Ready or not, muscle car fans, because Dodge and the SRT skunkworks started to ship the maniacally powerful Hellcat-engined Challenger to its US dealers. It was a long wait considering the model was unveiled in May, but all these long months were not in vain.
When Dodge first started to tease us with the 2015 Challenger SRT Hellcat, we were told to expect “over 600 horsepower.” That would’ve been gutsy, but not enough by SRT standards. This is why the 6.2-liter supercharged HEMI V8 warhead under the hood whines its way to 707 ponies and 650 lb-ft (881 Nm).
Couple that monster under the bonnet to a Viper-derived six-speed stick shift gearbox or an eight-speed automatic and you get a car that can blitz the quarter mile in a mere 11.2 seconds on stock Pirelli P Zero rubber or 10.8 seconds on road-legal drag radials. With a $59,995 starting price, the Challenger SRT Hellcat is, in terms of bang for the buck and character, a very hard to resist automotive proposition.
It's no wonder then why “the reaction from our customers and the general public has been beyond even our positive expectations" according to Tim Kuniskis, CEO and president of the Dodge and SRT brands.
We previously reported you how an insider told that over 5,000 units of the berserker muscle car were ordered since the order books opened in September. To boot, the manufacturer now disclosed that it received more than 4,500 orders for the Challenger SRT Hellcat in the first 5 days after orders opened.
Top tip from a Dodge insider: if you want a Hellcat in Sublime Green, you'd better hurry up because that poisonous exterior hue is the customers’ favorite and the waiting list is getting longer by the minute.
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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