Dodge Challenger Hellcat | PH Used Buying Guide

10/18/2023

We won't see muscle cars like the supercharged V8 Dodges again – here's what to look for

By Tony Middlehurst / Sunday, 15 October 2023 / Loading comments

Key considerations

Available here for £62,000 (sometimes)
6.2 supercharged petrol V8, rear wheel drive
Over 1,000hp available in the Demon 170
…which makes it the world’s fastest 0-60mph production car
Not massively inspiring quality or cabin wise
V8 era ends this year (2023) – watch the prices rise

Ask a mature person to name two really iconic American car movies and the first one they’ll come up with is almost certain to be McQueen’s 1968 cop flick Bullitt.

What about the other one, though? Well, if you’re old enough, it could very well be Barry Newman’s 1971 chase movie Vanishing Point. In all honesty this film looks pretty dated now. The plot line was gruel-thin, but Dodge dealerships did pretty well out of it because of the starring role played by a 1970 gen-one Challenger R/T with a 440hp 7.2 litre V8 engine and a Hurst pistol-grip four-speed manual gearbox.

Speed-addled driver Kowalski (Newman) was trying to deliver it in record time from somewhere to somewhere else, Denver to San Francisco we think. Considering he was a delivery driver, Kowalski (‘the electric centaur, the super driver of the golden West, the last beautiful free soul on this planet!’) wasn’t that careful with ‘his’ R/T. If your name had been on the delivery docket you certainly wouldn’t have been best pleased if it had rattled up in a gasping mess outside your gaff. Luckily, you would have been spared that experience because the car ended up as a massive fireball in the desert.

Vanishing Point watered the seed of Dodge’s muscle car street cred, er, plant that had been sown by the bad guys’ Charger in Bullitt, but gallons of Roundup were poured on it in 1978 when the embarrassingly terrible Mitsubishi Galant-based gen-two model came out. It would be another 30 years before Dodge took on the task of properly rehabilitating the Challenger legend by recreating it as a genuine muscle car once more.

Since the 2008 arrival of the gen-three car, Dodge has been doing its best to do right by the Challenger. Yes, it’s true that there was a 3.6 V6 Challenger now, but that model sits at the bottom of a very big pyramid of cars, the vast majority of which are V8s dedicated to the simple pursuit of massive power. In tribute to Barry Newman, our buying guide today is going to be looking at the 2015-on Hellcat and a couple of its offshoots, powered by Dodge’s thunderously supercharged 6.2 litre (376ci) V8 Hemi engine.

Trademarked by Chrysler in the 1950s, the ‘Hemi’ name came from the hemispherical shape of the overhead-valve engine’s combustion chambers (i.e., the spaces above the pistons). Hemi-design engines were around for a bit before Chrysler got into them. American WW2 fighter planes used them, and after the war they became a popular choice for post-war leisure boats.

As all PHers know, however, Hemi engines rose to legendary status in more earth-borne applications. The 6.2-litre version with the twin-screw IHI supercharger that made its debut in the 2015 SRT Hellcat (named after the supercharged 46-litre Grumman Hellcat carrier-based fighter plane) is the one that we’ll be focusing on here.

The Hellcat was the brainchild of a Brit, Cambridgeshire-born engineer Chris Cowland. His team at Dodge set themselves a minimum power target of 700hp in order to take on and beat Ford’s 670hp Shelby GT500 of 2013, otherwise what was the point, right? After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles board the 2015 car did indeed hit that target with 707hp and 650lb ft. But it turned out that those numbers weren’t mad enough for Dodge or its customers. Some of the Hellcat derivatives went on to churn out 800hp and over 700lb ft of torque, all in stock trim – and one went well over that.

We could spend the next fourteen thousand words trying to describing the many Hellcat variants and the many ways in which one differed from another, but for the sake of everyone’s sanity we’re going to assume that anyone reading this who is contemplating buying a fast Challenger is already clued up on most, if not all, of the differences. The naming conventions that Dodge went in for with these cars are mind-boggling. There was one variant that went under the title of Jailbreak Hellcat Demon Redeye Scat Pack Last Call Black Ghost Swinger Shakedown Super Stock Shaker SRT R/T Widebody Narrowbody Challenger. OK, we admit it, there’s not really one single model wearing all of those names at once, but some of them didn’t seem that far off.

