Dodge Charger Hellcat Review!

[Jaguar-™]

$66,000 base and $75,000 as tested

Cars like the Dodge Charge SRT Hellcat are born from special circumstances. No car company in its right mind would build a car with seven-hundred and seven horsepower and six-hundred and forty lb-ft of torque as part of its product plans. Thankfully, Fiat-Chrysler isn’t like most car companies.

Chrysler is a company po[CENSORED]ted with people who can take a bad situation and make the best of it. The old adage about taking lemons and making lemonade applies. In the late seventies and early eighties, they were conglomeration of disparate companies, leftovers if you will, joined together for their very survival. And not only did they survive, they thrived, churning out an entire portfolio of affordable cars that were all based on the same platform. They invented the minivan. They daringly re-po[CENSORED]rized the convertible at a time when everyone else had given up on the idea. They hired Carrol Shelby to produced performance versions of their cars at a time when most Americans had given up on fun cars. Some of the most adventurous and prescient concept cars ever to debut came from the Chrysler group, including the Dodge Viper, which they actually turned into a production car – something nobody had ever done before. Cab-forward cars were developed and introduced by Chrysler. The list of achievements could go on but in the late Oughts, Chrysler again found itself in trouble. The marriage to Daimler-Benz had soured and with the world economy tanking, people stopped buying cars, not sure if they’d have a job tomorrow. After a shotgun marriage to FIAT, officiated by the US government, Chrysler once again took life’s lemons and made lemonade. Or rather limoncello.

The two companies found a synergy from which to draw from and new product was designed and engineered and old debts were paid off. At some point however, the FIAT-Chrysler Automobile group found it had a lot of investment money tied up in the Chinese market, which wasn’t doing so well. Strapped for cash again, the engineers took what they had and worked with it, like they have so many times before. They developed important things, necessary things like the SRT Hellcat engine: a 6.2L supercharged monster of a Hemi-V8. Which from an investment standpoint may seem like a bad idea, but it brought a lot of excitement and attention to FCA and hey – engineers and enthusiasts alike need morale-boosting products like this. And thanks to FIAT’s parental oversight, they never pushed the Chrysler divisions to be less “American” and more “international.” They actually encouraged it. Which is precisely how we got something as quintessentially American as the Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat. Seven-hundred and seven freaking horsepower and 650 lb-ft of torque thundering under the hood of what is essentially a four-door family sedan. God Bless America!