2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat review notes

Gallery 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat review notes

Driving the 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat is like taming a rocket.

EDITOR WES RAYNAL: I see the 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat has two key fobs. The red one opens the gates of, um, hell; the black one kills the horsepower, while Valet mode locks out first gear, cuts more horsepower, disables the paddle shifters, etc.

I wouldn’t know. I never bothered with the black key or the Valet mode.

No, I went with red all the way, man, releasing the full mind-bending 707 hp and 650 lb-ft of torque. Good lord, it’s a rocket.

I just love the deep exhaust and slight supercharger whine. I could listen to it all day, no matter the rpm. The car isn’t nearly as scary to drive as I thought it might be, though of course there’s no way I could take any kind of advantage of the power on city streets. Still, I got into it enough to feel that the power comes on smoothly, no spikes or other weirdness. Sixty mph comes up almost literally in the blink of an eye, but use the throttle judicially, and the car is a pleasant around-town cruiser, thanks in large part to the big comfy interior. It would take a few hours at least to get into all the drive mode menus for adjusting power, traction, suspension and the like, but that just means I need more time in it.

I’ve read in lesser publications about how the car doesn’t “handle” or “go through corners well.”

Ha-ha. Nerds.

I care not. This is a whole new kettle o’ fish -- the horsepower gauntlet has been thrown. How high will it go? Ford/Chevy have no answer for this car, at least none they’ve told us about; so for now, this glorious, low-slung toy is the horsepower king.

The 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat is a gnarly tire shredding beast.

SENIOR MOTORSPORTS EDITOR MAC MORRISON: I was unfortunately caught in rain and heavy traffic, but I can tell you that the new interior is a small but nice step up, with a clean center stack, display information about reaction time and best launches, a slick bit of diamond-plate trim on the instrument surround and center console, and nice leather on the, if anything, overly bolstered seats. Without rewriting the Challenger interior script, it still manages to make the cockpit a nicer place for driver and passengers.

I, too, used the red key, and while I was unable to partake in any dark, back road drag races or similar hooliganism, in contrast I found a car that welcomes sedate driver inputs. One quick step on the throttle starts the meter running on your tire replacement chit, generating enough smoke to supply a metal band’s stage show in a large arena.

As Wes notes, however, the experience manages to avoid heart-stopping doses of fear. Too much throttle and you’ll just melt the tires; get it right and you simply goooooooooooooo at tracer-bullet velocity.

As I mentioned, the Challenger SRT Hellcat will take you happily around town at legal speeds in smooth and comfortable style. It’s quite a contrast, really, to the big numbers you know reside under the hood. I thought of this car a few days after driving it when, cruising along metro Detroit’s famous Woodward Avenue, an older gentleman in a first-gen Challenger that appeared one-step short of being a full-on drag car pulled alongside me and gunned his Hemi in staccato bursts. Apparently he felt that a Porsche Cayman should be up for some sort of street duel, which I declined mostly because I wasn’t in the mood to go to jail or receive a citation for street racing under the, er, cover of sunny midday openness -- the Woodward cops are really cracking down on this sort of thing -- but also because the basic thought seemed preposterous. The same would apply should you be in just about anything else when a new Hellcat driver throws a gauntlet your way.

But I also noted how this particular dragster of “old” bucked and pitched as he tickled its throttle, how the fumes from its exhaust were thick in the air, how it just looked ridiculously wrong to see such a car doing anything but launching down a closed-off quarter mile. That’s when I thought of my recent drive in the Hellcat. It, too, is made to devour drag strips, but in between track outings it doesn’t spit and gurgle at you, demanding you either drop the hammer or be miserable at 50 mph; it’s equally comfortable doing both.

Oh, and handling? Anyone who plants $60K-plus in a dealer’s hand for this car and expects, on the flipside, to accept twisty-road challenges from, say, Porsche Caymans, needs their head examined. Know your limitations; flaunt your strengths, in other words. Do the latter in the Hellcat and you’ll be a speck on the horizon for the guy in the lane next to you before he knows what hit him.

Under the hood of the 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat is a supercharged 6.2-liter V8 backed with an eight-speed automatic.

ASSOCIATE EDITOR GRAHAM KOZAK: I was lucky enough to have the 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat for the weekend of the Woodward Dream Cruise. The Cruise was probably the best conceivable place to be seen in a pre-launch Hellcat, except for maybe a drag strip. It wasn’t, however, the best place to put its 6.2 liters of supercharged fury to use. Tempting as it was to shred the tires right on the Avenue, Woodward cops are, as Mac notes, especially vigilant around Cruise time …

Fortunately, I wasn’t stuck in classic-car gridlock the whole weekend. I had to get to the Cruise somehow (as did a Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 that apparently wanted to race down the expressway at close to Vmax; it took some restraint to refrain from engaging). And I also spent a few hours just tooling around the Detroit area trying to get a feel for this much-discussed monster.

We all know how fast it is; it’s hard to convey the feeling of accelerating so rapidly in something this heavy, but it’s something that a lighter, more nimble sports car can’t duplicate. And much has already been said about its ability to melt tires and/or run respectable quarter-miles on stock tires.

The most surprising thing about the Hellcat, though, is how driveable it is. Like everyone else here, I don’t think I used anything other than the red key. There’s an “eco” mode accessible through the infotainment touchscreen, but that’s probably more of an inside joke on the part of the SRT guys than anything meant to have real-world relevance.

So it drinks gas. So what? You could still daily-drive it. You could get groceries in it without worrying that it’s trying to kill you every time you nudge the accelerator. It is old-school heavy, but it’s not old-school floppy. Nothing rattles or shakes or feels like its one aggressive launch away from self-destructing.

Plus, there’s the attractive interior. We’ve seen the entire Chrysler Group gradually improve its fit and finish and material quality over the past few years, and the new Challenger’s is visually attractive and relatively nice to touch (some elements, like the rubbery dash covering, are neither here nor there). Is the Chevy Corvette’s cabin nicer? Yeah. Is AMG’s stuff better? Undoubtedly. But in a maximum-horsepower-per-dollar bargain like this, the good interior is a very nice bonus.

If it weren’t for the Dodge Viper, and its relatively restrained looks, the Hellcats would be the obvious Mopar halo cars. Heck, they might still be the Mopar halo cars, since no one is really buying the Viper. That this car looks just like a regular Challenger at first glance may turn off those hoping to make a visual statement, but I don’t think the Hellcat will have any trouble finding fans -- or buyers.

The Challenger SRT Hellcat is thoroughly modern muscle. For all of our sakes, I hope other automakers have rebuttals in the works.

Options: Eight-speed paddle-shift automatic transmission, steering wheel paddle shifters, remote start system ($1,995); premium Laguna leather SRT seats ($1,795); Uconnect 8.4 AM/FM/SXM/HD/BT/NAV, GPS navigation, HD radio, Sirius XM traffic with 5-year traffic service, Sirius XM travel link with 5-year subscription ($695); 275/40ZR20 tires ($395)