In brief, the Challenger Hellcat timeline began in 2015 with the straight Hellcat priced at just over $58,000 in the US. A $6,000 Widebody option was released in 2018 (by which point the base car’s price had risen to just over $64k) along with a $20k more expensive (and more powerful) high-profile-tyred Demon that was aimed at the drag strip. We’ll talk more about that in the Engine bit.

2019 saw the introduction of powered-up Redeye and Redeye Widebody models, with the Super Stock of 2020 slotting into the range above the Redeye and below the Demon. It had lightweight 18in wheels and brakes and the Demon’s drag-oriented tyres. All these variants were refreshed in 2022 when they were joined in the range by new Jailbreak and Super Stock models. The ’22 Super Stock became the most expensive Hellcat at just under $89k. For an additional $26k you could have a Convertible version of any Hemi-engined Challenger.

Barry Newman died in May this year (2023). He never actually owned a Challenger of any sort, but in 2008 he did take up a journalist’s offer to drive a then-new gen-three. He pronounced it ‘a far better automobile in every way than the Challengers we drove in Vanishing Point’.

Dodge did put out a commemorative pistol-shift SRT 392 Kowalski Edition in 2011 but they only made ten of them. Fortunately the later cars that we’re looking at here are somewhat more common and therefore easier to find, even in the UK. All gen-three Challengers are left-hand drive (although Clive Sutton, official Dodge distributors in the UK, has been converting them to RHD from 2015) but LHD-ness doesn’t mean they’re going to be cheap. Even used 3.6 V6s aren’t much less £30k in Britain and the blown 6.2s are in a completely different league above that. In October 2023 most were nudging £90k, with many comfortably over that mark because UK imports tend to be the maddest models. We did find one ‘bargain’ 6.2, though, and there’ll be a link to that at the end.

Are they worth the money? That’s down to you. The breadth of model choice and specs makes it hard to compare one used car directly with another. You’re very unlikely to find two cars the same, in the UK at least. In this piece we’ll try to give you a decent overview on what goes into the 6.2 Hellcat derivatives and a heads-up on some of the stuff you should be watching out for.

SPECIFICATION | DODGE CHALLENGER 6.2 HELLCAT (2015-ON)

Engine: 6,166cc V8, 16v, supercharged
Transmission: 6-speed manual (or 10-speed auto), rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 707@6,000rpm
Torque (lb ft): 650@4,000rpm
0-60mph (secs): 3.7
Top speed (mph): 199 (195 Widebody)
Weight (kg): 2,018
MPG (combined): 18
CO2 (g/km): 298
Wheels (in): 20 x 9.5
Tyres: 275/40
On sale: 2015 – 2023
Price new (UK): n/a
Price now: from £62,000

Note for reference: car weight and power data are hard to pin down with absolute certainty. For consistency, we use the same source for all our guides. We hope the data we use is right more often than it’s wrong. Our advice is to treat it as relative rather than definitive.

ENGINE & GEARBOX

The 6.2 Hemi in the Hellcat had the same bore as the 6.4 Hemi and the same stroke as the 5.7 and 6.1 Hemis. There were only two valves for each piston, which meant they had to be big ‘uns.

With that in your mind and the ominous Mad Max whine of the supercharger in your ear, it was either impressive or surprising that the Hellcat’s peak power of 707hp didn’t arrive until a lofty 6,000rpm, just 200rpm short of the redline, with the 650lb ft torque peak at an also quite high 4,000rpm. Intake mods on 2019-on Hellcats took those numbers up to 717hp and 656lb ft. Having the max poke so far up the range did at least give you an excuse to rev the nuts off it, a popular love when roaring through a hitherto peaceful village.

Early Hellcats did the 0-60mph run in 3.7sec, or 3.6sec in the fatter-tyred Widebody. Top speeds were 199mph and 195mph respectively. The 2019MY Redeye Hellcats had, as you might expect, a red engine block, a red eye in the badge and a more powerful engine courtesy of a larger capacity supercharger (2.7 litres, up from the Hellcat’s 2.4 litres) plus different heads, cams, block, exhaust and cooling system. Redeye power was significantly hoisted to 797hp at 6,300rpm as a result. Redeye top speeds were 203mph in both body styles but the 0-60mph times weren’t that different to the Hellcat’s at 3.5sec (3.4sec Widebody) because of the traction issues that inevitably arose when so much power was trying to force its way through just two tyres. All-wheel drive was available in the Challenger range but only on the 3.6 V6s.

