This 9-Second Dodge Charger Hellcat Is Ready to Slay the Demon
We imagine that poor Corvette owner was pretty shocked.
In case you haven't noticed, America is in the midst of perhaps the greatest revolution since that time we dumped all the tea and kicked the Redcoats' asses. Yes, the great Muscle Car Uprising is upon us. If you want to shred your tires with some ludicrous factory horsepower figures, your options are more numerous than they've been at any time in history.
That is, unless you require four doors. Dodge neglected to give the Charger a Demonic treatment alongside the Challenger, but as this video shows, a few tweaks to the Hellcat engine will have the sedan running nine-second quarter-mile passes all day long at the strip.
Shot in Texas, the clip shows a C6-generation Corvette Corvette and the Charger moseying up to the line for a timed quarter-mile run. Both engines sound modified and each is rocking a pair of hefty drag slicks, but the 'Vette also enjoys about a 1,000-pound weight advantage over the Charger. The first real sign that all is not as it appears with the Dodge is the pre-run burnout to warm up the tires; it barely needs to rev the engine to spin the rears, while the Corvette wails away like that one guy at the gym who always tries to bench too much.
At 1:08, it's rapture time. Both cars blast off with a tremendous amount of noise and speed, but they're barely past the Christmas tree before it's clear the Charger is pulling ahead for good. The end result is a 9.759-second quarter mile at 142 miles per hour, just shy of the Demon's official time (which is itself the subject of a little debate). You can almost hear the Corvette driver wondering what on earth just happened.
The Charger then demolishes a Dodge Viper and a hopelessly-outmatched Scion FR-S with similar times. It may not have the fancy Torque Reserve Launch System to boost its times past Dodge's latest monster, but it sure is knocking on the Demon's door.
We don't know exactly what was done to sharpen this Hellcat's bite, but you can bet that 6.2-liter V8 has even more untapped potential with the right modifications. After all, Dodge managed to squeeze an extra 100 horsepower out of it for the Demon—imagine what the aftermarket can do.
