Dodge’s ultimate muscle car was originally teased by a red-skinned goblin with red eyes and an evil smirk on its face. For the second teaser building up to the grand reveal on March 20th, the muscle car brand owned by Stellantis (Fiat Chrysler x Groupe PSA) went bananas.
The 25-second clip starts with a garage full of rusty gears, a selection of tools, and a vintage oil can. Right in the middle of the garage, there’s an IV bag holder stand with what appears to be dinosaur juice instead of intravenous fluids meant for humans. Commercially available gasoline has a slight yellowish color, although the high-octane fuel in the bag is yellow going on gold.
Intriguing? It’s getting better because that dinosaur juice is going into the veins of a leprechaun. It’s hard to make a parallel between Dodge and a creature from Irish folklore, but then again, Dodge be weird like that. After increasing the flow rate (Metallica’s intro to Fuel, anyone?), the red-eyed leprechaun turns into a gold-eyed goblin that walks in a sassy way toward the viewer.
The final piece of the puzzle is the teaser video’s title, Runnin’ Hyde, which likely refers to the special edition model’s straight-line performance and its dual street-strip nature. Dodge has plenty of experience with street-strip automobiles, the 840-horsepower and uber-torquey Hellcat being the most obvious example of the bunch.
Those 840 horsepower and 770 pound-feet (1,044 Nm) of torque are produced exclusively on race-grade fuel, not premium or regular octane. The Challenger SRT Hellcat Demon was produced for one year only in 2018 to the tune of 3,300 units, split between 3,000 for the United States market and 300 for the Canadian market.
When it comes to Hellcat engines running on lower than 100-octane fuel, the Super Stock comes to mind with 807 horsepower and 707 pound-feet (959 Nm) on 91. Given that the seventh and final “Last Call” special edition is a farewell to the current-generation Challenger and its four-door sibling, the Auburn Hills-based automaker is expected to push the Hellcat V8 to 1,000 horsepower.
Plenty of aftermarket companies already did it, and Hennessey Performance Engineering also backs up its 1,000-horsepower package with a two-year warranty for extra peace of mind. Dodge big kahuna Tim Kuniskis let it slip that his engineering team blew up seven engines to certify the most extreme Hellcat engine there’s ever been, all in the name of ironing out potential issues.
Most likely called Goblin, after the first and second video teasers, the mystery model will be revealed in the flesh at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 20th, during the Dodge Last Call Powered by Roadkill Nights Vegas event. It’s certainly limited in numbers, but time will tell if it is as limited as the better-named Demon.
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
Would you like AUTOEVOLUTION to send you notifications?
Google News