Gasoline. Traffic laws. Other car companies. Common decency. Sanity. The Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat is about to declare war on all those things and more. In addition to its official price, Dodge announced some of its other performance stats today, and it is officially batshit nuts all around.
The folks at Autoblog got themselves a nice sit-down with Tim Kiniskis, President and CEO of Dodge, and the tidbits he dropped during the interview are not only amazing, but also kind of terrifying:
The Hellcat can burn 1.5 gallons of gas per minute. That must be at full throttle, because if you back off it can return up to 20 mpg on the highway. If it has the same 19 gallon tank as the current Challenger, that means you'll kill a tank in under half an hour with heavy hoonage. Gasoline - you're gonna need a lot of it!
He expects the 0-60 mph second time to be "in the mid-threes." Sounds appropriate.
SRT had to build new dynos to test it. The ones they used for the Viper weren't up to the task.
It has a top speed of 199 mph. Probably not something you should try yourself, but hey, it can do it.
There's a "valet mode" that lowers power overall. Second-gear starts, a 4,000 RPM limit, less power. A lot of cars do this, but it's good to have here in case the kid parking your car at the restaurant decides to try that last item with a few of his buddies.
You can get it with a manual. We knew that already, but it's still awesome.
Handling. It is not mentioned anywhere in the interview.
Try and stop it. Just try and stop it. See where that gets you.