Click on the settings icon to select 2D or your choice of 3D formats.
As far as I can determine, TTAC was the only popular car blog to publish exclusive photos from yesterday’s reveal of the 2015 Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat. Everyone else seems to have relied on the publicity shots released by Chrysler. We care so much about the Best & Brightest that I braved the aftermath some of the worst flooding the Detroit area has experienced in almost a century to get those photographs for you to enjoy. I don’t know if hell is associated with torrential rain, but severe precipitation seems to be following the new 707 hp Hellcat HEMI V8 engine around. The recent press ride & drive for the Challenger Hellcat took place in part on a race track that had been literally inundated.
Seriously though, while it was just a 5 minute drive to Vinsetta Garage, where the reveal was, the route took me through residential neighborhoods where almost every household’s basement contents were now sitting waterlogged at the curb. A lot of people lost some valuable possessions, and furnace repairmen and disaster reclamation companies were very busy. I was fortunate that my basement didn’t flood but my friend Tory, who helps me work some press events and was schlepping around camera gear at the Charger Hellcat event, had 3 feet of standing water in his.
Following up on yesterday’s photos, here is some video (with audio, of course) of the Charger Hellcat firing up and roaring a bit. At first it was a bit hard to hear it because I was standing directly in front of the car with noisy pre-Dream Cruise Woodward traffic behind me, so I moved to the rear of the car and the Chrysler guy at the wheel obliged with a couple of nice throttle blips. The feline appellation is appropriate because the slightly loping idle is reminiscent of a cat purring, a very big cat.
Speaking of reminiscing, the Hellcat V8 has it’s individual ignition coil packs mounted in the middle of the supercharged HEMI’s orange valve covers, evoking the look of the original 426 Hemi, which had orange valve covers pierced by that engine’s spark plugs.
In addition to recording the sounds and sights of what is likely the highest performance sedan in the world, I also did a brief video walk around the car. That video is mostly silent due to a glitch between the file format of a new 3D camcorder that I’m trying out and my video editing software. You’ll just have to do without my scintillating commentary.
Finally, I’ve embedded the “B roll” video that Chrysler produced on the car, which just coincidentally also has a section without any soundtrack, along with some running footage that has audio of the Hellcat’s glorious exhaust note.
Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS
How many law enforcement agencies will order Hellcat Chargers, I wonder…
…yeah, but it gets the suspects to lockup/interrogation really, *really* fast! And what if we have to chase down a speeding Tesla?!? /justification
I seriously doubt any police agency will need a Hellcat Charger. I’ve never even seen an SRT Police charger. They use regular HEMI with donut tires in their pursuit packages and you pretty much can’t get away from them because you’d either run out of fuel or destroy your car attempting to evade them.
HEMI? Most municipalities buy V6 versions…
Doubt they will order one but I bet a few will show up after they snag one or two for street racing.
Nobody will have any trouble chasing down a Tesla, the top speed is really low to start with, and the range at top speed is probably Veyronesqe. Great acceleration, no legs.
If you guys are done folding yourselves over blowing yourself, Autoblog reported this AND had pictures well before you.
Oh, well then, Shut Down Everything.
As I mentioned in my post about my orthopaedic surgeon’s Porsche 968, I have chronic low back pain, so what you have suggested is just not possible. As for Autoblog’s post, at the time I hit the “Submit” button, Autoblog was displaying publicity photos from Chrysler. They added their own pics later on. From their post:
“UPDATE: Press release added below – showing a top speed of 204 miles per hour! A full gallery of images now lives up top, too.”
regardless, a website claiming that they broke a story first is about as dumb as the idiot who claims he replied to an article first. at the end of the day, no one gives a shit
Didn`t autoblog publish a couple of their own photo’s yesterday? Nothing like the number or range of photo’s Ronnie got us – which is appreciated.
I’ll take Ronnie’s report over autoblog’s any day of the week.
It makes me regret I’m missing the dream cruise this year. At least I don’t have to deal with living a block off Woodward.
Thanks for the kind words. The folks living a block off of Woodward have bigger concerns than the Dream Cruise this year. It looks like all of Huntington Woods and a good chunk of Berkley got their basements seriously flooded. I heard that 80% of the homes around here had a foot or more of standing water in their basements. When the storm drains are overwhelmed and the water rises above the sill where a house sits on the foundation, it’s going to pour in.
I said this in my Nash-Healey post and I can’t emphasize it strongly enough: Digitize your family’s old photos and home movies. Furniture and electronics are usually just things, but in fires and floods people lose photos, mementos and other physical items whose value can’t be expressed in dollars and cents.
In any case, I was at the funeral today of a good friend who died way too young, a man who was defined by how good he made other people feel. Try to make someone smile.
This reminds me of several years ago, when a hurricane struck downtown Houston. Several people parked their expensive cars in an underground garage, thinking it will be safe from the storm…it flooded.
I’m sorry to hear about your friend.
And a smile is a good thing indeed.
I put my 300 in the shop this morning. I’m upgrading my fuel pump, tstat and my rotors to drilled/slotted front and rear. HELLCAT fever has captured me. I’m gonna supercharge this bastard. No need playing games anymore. I’ll be at Mopar Nationals in NJ Englishtown on the 23rd (next saturday at 9AM.
Hopefully the Hellcats will be there.
Which kit are you having installed, and how much past the recommended boost pressure are you going?
I’m using forged internals from my 440 Stroker and a Magnuson Magna.
I will not go beyond recommended boost.
What blower BT?
Gee, it has a internal combustion engine. You think it will produce sound?
Yep, it will sound like whatever the mufflers are tuned to sound like. The days when the noise out of the tailpipe directly correlated to what was under the hood are long gone.
Are you saying that with an appropriate muffler an inline four can be made to sound like a V12, a V-Twin or a Briggs & Stratton lawnmower engine, whichever way you’d like it?
Ronnie, if you get a chance, go drive a BMW i8 in sport mode. I’m amazed at how much exotic-car character they got out of a 1.5L 3 cylinder, and I’m sure there’s some sort of electronic wizardry going on under there.
Still, it’s still a pretty sweet exhaust note.
And despite all the tinkering that goes into how cars sound, that organic burbling gurgling sound of a large displacement V-8 isn’t something that can be replicated without the attendant hardware.
Maybe the inundations following the Hellcat are God’s way of telling Fiat they are making a mistake, and that we should all be driving VW XL-1’s.
Well, the Western US is experiencing an epic drought. So rain is a reward, not a punishment. Should have done the reveal in Las Vegas or Southern Cali.
There is a strong case to be made that the “epic drought” is simply a reversion to the long-term mean.