Payne: Cruisin' Plum Crazy in the last Charger Hellcat
Henry PayneBirmingham — It was a Plum Crazy Dream Cruise week.
I drove a Plum Crazy-painted 2023 Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Widebody Jailbreak on Woodward all weekend. Plum Crazy fun to drive. And it’s Plum Crazy that this is the last year Dodge will sell this popular, iconic popular sedan.
If Corvette is Cruise King, then the Charger Widebody (and its Challenger sibling) is the Duke of Brawn. As I drove up and down Metro Detroit’s main street last week, few sedans had more presence. Widebody fenders like Dwayne Johnson biceps, dish wheels like Captain America’s shield, sinister LED running lights.
No one was more entertained than young kids. In Pontiac Cruise traffic, I saw the eyes of two boys in a pickup bed widen at the sight of the Purple People Eater on their bumper. Their fingers formed spinning air wheels and I obliged by shoving the Hellcat’s T-shifter into NEUTRAL, then revving the engine.
WHEEEERAWWWRRR! WHEEEERAWWWRRR! WHEEEERAWWWRRR!
The Hellcat’s sinister combination of supercharger and V-8 was intoxicating. More so with open road in front of it. Stoplight challenges from Mustangs, Camaros (even V6-powered Chargers wanting to know how they measured up to Brother Hellcat) invariably ended with their doors blown off into the grass. Plum Crazy.
Since it was introduced in 2015, the Dodge SRT Hellcat has captivated American enthusiasts. It reduced a pack of media to giggling children at its first Challenger coupe test at Portland International Speedway. With more power than Thor and that shrieking, supercharged 6.2-liter Hemi V-8 sending chills up your spine, naming these beasts after a kitty seemed an understatement. Was Godzilla copyrighted? Kraken not available? Smaug?
“The Hellcat has 650 pound-feet of torque,” said Dodge ringleader Tim Kuniskis at the time. “Top speed of 182 mph. Quarter-mile in 11.2 seconds. It’s loud, obnoxious, pure evil.”
And pure gold for Dodge. SRT Hellcat did the improbable: carrying Challenger to No. 1 in segment sales over the iconic Mustang and Camaro. I’ve always preferred the Charger sedan version because I’m a family man: with four doors, you could pick up the kids at school during the day, do launch controls out of Woodward stoplights by night.
No wonder Charger outsells Challenger 3:2, maintaining 80,00-90,000 in annual sales for the last nine years even as other sedans disappeared from the landscape. Kuniskis and his elves kept hammering out new, more outrageous models — Demon, Redeye, Jailbreak (which unlocks a flood of custom options) — dressed in outrageous colors: Destroyer Gray, Go Mango, Sinamon Stick, Sublime, Plum Crazy.
The SRT lineup peaked with the limited-edition, 1,025-horse Challenger Demon 170 that only a lucky few will own. One of them is Jay Leno, who picked up the keys for his 170 at Vinsetta Garage on Aug. 19 to kick off the Cruise.
I asked the comedian what other models in his 180-car, $52 million collection had over 1,000 horsepower. He rattled off four hot-rod mods like the biofuel EcoJet and a Rolls Royce Merlin-powered Franken-Bentley. But the Dodge was the only production car to achieve that distinction.
Heady stuff, but my base 717-horse Charger SRT Hellcat Jailbreak will do just fine, thank you. I chased Leno and Kuniskis up Woodward to Pasteiner’s hobby shop and I swear my Charger got more looks. Paint it green and you’d swear it was the Hulk.
My customized $89,907 model came standard with the latest electronic goodies embedded in a distinct, bezeled carbon-fiber dash display that stands out in this day of hoodless tablet screens.
With goodies like Android Auto, audio controls on the back of the steering wheel, shift paddles, blind-spot assist, and rear-backup assist, Charger lacked few of the gizmos found on the $153,000, 617-horsepower twin-turbo-V8-powered BMW M8 that was also in my driveway for Cruise week.
“Which one shall we take to Woodward?” I asked my motorhead son, who was in town. “We’d be Plum Crazy not to take the Hellcat,” he smiled.
Alas, the killjoys in Washington, D.C., have decided Dodge V-8s are mortal enemies of the polar bear. The last Hellcat will roll off the assembly line in Brampton, Ontario, at the end of this year lest Dodge incur the wrath of the pencil pushers (by the way, if you don’t have $90K laying around, let me recommend the $56K Scat Pack. Same Widebody. Same 20-inch wheels. Same Plum Crazy paint).
If only I could have taken the bureaucrats for a ride in the country.
Midweek, I took Hulk up north to M-32 (the gas guzzler’s 18.5-gallon tank meant I had over 300 miles of range), where the beast proved it could tap dance through the twisties as well as obliterate spotlights. Tap the SRT button on the center console and a menu of Drive Mode options appears. I haven’t seen so much red meat since I ate at Fleming’s.
AUTO mode is muscle enough, but TRACK mode takes Hulk to another level.
The suspension noticeably stiffened. Did it paw the earth as I aimed it at M-32? I destroyed a set of S-bends, the 4,500-pound chassis glued to the pavement before torching a short straight leading to another suite of bends. A special nod goes to the widebody fenders, which allow wider 12-inch Pirelli P Zero tires versus the standard body’s 10.8-inchers.
Upshifts were brutal, however, belting me in the back. Electronics to the rescue again. I pulled to the side of the road and accessed CUSTOM mode. I selected TRACK settings for everything but the transmission, which I kept in STREET mode. Much better. Hulk continued to bound through the countryside but without knotting my spine with each upshift. As I grew comfortable with the eight-speed gearbox, paddle shifters worked nicely too.
All this on a dated 2005 chassis. Imagine what Hellcat could have accomplished had Dodge been updated like other sports cars in recent years — BMW M, Ford Mustang, Toyota Supra — with the latest metallurgy and tech.
So the sun sets on the 28th annual Woodward Dream Cruise — and the last model year Challenger and Chargers. They will live on at the Cruise for years to come, their muscled torsos a reminder of the second golden era of V-8 muscle cars.
My son and I swapped the driver’s seat so he could enjoy Hellcat launch control. WHEEEERAWWWRRR! roared the engine as the 650 pound-feet of torque overwhelmed the rear tires and we laid a patch of rubber down a secondary road. Plum Crazy.
Next week: 2023 Ford Performance 700 HP Package F-150
2023 Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat Widebody Jailbreak
Vehicle type: Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive five-passenger sports sedan
Price: $81,150 base, including $1,595 destination ($89,907 as tested)
Power plant: Supercharged 6.2-liter V-8
Power: 717 horsepower, 650 pound-feet of torque
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Performance: 0-60 mph, 3.5 seconds (Car and Driver); top speed, 196 mph
Weight: 4,594 pounds
Fuel economy: EPA est. 12 city/21 highway/15 combined
Report card
Highs: Bodybuilder good looks; visceral thrills all day long
Lows: No adaptive cruise control offered; pricier than a Corvette
Overall: 4 stars
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or Twitter @HenryEPayne