A small increase in the red line to 6,400rpm helped to lift peak power in the Super Stock model to 807hp and to drop the 0-60 time to a claimed 3.25sec, though the high-sidewall tyres limited the top speed to 168mph. The 2018MY Demon was the tops for grunt though with 840hp and 770lb ft courtesy of its 14.5psi of boost, comprehensive reworking of the engine internals, dual fuel pumps and what Dodge claimed to be the biggest functional bonnet scoop ever.

That 2018 Demon was the first production car with a drag-style transmission brake whose purpose was to keep the car steady as you built up the revs and crept up to the start line. It was also the first to have drag mode suspension adjustability for optimal weight transfer. An optional crate of performance parts included skinny front wheels. Nitto drag radials came as standard on the rear. The Demon did the 0-60 in 2.3sec, the 0-100 in 5.1sec and a wheelie-popping quarter-mile in 9.65/140mph, enough to ban it from NHRA drag races based on its lack of a roll cage, racing harness or braking parachute.

All pretty impressive stuff, but that first Demon looked puny against the 2023 Demon 170, which wasn’t so much a car as an ‘up yours’ sign-off to a golden age of big underbonnet iron. Fitted with a large-intake, small-pulley 3-litre supercharger running 40 per cent extra boost (21.3psi) this monster pumped out 900hp/810lb ft on E10 petrol or 1,025hp/945lb ft with E85, which was practically all (well, 85 percent) ethanol. Hence the 170 name – Dodge reckoned it was 170 proof. The ECU automatically remapped the engine for either fuel.

With E85 in the tank, the wing flares removed for weightsaving and Mickey Thompson drag tyres on the small carbonfibre-rimmed wheels, the 170 ran eight-second/150mph+ quarter-mile times. Its 1.66sec time made it the world’s fastest production car from 0-60mph. All that for $96,666 (number of the beast, etc) in North America, or under £80k in the UK at prevailing exchange rates. 3,300 of these Demon 170s were built.

All Hellcats, Redeyes and Super Stocks were hooked up to an 8-speed TorqueFlite HP90 automatic transmission, although the base model from 2015 to 2021 could be specified with a 6-speed Tremec TR-6060 manual, saving you $3,000 on the automatic. The manual added around half a second to the 0-60mph time in independent testing. It was unavailable for 2022 but then brought back for 2023, the final year of Hellcat production.

All Hellcats had Launch Control, Launch Assist which reduced torque when wheel hop was detected, Torque Reserve which closed a bypass valve to pre-fill the supercharger and generate more immediate torque from a standing start, and Race Cooldown (or after-run chiller) which cooled the supercharger after engine shut off.

Hellcats also had line lock, a longstanding US muscle car tradition which applied the front brakes so you could do big burnouts without going anywhere, or indeed going somewhere quite slowly while changing up through the box. Hardly surprisingly given the amounts of power on tap and the almost irresistible temptation many owners felt to unleash it all at every possible opportunity, driveshafts on early (2015-16) Challengers were a bit melty. Excessive noise, vibration and rear-end whining were regularly reported, especially from owners who drag-raced their cars on sticky tyres. A tech bulletin was put out on it. If the technician heard unusual rear-end whining they replaced the propshaft. It took Dodge quite a few goes to get these replacement parts up to spec but they got there in the end. The 2023 Demon 170 was given a 30 per cent stronger propshaft and a 30 per cent stronger rear axle than the 2018 Demon’s.

The superchargers of some 2015 and 2016 cars suffered from bearing trouble leading to lower boost, more odd whining noises, a beans in the tin type rattle and, in a very small number of cases, total component failure. By 2017 all of the dodgy superchargers should have been replaced under warranty by superior ones. Obviously there should be paperwork with the car to confirm that.

Oil cooler lines were vulnerable to splitting on more than a thousand Feb-May 2017 build cars, giving rise to the possibility of oil on your windscreen, not enough oil in your engine, and a potential fire. Upper radiator hoses leaked, usually caused by unsuitable clamps. Charge air pump connectors corroded and there was a recall on the fuel rail crossover. Engine misfires weren’t unheard of and nor were broken valve rocker arms.

Don’t buy a Hellcat if you want to save the planet. The EPA city fuel consumption was 15mpg and it wasn’t hard to imagine that dropping well below 10mpg with enthusiastic use. That was on the lowest-powered model in 2015. You can make your own guesses on what the equivalent data might be on the really rortmungous models. Some US websites quoted CO2 emissions in pounds per mile rather than grams per kilometre. Again for the basic 298g/km Hellcat that equated to over a pound of emissions per mile, which is quite sobering.

