Dodge’s New Turbo-Six Charger Just Raced the Supercharged Hellcat It’s Replacing – And a Mustang Dark Horse Crashed the Party

Dodge’s new twin-turbo, all-wheel-drive Charger Sixpack lines up against the supercharged Hellcat Redeye Widebody it’s replacing and a Ford Mustang Dark Horse — in falling snow. Throttle House’s drag race turns into an argument about tire choice, traction, and whether raw horsepower still wins when it can’t reach the pavement. Watch to see whether Dodge’s new turbo-six can actually keep up with the V8 muscle car culture it’s leaving behind.

Dodge built its reputation on brute-force V8 muscle, so watching the company’s own engineers line up a twin-turbocharged inline-six Charger against the supercharged V8 it’s replacing feels almost like watching a family argument settled on a drag strip. Throttle House brought a third car into the mix — Ford’s Mustang Dark Horse — and then let snow start falling mid-shoot, which nobody involved seemed thrilled about. Three completely different approaches to modern muscle car performance, one quarter-mile, and according to the comments, a result that had almost nothing to do with which engine made the most horsepower on paper.

Three Very Different Philosophies on One Track

The Charger Sixpack represents Dodge’s newest answer to what a muscle car should be in 2026: a twin-turbocharged inline-six making its power through boost and all-wheel drive rather than displacement, starting at $54,995 in the US and $69,995 in Canada for the Scat Pack trim tested here, with the Sixpack lineup opening lower at $49,995 for the 420-horsepower R/T. Line that up against a Ford Mustang Dark Horse — naturally aspirated, rear-wheel drive, starting higher at about $63,080 in the US and $79,650 in Canada — and the outgoing supercharged Challenger Hellcat Redeye Widebody, and you’ve got three fundamentally different engineering answers to the same question sharing the same stretch of pavement on the same afternoon.

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Why the Hellcat’s Tires Told the Story Early

One detail viewers picked up on immediately: the Hellcat Redeye Widebody was riding on Pirelli P Zero tires rather than a drag-oriented tire, and at least one commenter said they knew exactly how the race would go the moment they spotted them. P Zeros are built for cornering grip and daily-driver longevity, not off-the-line traction under the Redeye Widebody’s 797 horsepower, and that mismatch between engine output and tire compound is a classic recipe for wheelspin — a problem the Charger’s all-wheel-drive system and the Mustang’s more modest power output simply didn’t have to fight in the same way at the line.

The Advantage Nobody Expected From a Six-Cylinder

On paper, the Hellcat should win a straight-line fight against a six-cylinder car every time — it’s the most powerful engine of the three by a wide margin. But the Sixpack Charger’s AWD system puts power down through all four tires instead of two, and in a launch scenario where traction matters more than peak horsepower, that architecture advantage can close a gap that looks enormous on a spec sheet. It’s the same principle that’s let all-wheel-drive sedans embarrass rear-drive sports cars at stoplights for years, just applied to Dodge’s newest muscle car platform for the first time.

Snow, Cold Pavement, and a Genuinely Risky Shoot

Filming a multi-car drag race is complicated enough without weather working against you, and at least one viewer flagged that snow was actively falling during parts of this shoot — hardly ideal conditions for putting supercharged and turbocharged muscle cars at full throttle. Cold pavement and falling snow affect every car differently depending on tire compound and drivetrain layout, which only reinforces how much the Hellcat’s tire choice mattered relative to the Sixpack’s AWD grip and the Dark Horse’s comparatively modest power output on a surface nobody would call ideal for a drag race.

The Quiet Mustang in the Background

While the Charger and Hellcat drew most of the attention, comments repeatedly singled out the black Dark Horse and its driver for a different reason entirely — a quiet, locked-in presence described by one viewer as the silent assassin skulking in the background while the other two crews carried on. That kind of focus matters in a multi-run drag shoot where consistency across repeated launches often decides who actually wins over a full session, not just who looks fastest on a single highlight-reel pass posted to social media afterward.

Why Enthusiasts Are Split on the New Charger

The Sixpack Charger has become a lightning rod in Dodge’s fanbase precisely because it swaps a naturally aspirated or supercharged V8 for forced-induction six-cylinder power, and the comments here reflect that split. Some viewers praised the new car’s efficiency, lower price, and available all-wheel drive, with one calling the orange test car’s colorway perfect and saying they’d take the Sixpack over either rival. Others made clear they still prefer the outgoing V8 specifically because of its excess — one commenter said the old Hellcat is cool because of how stupid it is, a fair summary of the era Dodge is now leaving behind.

What This Race Actually Settles

No single quarter-mile pass is going to end the debate over whether turbocharged six-cylinder power, naturally aspirated V8s, or supercharged brute force represents the right future for American muscle cars — but putting all three philosophies on the same strip, in the same conditions, is about as fair a test as enthusiasts are going to get outside of a dyno. What this video makes clear is that horsepower on paper and horsepower that reaches the pavement are two very different numbers, and in 2026, the car that gets its power down most efficiently can matter more than the one with the biggest engine under the hood.

What Throttle House’s Format Adds to the Comparison

Throttle House built its audience on exactly this kind of multi-car comparison, pairing hosts with distinct on-camera personalities against cars that don’t always get cross-shopped in real life. Putting a twin-turbo AWD Charger, a naturally aspirated Mustang, and a supercharged Hellcat through the same test on the same day, in the same conditions, gives viewers a genuinely useful data point that a single manufacturer press event never would, since automakers rarely let their own cars share pavement with a direct rival on camera. That format, combined with hosts willing to admit when a result surprises them, is a big part of why the channel’s comparisons keep circulating well beyond the initial upload week. It also means the channel’s audience gets to see real disagreement play out on camera rather than a scripted consensus, since Thomas, James, and the rest of the crew don’t always agree on which car actually deserves the win once the runs are finished and the data gets compared side by side.

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