The Durango SRT Hellcat isn’t your average people-carrying utility vehicle. Inspired by the Challenger and Charger in SRT Hellcat flavor, the seven-seat muscle SUV delivers a McLaren 720S-rivaling 710 horsepower.
Peak torque is rated at 645 pound-feet (875 Nm) just like the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, which covers the quarter-mile in 11.6 seconds instead of 11.5 seconds for the range-topping Durango. Rarer than the mighty Demon, the family-sized performance utility vehicle sounds like nobody’s business from the factory. The aftermarket, however, can improve the aural pleasure along with the supercharged V8 mill that Dodge calls the Hellcat.
Texas-based Hennessey Performance Engineering is much obliged to crank things up to 912 horsepower and 873 pound-feet (1,184 Nm) of torque as part of the HPE900 package. A supercharger pulley upgrade, drive hub assembly upgrade, and ported snout open the list of go-faster goodies, along with the overdrive crank damper, high-flow injectors, and filtration system.
To achieve the aforementioned figures, Hennessey also reflashes the engine and transmission control modules with proprietary software. A crankcase ventilation system pretty much seals the deal, together with chassis dyno testing and up to 400 miles (644 kilometers) of testing on the track.
Every HPE900 is backed up by a three-year warranty, and from a visual standpoint, you can tell a Hennessey Durango SRT Hellcat from a stock model with the help of badges and serialized plaques. There is, however, an even more glorious performance package available in very limited numbers.
HPE1000 stands for a whopping 1,012 horsepower at 6,500 revolutions per minute and 969 pound-feet (1,314 Nm) at 4,200 rpm. This kind of suck-squeeze-bang-blow is made possible by the aforementioned mods plus more supercharger upgrades, new spark plugs, and a beefier thermostat. Only 50 units will be produced and heaven only knows how much these upgrades cost when you consider the rarity and MSRP of the Durango SRT Hellcat.
As a brief refresher, this variant is a one-year affair that’s going to number a little over 3,000 examples. Still available to order at the moment of reporting, the gentle giant starts from $80,995 excluding destination charge.
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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