When it comes to bang for the buck in terms of horsepower for your money, the best deal is arguably the Hellcat. I still remember when Dodge introduced the 6.2-liter supercharged HEMI V8 for the 2015 model year, and since then, nothing has come close to the beefed-up Challenger developed by the Street and Racing Technology team.
The most affordable specification of the lot will set you back $60,695 before destination and other taxes, but the Hellcat you want is the Widebody. In addition to flared wheel arches, the $6,000 difference over the standard model also goes into 305/35 by 20-inch tires. Indeed, the larger contact patch translates to slightly better handling and less wheel spin off the line.
When equipped with the TorqueFlite eight-speed automatic transmission, the wide-bodied muscle car also happens to be insanely quick on the quarter-mile. More to the point, Dodge quotes 10.96 seconds in bone-stock configuration, while zero to 60 mph (96 kph) takes just 3.6 seconds.
The red-and-black Hellcat Widebody in the following video couldn’t match the manufacturer’s quarter-mile time, but 11.1 seconds at 130 miles per hour (209 kilometers per hour) still is hugely impressive with the factory tires. However, the Porsche on the other lane of the drag strip came within half a second and 10 miles per hour (16 kph) despite its far less potent powerplant.
In Carrera specification, the 992 series Neunelfer develops 380 horsepower and 332 pound-feet (450 Nm) of torque. By comparison, the Mopar land missile rocks 717 horsepower and 656 pound-feet (889 Nm). We also have to consider how much heavier the Hellcat is, and lest we forget, Porsche has the upper hand in terms of performance-enhancing electronics.
These goodies do come at a price, though, a very different price point from Dodge. At the time of writing, the rear-wheel-drive sports car from Germany is listed at $99,200 excluding freight. The Sport Chrono Package adds $2,790 to the tally, which means that only one option is enough to surpass the $100,000 mark with the entry-level version of the Porsche 911.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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