Tuesday 30th June 2015

Dodge launches new Challenger Drag Pak

Turn key drag racer is claimed to be able to turn in eight second quarters all day long

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You've got to admire a company that produces a non road-going version of one of its road cars, especially one that's designed to do no more than go in a straight line. But as this is just the latest in a series of Drag Pak Challengers, Dodge is obviously onto something.

Live life literally a 1/4 mile at a time? Voila!

The bad news is that it's not coming here. The good news is that, as it's not intended for road use, there's nothing apart from the pricetag to stop you from buying one in the 'States and then shipping it over. The Challenger Drag Pak is a turn-key drag racer, which the company says will be able to turn in quarter mile times in the eight second range.

The last Drag Pak had the V10 engine from the old Dodge Viper, but this one comes with a choice of two V8 powerplants - a 5.8-litre with a supercharger and a naturally aspirated 7.0 litre one. There are no power and torque figures yet - apparently the car has to be homologated with the U.S. drag racing authorities first - but to produce those numbers each will be making plenty. The only transmission option is a race-spec three-speed auto which will be manually controlled by a vast metal shifter.

Guess this is the supercharged one then...

The cabin is completely stripped of unnecessary distractions - owners will only be sitting in it for a couple of minutes at a time - and is delivered with a full roll cage and wearing a set of super sticky Hoosier drag racing tyres. Suspension is also seriously upgraded - with a new rear axle to handle the stress of repeated full-bore starts.

In the 'States the naturally aspirated version will cost $99,426 and the supercharged one is $109,354. That's £63,425 and £69,560 at current exchange rates, although getting one into the UK is going to be a fair bit more expensive than that.

[keith2.2]

Delighted to be enlightened - I can't understand why one would buy an off-the-shelf dragster? I thought the idea was to build something better / faster than the next guy?