This multi-car drag showdown lines up a Camaro ZL1, Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat, Mustang GT, Shelby Super Snake, and Challenger Shaker in a rotating series of head-to-head passes. One Camaro owner watching in the comments admits his own ZL1 got beaten by a Hellcat, then explains the transmission choice that might have closed the gap. Rough launches, spinning tires, and one uninvited car – the Dodge Demon – dominate the debate underneath. Watch to see which factory muscle car actually backs up its numbers.
A modern muscle car drag race sounds simple until you actually watch one: cars leave the line unevenly, drivers miss shifts, tires spin, and the fastest car on paper doesn’t always win the pass. This multi-car showdown lines up a Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, a Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat, a Mustang GT, a Shelby Super Snake, and a Challenger Shaker against each other in a rotating series of head-to-head runs. One Camaro owner watching in the comments admits his own ZL1 got walked by a Hellcat – then explains exactly what transmission choice might have closed the gap. Which cars actually delivered, and which ones spun their way out of it?
The ZL1 That Got Beat, According to Its Own Owner
Few comment-section admissions are as candid as a ZL1 owner watching his own car’s platform lose a pass and immediately owning it. In the comments, a self-identified Camaro owner concedes that a Hellcat “walked all over” the ZL1 in one of this video’s runs, then points to a specific fix: the ZL1’s 10-speed automatic, when properly launched, should out-trap what’s shown on screen. It’s a reminder that a drag race video captures one specific run, on one specific day, with one specific driver behind the wheel – not a definitive verdict on which platform is actually quicker. That kind of self-correction from an enthusiast, rather than a defensive dismissal, is part of what makes this comment section worth reading alongside the video itself. It’s also a useful corrective for anyone reading dyno numbers as gospel – the ZL1’s supercharged LT4 and the Hellcat’s supercharged Hemi are close enough on paper that driver execution, tire prep, and even ambient temperature can swing a given pass either way.
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Why So Many Launches Look Rough on Camera
More than one commenter points out that driver skill, not raw horsepower, decided several of these races – multiple cars visibly struggle to get off the line cleanly, with wheelspin and hesitant launches costing tenths of a second that no amount of factory horsepower can make up. That’s a common thread in amateur-filmed drag content: a Hellcat with 707 horsepower on tap is only as fast as the driver’s ability to modulate that power against the tires, especially on factory street tires rather than dedicated drag rubber. Traction management on a rear-wheel-drive car with 700-plus horsepower is genuinely difficult to execute consistently on a public road rather than a prepped drag surface, which is exactly the environment most of these clips appear to have been filmed on.
The Shelby Super Snake’s Different Kind of Muscle
The Shelby Super Snake entry represents a different approach to horsepower than the factory Hellcats and ZL1s in this lineup – it’s a Ford Mustang built and modified by Shelby American with a supercharged upgrade well beyond what leaves a Ford dealership, historically pushing output past 700 horsepower depending on the specific package a buyer ordered. Facing off against a factory ZL1 puts a heavily modified specialty build against Chevrolet’s most track-focused factory Camaro, which is exactly the kind of matchup that makes viewers argue about whether “stock versus modified” comparisons are even fair to begin with.
A Shaker Hood Doing Double Duty
The Challenger Shaker entry gets its name from the functional hood scoop that’s mechanically attached to the air intake and visibly shakes with engine movement – a callback to the original 1970s Shaker hoods that Dodge revived for modern R/T and Scat Pack Challengers. Running it against the SRT 392, which carries the same naturally aspirated 6.4-liter HEMI in a more track-oriented trim, turns this into a battle between two different philosophies for extracting performance from the same basic engine family, rather than a horsepower mismatch like some of the video’s other pairings.
The Demon That Wasn’t Even Invited
One comment cuts straight past every car actually in this video to name the one that isn’t: the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon, widely regarded even by rival owners as the fastest and best of the modern muscle car era thanks to its drag-specific factory tuning. That the Demon comes up unprompted in the comments of a video that doesn’t even feature it says something about how thoroughly it reset expectations for what a factory muscle car could do in a straight line after its debut. Dodge built the Demon specifically to dominate exactly this kind of comparison video, stripping weight and adding drag-radial tires as standard equipment in a way none of the cars actually racing here can match.
