Getting your hands on the fan-bleeding-tastic Hellephant isn’t easy. Not only does the 7.0-liter colossus retail at $29,995 or exactly $29.995 per horsepower, but you also need an installation kit from Mopar, the front-end accessory drive, and many other whatnots that should total $35k.
It’s also worth mentioning that Mopar produces the Hellephant in limited numbers, which is why it’s almost impossible to purchase this powerplant on a whim. The Chrysler 300 is rare for extremely different reasons, but no 300 is rarer than one with the aforementioned crate engine under the hood.
Owned by Khaled - a.k.a. @khal_srt on Instagram - the muscled-up sedan is the perfect example of what some people describe as OEM tuning. As opposed to the lethargic 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 and 5.7-liter HEMI V8 that come standard, the 7.0-liter Hellephant V8 is much obliged to deliver a mind-boggling 1,000 horsepower and 950 pound-feet (1,288 Nm) of torque.
By comparison, the six-cylinder base motor belts out 300 free-breathing ponies while the factory-issue V8 option makes do with 363 horsepower. The one-of-one build further boasts five-spoke wheels painted in black, wide drag radials front and aft, as well as an Air Grabber-style hood that helps the supercharger and powerplant with more air and improved cooling.
The Hellephant-swapped 300 runs but isn’t exactly finished at the moment of writing, but fret not because Khaled is going to fine-tune his car on and off the drag strip. However, I'm suspecting that a Challenger SRT Demon may be quicker because it features a few goodies the 300 doesn’t have.
From the specially-developed skinnies up front to the TransBrake, Drag Mode, Torque Reserve, SRT Power Chiller, and After-Run Chiller, the most exciting Challenger of them all is no pushover. According to Dodge, the Demon covers the quarter-mile in 9.65 seconds at 140 miles per hour (225 kph).
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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