CHASSIS

Hellcat’s weren’t light at over two tonnes, and 57 per cent of that was over the front wheels. Predictably they were criticised for their lardiness by owners of rivals such as the aforementioned Mustang Shelby GT500 or the Camaro ZL1, but Dodge owners were quite happy to trade off some of the finer points of handling for the butt-clenching thrills of major horsepower. All they cared about was there would be enough power to vanquish rivals on the strip. Which in Redeye spec or above there most certainly was.

And actually the Hellcats felt surprisingly light on their feet, all things considered. Wheels were Hellcat-specific 20in items and the brakes had six-piston front, four-piston rear Brembo calipers. Some cars had three-mode Bilstein adaptive damping Competition suspension. Power steering was electric, nominally for better feel but mainly (you suspect) to ease parking.

You had lots of modes to play with on gearchange speed, steering and paddle shift response and suspension. There was no physical control for those: you had to do it all via the touchscreen.

BODY

The 2015 Challengers got a new front end look that was designed to evoke more vivid memories of the gen-one cars from the 1970s but the first SRT Hellcats were not that obviously different from the standard Challengers. They did get bigger mesh grilles and front splitters, a rear lip spoiler and a big central bonnet intake flanked by two smaller ones. The 2018 Demon had a huge central intake. From 2019 all Hellcats had dual ‘nostril’ bonnet vents. 2018-on Widebody cars had 3.5-inch wider wheelarch flares front and rear, side sills, housing 20 x 11 wheels with 305/20 PZero tyres. The lights front and rear were LEDs and the hood (or bonnet) intakes were functional.

Paint quality was never a strong point on gen-three Challengers. The boot wasn’t large enough to swing a Hellcat in and the aperture through which you were meant to insert your kittie wasn’t that big, either.

INTERIOR

Some fans grumbled about having to ignore an air of cheapness in the Dodge’s cabin, and that it wasn’t really special enough for the performance. The Demon 170 was because it only had one seat as standard and a rollcage and a parachute as subsidiary options.

One of the few points of difference between Hellcats and lesser models was the 200mph speedometer. They did have heated and ventilated front seats but unless you ponied up the extra dollar for Alcantara or leather options the standard offering even on late (’22-’23) Hellcats was uninspiring houndstooth cloth and poor quality plastics. Realistically, most of the money had gone into the performance. The point about that 200mph speedo was that suitably-tyred models could genuinely put its needle on the stop.

Still, there was a flat-bottomed SRT steering wheel with paddle shifters and the 8.4-inch (Fiat) Uconnect 4 infotainment screen did accommodate both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, although the Challenger’s screen was never upgraded to the 10.1-inch item found in the Hellcat equivalent Durango SUV. Reaction, braking and acceleration data came up on the panel between the main instruments, along with G-forces. Harmon Kardon audio was a popular option at $2,000. HVAC failures are not unknown.

PH VERDICT

First, a heartfelt well done to Dodge for recognising that the days of iron-block V8s were numbered and for celebrating that fact with a fine burst of 6.2 Hellcat madness. Second, congrats to them for selling 80,000 Hellcats, a hell of a number really.

Right now we believe you can still get new supercharged 6.2 Hellcat Widebodies in either Jailbreak (717hp/650lb ft) or Redeye Jailbreak (807hp/707lb ft) guise. If you’re interested in this type of car, and in possibly making a few bob while you’re at it, you might want to track down one of these because the blown 6.2 Hellcats are going out of production this year (2023) as Dodge embraces its electrified future. Expect used Hellcat values generally to rise as a result.

The cheapest 6.2 Hellcat on sale in the UK at the time of writing (Oct ’23) was this leathery 14,000-mile 707hp car on PH classifieds at £61,995, an exceptionally low price. Most 6.2s are much nearer to £90k-£100k, with a few falling into the £80k-£90k bracket. This 5,000-mile Redeye Widebody (797hp, 707lb ft) from 2019 was being offered privately at £89,000, an enticing price considering the power and spec. For £11k more you could have this delivery-miles one in matt black.

Here’s a ’21 Super Stock with 9,000 miles at just under £120k. You’re probably wondering how much a Demon will be? Well, in the case of this ’18 car with 6,000 miles on it the answer is just short of £145k, an eye-watering sum but then what do you expect, it’s a trouser-watering car.

For more information on all things Hellcattish there is a dedicated website here.

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