
Q 10Which general used a Dodge touring car in the 1916 expedition against Pancho Villa?
John J. Pershing
John J. Pershing. The Army bought at least 150 Dodges for the campaign, and he used one to keep up with his columns as they pushed across northern Mexico.
Q 11Which future WWII general led America's first motorized military raid in three Dodge cars?
George S. Patton
George S. Patton. The young lieutenant had the three dead raiders strapped to the hoods of the Dodges and driven back to headquarters, and the press hailed him as a 'bandit killer'.
Q 12Which 1974 Dodge sedan, bought as a retired police cruiser, is the Bluesmobile in The Blues Brothers?
The Monaco
The Monaco. The studio bought a fleet of retired California Highway Patrol cars to play the one battered cruiser, each set up for a different stunt.
Q 13Both Dodge brothers fell ill visiting which city's auto show?
New York
New York. It was January 1920, with a flu pandemic still running: one brother died in the city days later, and the other never fully recovered and followed him before the year was out.
Q 21What was the name of Dodge's first V8, a smaller version of the Chrysler Hemi?
Red Ram
Red Ram. Chrysler scaled its new Hemi down for the smaller brand, and in 1953 Dodge took Red Ram cars to the Bonneville Salt Flats and came home with more than a hundred speed records.
Q 22Which Chrysler design chief led the 1955 restyle that brought tail fins to Dodge?
Virgil Exner
Virgil Exner. He had worked under Harley Earl at GM and then for Raymond Loewy, and his finned 1950s cars set rival makers scrambling to fit bigger and bigger fins of their own.
Q 23Which Japanese-built Dodge was dropped as pace car of the 1991 Indianapolis 500 after union protests?
The Stealth
Q 14Who sold Dodge Brothers to a Wall Street bank in 1925 for $146 million, then a record cash deal?
The founders' widows
The founders' widows. Matilda and Anna Dodge had inherited the company five years earlier, and the bankers who paid them resold it to Walter Chrysler within three years.
Q 15What nickname did the 426 Hemi V8 in Dodge's 1960s muscle cars earn for its size and power?
The Elephant
The Elephant. It proved so strong on the track in 1964 that NASCAR barred it for 1965, until Chrysler agreed to sell a tamer version in ordinary road cars.
Q 16Which racing legend was hired to turn 1980s Dodges such as the Omni GLH into performance cars?
Carroll Shelby
Carroll Shelby. He was called in by Chrysler's chairman, the same executive who had once brought him to the Ford Mustang, and he later advised on the Viper.
Q 17From 1933, Dodge sat between Plymouth and which other brand in Chrysler's lineup?
DeSoto
DeSoto. Chrysler had launched DeSoto as the cheaper of the two, then swapped them for 1933 in the hope of lifting Dodge's sales.
Q 18Which 1940s Chrysler feature let a Dodge stop in gear without stalling?
Fluid Drive
Fluid Drive. An oil-filled coupling took the place of the flywheel, so the engine kept running at a standstill, though the driver still pressed a clutch to change gear.
Q 19Which engine maker's turbo-diesel, first offered in 1989, made Dodge pickups a favourite for heavy towing?
Cummins
Cummins. The straight-six diesel, a design also found in school buses, gave Dodge's ageing pickups their first sales rise in years.
Q 20Which civilian truck grew directly out of Dodge's wartime WC series?
The Power Wagon
The Power Wagon. Dodge put the army's four-wheel-drive truck on sale almost unchanged, flat fenders and all, and was still listing the old 'Military Type' beside its modern pickups after 1957.
The Stealth. Auto workers objected to an imported car leading America's biggest race, so Dodge rushed out a prototype of its still-unreleased Viper instead.
Q 24How did drivers select gears on a Dodge automatic of the late 1950s and early 1960s?
Mechanical push-buttons
Mechanical push-buttons. The row of buttons sat at the far left of the dashboard, replacing the column lever of Dodge's first automatics, and lasted until a lever returned for 1965.
Q 25Dodge's first compact, launched for 1961, was a variation on which Plymouth?
The Valiant
The Valiant. Dodge's version, the Lancer, sold poorly and lasted only two model years before the 1963 Dart took its place and became one of the division's best sellers.
Q 26Which Dodge, launched for 1966 as a fastback version of the Coronet, is the villains' car in the Bullitt chase?
The Charger
The Charger. The film used two black 1968 cars, one for close-ups and one for stunts, and the stunt car's big V8 was left almost standard for the chase.
Q 27Which Dodge starred in the 1971 chase film Vanishing Point?
The Challenger
The Challenger. Dodge joined the pony-car race years after the Mustang, and the film sends a white R/T flat out from Denver toward San Francisco with police on its tail.
Q 28Dodge's Colt subcompact of the seventies was built by which Japanese partner?
Mitsubishi
Mitsubishi. The Colt was a rebadged Mitsubishi Galant shipped from Japan, the start of a partnership that kept Mitsubishi-built Dodges in showrooms into the 1990s.
Q 29The original Dodge Demon was a badge-engineered version of which Plymouth?
The Duster
The Duster. Dodge's copy sold far fewer than its Plymouth twin, and after two model years the Demon name was dropped and the car became the Dart Sport.
Q 30Which European Chrysler model was the basis for the Dodge Omni?
The Horizon
The Horizon. The American version even borrowed its first engine, a 1.7-litre four, from Volkswagen, whose Rabbit it was built to fight.