Dodge took the 392 HEMI out of the Challenger, dropped it into a three-row family SUV, and somehow built something that drives like a Charger wearing a taller body. With 475 horsepower, a near-perfect weight balance, and a genuine Track drive mode, the 2018 Durango SRT proves a family hauler does not have to feel like one. Here’s what makes it work.
My first moments in this new Durango SRT are spent adjusting the heavily bolstered leather seats and flat-bottom steering wheel — it’s important to get these right at a track day. Once settled in, it’s time to look around and gauge my surroundings. From the windshield, turn 1 is clearly marked and easy to spot after peering down the long straightaway. To the right, a 153-foot-tall pagoda. To the left, a yard of bricks. In back, two additional rows of seats.
Wait. Why am I about to run the infield road course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in a Durango?
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A three-row family SUV that can also embarrass a sports car at a stoplight sounds like a contradiction, but that is exactly the pitch behind the 2018 Dodge Durango SRT. Stuff a 6.4-liter 392 HEMI under the hood of something built to haul kids and cargo, and you get a genuinely strange hybrid of minivan practicality and Hellcat-adjacent attitude. Dodge’s own engineers apparently agreed it should handle like a Challenger wearing a taller body, and gave it seven drive modes, including a Track setting, to prove the point. Can a family hauler really pull off feeling like a muscle car?
A 392 HEMI in an SUV Body
The Durango SRT’s 392-cubic-inch HEMI V8 makes 475 horsepower and 470 lb-ft of torque, sent through a ZF 8-speed automatic to an all-wheel-drive system that shuffles up to 70 percent of power rearward when the driver wants it. That rear-biased setup, combined with a near-perfect 52/48 weight distribution, is exactly what lets a three-row SUV feel closer to a Challenger SRT than anyone reasonably expects. Zero to 60 comes in around 4.4 seconds, a number that would have been muscle car royalty just a decade or two earlier, never mind achieving it in something that seats six.
Brakes and Modes Built for the Track, Not Just the Driveway
Braking duty falls to six-piston Brembo calipers up front and four-piston units in back, serious hardware for a vehicle this size, and the seven available drive modes top out with a genuine Track setting that stiffens the suspension and lets the 8-speed rip through shifts in as little as 160 milliseconds. None of that is typical SUV spec sheet language, it is straight out of the Challenger and Charger SRT playbook, just wrapped around three rows of seats.
On top of all that performance, the Durango SRT still tows up to 8,700 pounds, the best figure in its class at the time, which means it never stops being useful even after it is done embarrassing sports cars off the line. That dual identity, genuinely quick and genuinely practical, is what made the SRT version of Dodge’s family SUV such an oddball success story.
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