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A naturally aspirated Corvette Z06 was never supposed to beat a 707-horsepower supercharged Hellcat — especially not after giving it a head start. This drag racing compilation from Wheels pits the Z06 against a Hellcat, an Audi RS6, and one very confused Honda that ended up on the track by accident. The result surprised even the Corvette’s own fans watching along. Watch to see exactly how lopsided the numbers turned out to be.
A supercharged Hellcat Challenger, a numbers-matching Hemi Cuda, a bagged Scat Pack, and a Shelby-badged Mustang all line up on the same night in this Wheels compilation — and the results don’t go the way a spec sheet would predict. Viewers are still debating a 1967 Camaro that ran dead-on to its 11.52 index despite a rough burnout, and a Mustang that never got heat into its tires. Watch to see which pairings go old school’s way, and which don’t.
Both the Camaro ZL1 and the Challenger Hellcat cross the 700-horsepower neighborhood, just by very different paths – a supercharged LT4 for the ZL1, a bigger-blown Hemi for the Hellcat. The Hellcat edges the quarter mile by two-tenths, but the ZL1 gives up nearly 600 fewer pounds and closes the gap everywhere else. It’s one of the closest fights in modern muscle, and it still isn’t settled.
The Dodge Challenger Hellcat’s supercharged 707-horsepower engine turned nearly every drag strip in the country into an unofficial record chase. Racers like Jason Epling and the HHP-built TopCat pushed the factory-based combination into the 7-second and then 8-second range within a couple of years of its 2015 launch. Read on to find out just how far the same basic engine architecture eventually went.
At an RT66 Test N Tune event in 2015, Rich Kent’s E85-fueled 1962 Mercury Comet did something a brand-new 707-horsepower Dodge Challenger Hellcat never expected: it beat it clean off the line. The video’s own description reveals the Hellcat had run nearly three seconds quicker just a week earlier, turning a simple grudge race into a years-long argument about driving versus horsepower. Watch to see the run that started the controversy.
On paper, a 707-horsepower Challenger Hellcat against a 455-horsepower Camaro SS is not a race at all, it is a 250-horsepower head start. In practice these matchups have gone both ways often enough to deserve an explanation, and the reasons have far less to do with peak power than with 750 pounds of weight, a pair of 275-section tires, and the first sixty feet off the line. Read on for why the spec sheet keeps losing to the stopwatch.
Fifty-seven horsepower separated the sixth-generation Camaro ZL1 from the Challenger SRT Hellcat, and the Dodge held the bigger number. Hennessey Performance lined them up anyway, and the horsepower column turned out to be the least interesting part of the comparison — because weight, gearing, tire width, and what happens in the first sixty feet decide a drag race long before either car reaches top gear. Read on to find out why 650 horsepower and 707 horsepower end up much closer than the spec sheets suggest.
On paper the fifth-generation Camaro ZL1 has no business hanging with a Challenger SRT Hellcat down a quarter mile. The Hellcat brings 707 horsepower to a fight the ZL1 enters with 580, and the trap speeds tell the same story. But drag racing punishes anyone who trusts a spec sheet, and this particular pairing produced a result Mopar fans did not enjoy. Read on to find out where the horsepower advantage actually goes.
Dodge handed over the keys to a 707-horsepower Challenger SRT Hellcat and it delivered exactly the kind of experience the numbers promise, which is to say a slightly alarming one. But the Hellcat’s real significance was not the power figure. It was what that figure forced every other manufacturer in Detroit to do next, and how quickly Dodge itself made the car obsolete. Here is what actually made it work.
A wrecked Dodge Challenger Hellcat with fire damage to its body still carries one of the most valuable engines in the modern muscle car world underneath the scorched sheet metal. The supercharged 707-horsepower Hemi and its heavy-duty eight-speed transmission were both engineered to survive far more abuse than a stock tune ever demands. Read on to find out why builders specifically seek out toasted Hellcat donor cars.
A Dodge Challenger Hellcat and Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 lined up for a rolling highway pull, the kind of real-world test that does not always agree with drag-strip time slips. The Hellcat’s 57-horsepower advantage on paper met the ZL1’s lighter chassis and quicker-spooling supercharger on the open road. Read on to see why the result depended more on speed range and gearing than on the horsepower figures alone.
TFLcar lines up two Dodge Challenger Hellcats — one automatic, one manual — for a straight quarter-mile drag race to finally settle which transmission is actually faster. The results did not fully satisfy everyone, with one viewer arguing a 13-second pass meant the car simply needed a better driver. An unexpected background moment also stole some of the spotlight. Watch to see which transmission crossed the line first.
Street Speed 717’s Mike spent eight months living with a 707-horsepower Hellcat before deciding to sell — and this video walks through exactly why, from dealer visits to tire costs. Commenters push back hard, defending the drivetrain while blaming the decals, and one distills the whole debate into a fast-cheap-reliable trilemma. See what eight months of real ownership actually revealed.
A supercharged 6.2-liter Camaro ZL1 against a supercharged 6.2-liter Challenger Hellcat should have been the definitive answer to an argument that has run for decades. The Hellcat has 57 more horsepower. The ZL1 gives away 566 pounds. The manufacturer quarter-mile figures and the 0-60 figures point in opposite directions. Then the actual race happened and satisfied nobody at all. Read on for why the spec sheet and the strip disagreed.
A 1969 Dodge Charger gets a modern supercharged Hellcat V8 transplant in this build, appropriately named ‘Reverence,’ from the specialists at Cleveland Power & Performance. The test drive captures how a decades-old muscle car icon behaves with more than 700 horsepower now sitting under the hood. Watch to hear exactly what a Hellcat swap sounds like packed into a classic Charger this size.