Dodge retired the V8 Charger Super Bee in 2023 with a 1,000-unit send-off. Four years later the name returns on a twin-turbo six making 600 horsepower and running an 11.8-second quarter-mile. One YouTuber breaks down whether that still counts as a Super Bee.
In 2023, Dodge sold exactly 1,000 copies of a 6.4-liter HEMI V8 Charger Super Bee and called it a goodbye. Four years later, the name is back on a car with two fewer cylinders and 115 more horsepower. The 2027 Dodge Charger Super Bee Launch Edition packs 600 horsepower and 531 lb-ft of torque from a twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six, launches to 60 mph in 3.6 seconds, and runs an 11.8-second quarter-mile, numbers that put it within a hair of a 797-horsepower Challenger Hellcat Redeye. It does all of that without a single cylinder bank in sight. YouTube channel Auto Auction Rebuilds broke down exactly what changed, why the Hurricane six keeps drawing comparisons to a European sports sedan, and why the argument over what a Dodge is supposed to sound like isn’t going away anytime soon.
Roadkill Nights Was Supposed to Bring Back the V8 — It Didn’t
In his video, Randy of Auto Auction Rebuilds argues that Dodge’s Roadkill Nights event, the brand’s annual drag-racing celebration, should have been the moment the V8 Charger made its long-rumored comeback. Instead, the crowd got the Super Bee name stapled to the twin-turbo Hurricane six that already powers the rest of the Charger Sixpack lineup. He’s careful to frame the video as neither an EV-hater rant nor a V8-purist tantrum. His real point is narrower: he owns an electric Charger Daytona that, by his own numbers, already runs quicker than Dodge’s claimed figures for the brand-new, gas-powered, 600-horsepower Super Bee. If the electric version is faster, he asks, what is the six-cylinder actually for?
The comment section split roughly the way you’d expect from a Mopar crowd. Plenty of longtime fans mourned the loss of HEMI rumble and questioned whether any engine besides a V8 belongs under a Super Bee hood at all. Others pointed out that federal fuel-economy rules have squeezed automakers into turbocharged sixes across the board, and that Dodge’s hands are more tied than fans want to admit. A smaller, younger contingent pushed back the other way, noting that tuners are already pulling serious horsepower out of the Hurricane platform and that raw output numbers, not cylinder count, should settle the argument.
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A Badge That Keeps Outliving Its Own Farewell Parties
The Super Bee name itself has never belonged to one era. It debuted in 1968 on the Coronet as Dodge’s budget answer to the Plymouth Road Runner, then moved to the Charger for 1971 once the two-door Coronet coupe disappeared from the lineup. Production ran out after that model year, and the badge sat dormant until Dodge revived it on the Charger for 2007 through 2009, then again for 2012 and 2013.
Its most recent appearance before this one was the 2023 Charger Super Bee Last Call, a send-off edition limited to 1,000 units finished only in B5 Blue or Plum Crazy purple. That car ran the familiar 6.4-liter 392 HEMI V8 rated at 485 horsepower and roughly 472 lb-ft of torque, and Dodge marketed it explicitly as a farewell to V8 muscle before the brand’s shift toward electrification. Dodge made the same kind of goodbye gesture with the Challenger SRT Demon a few years earlier, a purpose-built drag car that squeezed everything the Hemi platform had left before that model line ended too. See how the SRT Demon’s own farewell played out here.
What 600 Horsepower Without a V8 Actually Buys
What replaces the outgoing V8 isn’t a detuned commuter engine. The Super Bee’s version of the Hurricane six uses a pair of 56-millimeter Garrett turbochargers pushing roughly 30 psi of boost, about 7.5 percent more airflow than the standard Charger Scat Pack Sixpack, which is where the 50-horsepower advantage over that car comes from. Peak torque arrives at 3,000 rpm and holds flat through 5,900 rpm, a wider and lower-in-the-rev-range plateau than a naturally aspirated HEMI ever offered. Power reaches all four wheels through a standard all-wheel-drive system and an eight-speed automatic, though drivers can switch to a rear-wheel-drive-only mode when they want the car to move around a little.
The rest of the car was built to back up those numbers under repeated abuse, not just post a good number once. Six-piston Brembo calipers grip 16-inch rotors up front, backed by four-piston calipers at the rear, a setup Dodge says delivers triple the fade resistance of other Sixpack models and double what the outgoing SRT-era Chargers offered. Aerodynamic changes add roughly 50 percent more cooling capacity, and the whole package rides on 20-by-11-inch forged wheels wrapped in sticky Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar 3 rubber. Whether that adds up to a real Super Bee is exactly the question Auto Auction Rebuilds, and its comment section, can’t agree on.
The Same Playbook, One More Time
The Super Bee’s engine swap isn’t an isolated decision. Dodge began phasing the 5.7-liter and 6.4-liter HEMI V8s out of its lineup starting with the 2023 model year, replacing them across the Charger, Durango, and Ram trucks with versions of the twin-turbo Hurricane six in standard and high-output tune. The strategy has been consistent even as the badges attached to it keep changing: retire a beloved nameplate with a limited-run V8 farewell, then bring the name back a few years later on the new engine once the turbocharged platform has matured. The Demon, the Last Call series, and now the Super Bee have all followed some version of that pattern.
Dodge hasn’t published an official price for the Super Bee Launch Edition, but it slots in above the rest of the Sixpack lineup, where a two-door Charger Scat Pack with the 550-horsepower version of the same Hurricane six already starts north of $56,990 and a Scat Pack Plus tops $61,985. Expect the Super Bee, as the quickest and most track-focused Charger Dodge has ever built, to price above both. For buyers cross-shopping the badge on reputation alone, that’s a real number to weigh against a car that, on paper, out-accelerates most of the V8s it’s named after.
Whichever side of that debate you land on, the numbers are hard to argue with: an 11.8-second quarter-mile and a 3.6-second run to 60 mph would have made the original 1968 Super Bee unrecognizable to the people who bought one new. What hasn’t changed is that Dodge is still betting its most aggressive nameplates can carry a new engine, a new drivetrain, and a very old argument about what a muscle car is allowed to sound like.
Watch the full video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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