There’s not a lot you can take away from watching a Charger Hellcat and a Challenger Hellcat race each other over a quarter mile. The two are genuine partners in crime, rather than rivals. Also, if this was a popularity contest, the Challenger would certainly come out on top, seen as how muscle cars are generally considered to be more awesome than four door family sedans, regardless of performance.
Still, if you had to know which of the two is quicker in Hellcat spec, would your money be on the Charger or the Challenger? The two weigh about the same, but the Challenger is actually a little bit wider as Dodge attempted to give it as aggressive a stance as possible. Unless of course you opt for a Charger Hellcat Widebody, like the one we see here.
The Widebody package consists of wider fenders (obviously), new 20-inch wheels with six-piston calipers and slotted rotors in the front, three-mode Bilstein adaptive damping suspension tuned for competition use, stiffened anti-roll bars, a new electrically assisted steering system and various features from the Challenger Demon (Race Cool Down, Line Lock, Launch Control/Launch Assist).
A non-widebody Challenger Hellcat will miss having some of those mechanical goodies, but in the end, we’re still looking at two vehicles of identical power outputs. Animating both is a supercharged 6.2-liter Hemi V8 unit rated at 707 hp (717 ps) and 650 lb-ft (881 nm) of torque. Normally you’ll find these cars equipped with eight-speed automatic transmissions, although you can get the Challenger with a manual too.
If you’re just counting to 60 mph (97 kph), both these Hellcats will get there in about 3.6 seconds, but over a quarter mile, at least during this recent event, the Challenger managed to edge out the Charger Widebody by nearly half a second. The former ran a 12.07-second quarter mile at 118.5 mph (190.7 kph), while the Charger did it in 12.44 seconds at 115 mph (185 mph).
On paper, they both could have done better, albeit not by much.
Sergiu got to experience both American and European car "scenes" at an early age (his father drove a Ford Fiesta XR2 supermini in the 80s). After spending over 15 years at local and international auto publications, he's starting to appreciate comfort behind the wheel more than raw power and acceleration. Full profile
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