America Turns 250 And Dodge Celebrates With An SUV Designed Before Some Of You Were Born

                                        https://www.carscoops.com/author/stephen-rivers/                                    

Dodge may be busy trying to convince the world that its future is electric and twin-turbocharged, but it still knows exactly how to work an old-school formula. Take one aging SUV, add some stripes, a few flags, a healthy dose of patriotic branding, and suddenly you have a “new” special edition just in time for America’s 250th birthday. Meet the 2026 Dodge Durango GT America250.

Unveiled at the New York Auto Show, the limited-run model is the first production vehicle shown as part of Stellantis’ partnership with America250, the organization handling the nation’s semi-quincentennial celebration. Is this ultimately just a bunch of corporate pageantry? We’ll leave that for you to decide.

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The biggest changes are cosmetic, though some are more interesting than expected. For the first time, Dodge is fitting the Durango GT with Black Laguna leather seats, normally reserved for more expensive and more powerful trims.

The seats get blue perforated inserts, embossed American flags, and red-and-white stitching. There’s also a red, white, and blue stitched steering wheel, Demonic Red seat belts, and forged carbon-fiber trim.

Outside, the America250 wears star-pattern dual stripes with blue tracer accents, America250 fender decals, and 20-inch Black Noise wheels. The full patriotic treatment is most obvious on White Knuckle-painted models, where the stripe package is exclusive, but buyers can also choose Red Oxide, Night Moves blue, Destroyer Gray, or Diamond Black.

V6 And V8 Lineup

Underneath the stars-and-stripes makeover, it’s still the same Durango buyers have known for years. The base GT Plus AWD uses Dodge’s 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 with 295 hp (220 kW) and 260 lb-ft (352 Nm). Buyers who still think an American celebration should come with eight cylinders can step up to the GT HEMI Plus or GT HEMI Premium, both powered by a 5.7-liter V8 making 360 hp (268 kW).

Here’s the interesting part: the V8-powered GT HEMI Plus starts at $51,270. That’s only $1,680 more than the V6 model, which starts at $49,590. In a world where automakers often charge thousands more for appearance packages alone, that feels almost reasonable. Orders open in early April.

While the Durango itself is now old enough to have a learner’s permit, Dodge clearly isn’t done squeezing a few more special editions out of it just yet.