Challenger Hellcat Widebody From a Lifelong Mopar Lover’s View
Two weeks driving one of the first Widebody Hellcats on the road was just as incredible as it sounds.
When the first examples of the 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Widebody test cars hit the media fleet last fall, I was fortunate enough to be one of the first journalists in the Metro Detroit area to get one. I received the Octane Red car that is still featured in Dodge social media ads and I spent two weeks driving it at a time when the only other people on the road with the new Widebody cars were FCA employees.
As you might imagine, having one of the few Widebody Hellcat Challengers in the world was an awesome experience and the fact that I had this test car during Detroit’s Woodward Dream Cruise made it even more memorable, but for a lifelong Mopar lover like myself, it was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. There is a good chance that every journalist who gets a Hellcat car enjoys it, but having grown up dreaming of someday owning a high performance Dodge, spending time in one of the first preproduction Hellcat Challenger Widebody models in car-crazy Metro Detroit was something that I will never forget.
Lifelong Mopar Lover
Prior to getting my driver’s license in the mid-1990s, I had already found a love for the look and performance of the classic Mopar muscle cars. The problem was that those cars were far too expensive for a 16-year old to buy, but I wanted a Mopar to rival the many kids my age who drove a Mustang or Camaro. That was how I came to own my first Dodge – a 1983 Mirada – which when fitted with a lightly worked 340 from a 1969 Cuda, had no issues beating many of the new American performance cars in the 90s.
Of course, at that time, there was no Challenger, but there was the Dodge Viper, and as a broke 16-year old kid flying the Mopar colors while racing a 1983 Dodge Mirada, I dreamed of someday owning one of the wicked American supercars. Over the years, I had a variety of other Dodge vehicles from a Stratus R/T coupe to a handful of Dodge Ram pickups to my 1972 Demon 340, but into the early 2000s, the Viper was still the ultimate goal since there really was no other high performance Mopar option.
Challenger Cometh
When the 2006 Dodge Challenger Concept was introduced, things changed for many Mopar lovers like myself and when the Hellcat cars were introduced in 2014, I had a new dream car in the form of the 707-horsepower Challenger. I was fortunate enough to be involved in the media test sessions for the Hellcat Challenger and Charger, and getting to drive these machines as hard as I could in the safe confines of a race track just secured my love for these machines. Through various media events, I spent many hours and hundreds miles behind the wheel of a factory-supercharged Mopar muscle car and I enjoyed every second of it.
When the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Widebody was introduced in 2017 for the 2018 model year, I was invited to come to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where we tested the newest Mopar muscle cars on the road course portion of one of America’s most legendary tracks.
That was, without any doubt, the most surreal experience of my automotive life, rocketing across the start/finish line of the Brickyard at more than 150 miles per hour in one of the ultimate American muscle cars. I would also drive the Widebody Hellcat on the street that afternoon and as is the case with all first-drive trips, I used my seat time to write my initial review.
Continued…
