CAR & DRIVER
Posted by Andrew Wendler | Photography by Michael Simari and the Manufacturer
A full 707 horsepower and 650 lb-ft of torque, a 3.6-second zero-to-60 time, sub-12-second quarters, and a hefty 4488-pound curb weight—any way you look at it, the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat is all about staggering numbers.
But here’s one number we didn’t see coming: The Cat has earned an EPA highway fuel-economy rating of 22 mpg when equipped with the eight-speed automatic transmission.
Shift-for-yourself types will have to make do with 21 mpg highway from the six-speed manual version. (City figures weren’t released for either transmission.)
Massaging those kind of numbers from a two-ton muscle car is an impressive feat, but according to a recent report on Jalopnik, the 707-hp Hellcat engine actually broke the 800-hp mark during development.
Using info gleaned from an unnamed source within Chrysler, the Jalopnik story says the Hellcat engine at one point dyno’d at an obscene 825 ponies.
The report also says the 707 number is not only conservative, but that no one is really sure where it came from.
The source also said that the Hellcat was having trouble meeting emissions requirements and that Dodge conducted tests using a Mazda mass-airflow sensor (MAF) and a wide-band O2 sensor, explaining that Chrysler generally uses a manifold-absolute-pressure sensor (MAP) instead of the former.
The speculation is that the company may be using the Hellcat engine as a test bed for future MAF-equipped engines.
Whatever the case, we’re just glad Dodge is using its powers for good and evil. Or something like that.
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