Why ‘Wheels’ Built a Channel Around Exactly This Format
The channel behind this video, simply named Wheels, specializes in exactly this kind of compilation-style drag content – stringing together multiple head-to-head passes between modern muscle cars rather than focusing on a single build. That format trades depth for breadth, letting viewers see how a Hellcat stacks up against a half-dozen different rivals in one sitting instead of a single dedicated matchup, which helps explain both the video’s six-hundred-thousand-plus view count and a comment section still active years after upload.
What the Praise for the Camera Work Says About the Format
Several commenters single out the camera work specifically, with one joking that most videos in this genre look like they were filmed by someone having a bad day – a backhanded compliment that highlights how much production quality varies across amateur drag content. Clean, well-framed footage of a rolling multi-car lineup is harder to pull off than it looks, and it’s part of why this particular compilation has held up as a reference video for the ZL1-versus-Hellcat-versus-Mustang debate years after most similar uploads have been forgotten.
The Real Winner Nobody Filmed
Taken together, these runs don’t crown a single winner so much as confirm what drag racing has always shown: horsepower numbers on a window sticker only tell part of the story, and a good launch from a Mustang GT can still humble a nominally faster ZL1 on a given day. That unpredictability, more than any single pass, is why compilation videos like this one keep pulling in views years after every car in the lineup has been replaced by a newer model. Every car in this lineup left the factory capable of embarrassing nearly anything built a decade earlier, which is easy to forget once the comment section starts arguing about which one embarrassed the other first.
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The Ford Mustang gt500 supersnake………..
Just like back in the day, they are all close the one you like is a winner. I don’t see any losers here.
Finally! No politics.
Yeah but Trump says….
Track times will be slower due to climate change.
Of course someone tries to bring it in though didn’t you
Hellcat !
Hellcat will smoke em. I’m a Camaro guy though.
Put them on road course. That’s what what the ZL1 was built for !!
HELLCAT BABY!! MOPAR or NO CAR.
ZL 1
It is right on Chevy’s site. The ZL1 is 11.4 sec’s in the 1/4 mile, to the Challenger Hellcats 11.2 sec’s.
Hellcat
Fastest don’t matter Camaro any day.
ill take none ill take the 1962 nova with a procharged 434 making 1000 hp .
Track??? A shelby gt350r of course!
The first race the Hellcat turned a high 11 second time. The :bright blue” Mustang had slicks or drag radials on which is better for less slip in the first 100 feet or so. Mission Raceway is a great track. Barely 5 feet above the river level and with “good air” ( lots of trees) it usually translates to being “below sealevel”. I turned an 11 second flat 1/4 mile time with my stock Suzuki GS 1150EF while I was weighing just under 275 lbs ( powerlifting phase). Couldn’t turn quicker than 11.3 at a 1/4 mile track in Prince George a couple years later and I had “trimmed down” to 228 lbs. If these “stock” cars are going to do their best times Mission raceway is the spot to do it.
Awesome
Dodge Challenge HELLCAT
MOPAR OR NO CAR!
I liked the last race with the Super Snake.
Its all true blooded American is what i like
Some of those guys look like they were slow off the line!
Camaro!
So you’re matching a 70k hellcat and a 60k+ Camaro against a 40 k mustang gt???
Make it apples for apples and then compare
Smoking all of em in my 2013 Charger. I supercharged my 6.2 hemi 2 years before the hellcat.
Dodge Demon
Demon
Where is the camaro and mustang? I see a Dodge Challenger a new Honda and a Mitsubishi.
Randy Tibbs
Most of them
Can’t drive WTH GUYS LEARN TO DRIVE UR SUCK CARS
Doesn’t matter,,, I would drive the Hellcat !