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Jeep Trackhawk Kills Old Viper Over the Half Mile, Takes On Other Rivals

It's official: the Trackhawk is a very sexy ride. Not only does it have the Jeep badge, which is fantastic on so many levels, but it delivers ridiculous SUV performance. How ridiculous? Well, it's bad enough to make the classic Viper look slow.
Jeep Trackhawk Kills Old Viper Over the Half Mile, Takes On Other Rivals 3 photos
Photo: YouTube screenshot
Jeep Trackhawk Kills Old Viper Over the Half Mile, Takes On Other RivalsJeep Trackhawk Kills Old Viper Over the Half Mile, Takes On Other Rivals
You guys all know how insane the Viper used to be. It's got the biggest engine fitted to a sports car and savage handling that might kill you. The Grand Cherokee Trackhawk is way faster but also feels like it's in control, like it can still do the dirty stuff and the school run.

Some might think that's a buzz-kill, but people have started to believe that the car which wants to ruin your life might not be good for you. You know what? An all-wheel-drive Jeep SUV with the Hellcat engine might be better!

The point of these half-mile races is not to see who can hit his gas pedal first. No, it's all about that trap speed, and that's an area where the Trackhawk has a genuine disadvantage. Being an SUV, its aerodynamic profile is way bigger than that of its track day rivals.

Other than the old Viper, everything else walks all over the Jeep due to the higher speed they can reach over the half-mile runway. For example, the McLaren 720S is closed at 175 mph compared to 142 mph, while the BMW M3 does 150 mph.

I'd still be pretty happy if my SUV would even be mentioned in the same sentence as the fastest McLaren supercar right now.

There's also an Audi R8 with a trap speed of 179.78 mph. That's not normal, right? Maybe that's one of those Hennessey twin-turbo models because the 610 horsepower German supercar isn't supposed to be that fast. But my god, that yellow Mustang sounds like every performance car should. Yummy!

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About the author: Mihnea Radu
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Mihnea's favorite cars have already been built, the so-called modern classics from the '80s and '90s. He also loves local car culture from all over the world, so don't be surprised to see him getting excited about weird Japanese imports, low-rider VWs out of Germany, replicas from Russia or LS swaps down in Florida.
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