The Dodge Challenger, whose base engine has been left in the dust by stellar new sixes on the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro, will get 305 horsepower from a specially tuned version of the Pentastar. That’s 55 more horsepower than the Challenger's current V6, yet its fuel economy will also grow by 1 mpg, to 18 mpg city/26 mpg highway. And that 305 horsepower should make the Challenger stoplight-ready against V6 versions of the Ford and Chevy pony cars. And of course, the eagerly awaited Chrysler 200 sedan will offer a Pentastar under its shapely hood.

The engines are also about company and manufacturing efficiency: Chrysler said the Pentastar will allow it to reduce the number of major engine components it uses from 189 to just 32. And the engine will replace that current hodgepodge of seven V6s that range from 2.7 to 4 liters. As the engine is built in a new, $364 million plant in Trenton, Mich., that has the capacity to churn out more than 400,000 engines a year, it should be noted that the Pentastar program is a boon to American jobs, as well.

In big-picture terms, let's also not forget that Chrysler's sales are still too heavily weighted toward pickups and SUVs, and therefore the company has miles to go in order to boost its corporate fuel economy to more than 35 mpg by 2016. This engine is a great start down that road; Chrysler expects the Pentastar to boost the company’s fleetwide fuel economy by more than 25 percent, and still has the 4-cylinder Fiat Multi-Air powerplants to look forward to.