Dodge’s Hellcat Charger Has Too Much Power, And That’s Why It’s Great

By Bradley Brownell - December 19, 2016

hellcat-charger-carfection

What Happens When You Throw Hellcat (Nuclear) Power at a Bad Car? You Make It Great Again.

Dodge’s Charger Hellcat is not a good car, that’s just an empirical fact. The interior is a bit bland and plastic. The steering is numb and overboosted. The suspension is indirect and wallowy. The brakes are not quite up to the needs of such a large car. It’s difficult to call it attractive, even.

Driving a Hellcat is a bit like driving in a dream. You don’t have the connectivity and sharpness of driving a “real” car. And the most-powerful Charger doesn’t make any sense at all. In a normal world, it shouldn’t even be available to the general public. Dodge’s Hellcat is a bit like those special one-offs that you hear about auto engineers building on weekends, just to see if they can. “Can we even fit 707 horsepower under the hood of this aging, dated, gigantic sedan? How about we find out?” Then, instead of keeping their weird weekend pet project to themselves, it was allowed to get out.

So why is the Hellcat so popular? Precisely for the same reasons that make it a terrible car. All of that power masks the less-than-exemplary attributes, and turns an undriveable mess into an icon of power to the people. The car is silly on a level that nobody has ever made before. It makes you giddy when you put your foot down, and you’re thrust forward as if on a rocket sled. The acceleration makes you forget about the panel gaps that you could fit an actual cat through. The noise it makes obscures your memory of the terrible interior quality. This is an utterly-American car, in that we overlook its myriad flaws, and hoist a wholly-unqualified car up on a pedestal above many other more sensible choices, because it shouted at us, and promised power like we’d never felt before. And we quite like that.