Dodge SRT Hellcat Challenger First Drive Review | The Warship on Wheels

This is the 2018 SRT Hellcat Challenger in destroyer gray. And what a fitting color for this car. This thing might as well be a warship on wheels. It sure as hell has the engine for one. And if you don't already know, that's a 6.2 liter supercharged V8 making 707 horsepower and 650 pound feet of torque. So know for 2019, they bumped the power up to 717 horsepower. But let's be real here, you're not going to tell the difference. This thing's an absolute monster. As it is, it's a lot like my Z06 in the way that's got instant power from pretty much any gear. And there's eight of those. Before we talk about the transmission, let's talk about one other thing. The supercharger whine. My God, this thing sounds heavenly. I wish my Z06 sounded like this Dodge. Really got it right here. It reminds me a lot of the Terminator Cobras from the early 2000s. The good old days. So let's get back to the transmission. Now, this thing's got an 8 speed TorqueFlite automatic, but you can still get it in 6 speed manual. Honestly, the automatic's the better choice though. Sounds a lot like my Z06, right? Wrong. This gearbox is leaps and bounds above what GM has to offer in their C7 Corvettes. The shifts are firm, aggressive, and most importantly, on time. There's little to no paddle delay. It feels very similar to a dual clutch system. The upshifts are fast and the downshifts are snappy. See, now that makes me a little upset because now there are two things that this Hellcat does better than my Z06. If you want to learn more about the pitfalls of an automatic Z06, go over and check out my video where I compare it to its manual counterpart. In the meantime though, let's go talk about this car's Achilles heel, the curb weight. This thing weighs 4,500 pounds. Let that sink in for a moment. Some SUVs weigh less than that. So even if it has more power than the Z06, the ZL1 or GT500, it's got over half a ton of extra weight it needs to move. It'd be interesting to find out how fast this thing actually is in the acceleration tests. Speaking of acceleration, traction can be a pretty big issue here. With the standard body Hellcat, your first and second gears are pretty much useless. They're severely limited by the 275 wide rear tires. If you're not careful, you'll accidentally find yourself doing donuts and burnouts all over the place. The wide body version is a little better though. With 305 section tires, you might be able to hook second gear. On the other hand, the brakes stop you pretty well, and they feel surprisingly confident. But they better because I'm counting on those 15.4-inch front rotors and Brembo brakes that stop me from whatever ungodly speeds I'd be traveling at. So this thing's effectively a one trick pony then. Because even though it's got stiffer sway bars, adjustable suspension, and a track mode setting, you can't deny the physics. The body roll is there. It's controllable, but it's definitely there. If you whip this thing into its manning corner, you're gonna feel it. You can't expect it to feel the same as its lightweight competitors. It's gonna have that front heavy nose dive feel, and the rear is gonna slide out pretty easily because of the way the weight is distributed. But you have to embrace it. You have to embrace the fact that the Hellcat was designed to only do one thing well, go fast in a strai, And sound great doing it. It's not to say that the Hellcat can't handle. Frankly, it corners exceptionally well for something with that amount of weight. What I'm trying to say is that you don't buy a Hellcat to be a road course car. You can do it, but you'll probably have better luck using it to scare old ladies. But what if you want to use the car? Well, as a car, I think the Hellcat is pretty good at that too. It's definitely comfortable enough to drive every day. The seats are nice and plush. They're similar to the Mustang GT I drove, which lacked bolstering. But the Hellcat seats feel much more substantial. The steering wheel is also nice and beefy, which is always a welcome touch. The adaptive suspension allows you to switch between stiffness settings and the firmness of the gear changes. Speaking of gear changes, I love the shifter design. It feels quite masculine. Plus the paddles are nice and solid, but they follow this silly Chrysler design where they aren't full paddles, just these little half things that share some space with the radio controls. The good news is the back seats are real. You can fit full size adults back there without having to decapitate them. Plus, there's a good amount of trunk space if you want to go on a road trip. The only thing I don't like about the interior is this retro cluster. I get what they're going for, but honestly, the tachometer is pretty hard to read when you're trying to go fast. Regardless, it would make a great GT car. So I guess this is now a two trick pony. I felt the need to elaborate on the whole GT thing some more. This car has got to be one of the more comfortable sports cars I've driven, and with all that power on tap, it'll just eat away the mild quickly. In terms of ride quality, if you throw the suspension in street mode, you can easily fall asleep at the wheel. I mean, I almost did. One more thing I wanted to touch on is the rest of the market. The Hellcat does have some immediate competition with the upcoming GT500 in the Camaro ZL1, which undoubtedly handles better, especially with the one LE package. It's a hard swing, honestly, but I'm willing to give up a little bit of handling for that intoxicating supercharger line. The Hellcat left a lasting impression on me. Being a Z06 owner, I always felt like the car was my arch nemesis. Perhaps in raw power and straight line performance, but in every other aspect they couldn't be more different. It's funny, last year I almost bought a wide body Hellcat, but my insurance company managed to convince me otherwise, probably for the better. I feel like I would get in a lot of trouble with that car, not only because it's loud, obnoxious and fast, but because I'd be doing burnouts everywhere completely by accident. The problem with Hellcats is the same problem that plagues most cars with a hierarchy of trim levels. You end up paying 70 or 80 grand for a car that ordinary people would assume is just another $30,000 v6 challenger. I'm okay with that though. You don't buy this car to stand out and feel special, you buy it to put a smile on your face. Another topic is looks and aesthetics are always subjective. I used to think that Challengers were such funny looking things, but the Hellcat, it's a completely different animal. With the wide body package, you have maximum road presence and it's quite menacing. Plus this destroyer gray color has to be my top pick. The biggest flaw is that the standard body version doesn't have enough tire to put the power down. There's no way to effectively hook the car from anything under 50 miles per hour if you suddenly decide to mash the throttle. And I might prefer this hood design over the new Red Eyes dual snorkel. But whatever your flavor, for less than 70 grand the Hellcat represents unbeatable value. Just make sure you get the wide body opt. Oh boy, what's this? Creepy, huh? I wonder who keeps leaving these little love letters. So next week it looks like I'll be running the Hellcat down the half mile to see what kind of speed it can achieve. At the same time, I'll also collect the 40, 160, 130 times for my fast list. So stay tuned for that performance review. And if you haven't already, make sure you hit that subscribe button for new content every Thursday. Thanks for watching.