There I was, aboard the ferociously barbaric 2015 Dodge Challenger Hellcat,
ready to restrain all 707 horsepowers and execute a stellar lap time on
our autocross course. By the first turn, however, I'd given up.
This car doesn't want to go
straight. It doesn't do polite, or graceful. It does sideways. All of
the time. Dropping grandma off at the hair salon? Sideways. Driving home
after a painful vasectomy? Sideways. Carrying a trunk-full of
explosives to an off-the-grid location somewhere in the deserts of
Arizona? Sideways.
Achieving a clean lap is
pointless; this car just isn't meant for that. The Challenger Hellcat is
a proper unadulterated muscle car, something that doesn't exist
elsewhere -- even in Mustang GT500 or Camaro ZL1
trim. Today's ponies are tamed and refined for modern use, whereas the
Hellcat sticks its middle finger up at society. It's basically Keith
Moon with a license plate, only conceived from the depths of Detroit.
The moment you touch the throttle
(even in third gear), the tires spin. It roars like James Earl Jones
nursing a hangover. To say the Hellcat is fast would be a gross
understatement. Sixty miles-per-hour arrives easily within four seconds;
completing the quarter mile on stock tires takes just 11.2 seconds. A
6.2-liter HEMI V-8 resides under the scooped hood, massaged into the
beast that it is via a Titanic-sized supercharger. Even by Dodge's own
admission, building a machine like this makes little sense from a
business perspective. But creating something special seldom does.
After just a couple of laps on
the autocross we had to swap the rear tires with the fronts. Two laps
later, all four were down to the cords. Of all the cars I've driven
sideways, none are as easy to control as the Challenger -- and none do
skids as extensive outside of a purpose built drift-car. For that we
must thank the immense torque on tap and rear tires that simply aren't
nearly large enough to cope with an extreme engine like the Hellcat's.
That engine. It's simply an
expensive tool to destroy rubber, and a more efficient way of emptying
your bank account than, say, sending your wife to Saks Fifth Avenue for
an afternoon with six of her best friends and a bucket-full of
margarita.
But you don't care. For $60,000,
the Hellcat is a riot. I'd re-mortgage my house to own one, but first, I
may need to befriend Mr. Pirelli. And buy my wife a bucket-full of
margarita.
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