Dodge Durango Hellcat | Spotted
We dare you not to find something to love in this 710hp soccer mom dreadnought
Whoa there, slow down. I know I’m treading on thin ice shouting out an SUV, let alone one a left-hand drive one wearing a Dodge badge. But I’d like to invite you to put step away from the keyboard for the next few minutes while I do my very best to explain why this particular Dodge proves that SUVs (well, some of them at least) can have a sense of humour.
Let’s start off with the idea of a performance SUV, which, on paper at least, is a contradiction on wheels. Take a large, extremely heavy vehicle designed for ‘lifestyle’ holidays, rip out all the bits that make it comfortable and thrown in some trick electronics that work overtime to disguise the fact that you’re basically driving about in a turbocharged sideboard. And I’m not here to bash those who are into these kinds of SUVs - not at all - but there’s no denying they’re a compromise, no matter how well struck.
So, onto the Dodge Durango. In standard form, it’s hardly the most inspiring car to come from the US marque, sharing its underpinnings with the Jeep Grand Cherokee and the now redundant Mercedes ML and GL. And with an extra row of seats in the boot, the Durango is well established as Dodge’s family car. But with its two stablemates, the Challenger and Charger, all being offered with drag-focused performance variants, the manufacturer thought it would be deeply humourous (and no doubt lucrative) to do the same with its soccer mom flagship.
The result is the Durango Hellcat; a family SUV with the same 6.2-litre supercharged Hemi V8 that can be found in the Challenger and Charger of the same name. Performance is truly mental. With an output of 710hp, the Durango Hellcat is up there with the most powerful SUVs ever made. All that power is sent across both axles via an eight-speed auto ‘box, again plucked from previous Hellcats, helping launch you and your family from 0-60mph in a likely terrifying 3.5 seconds.
Of course, you’d expect a bunch of chassis upgrades to help manage all that power, right? Well, you do get beefier Brembo brakes, a tweaked suspension setup and a reworked steering ratio. But that’s about it, no active systems to report here. The interior is also to your standard US-grade with absolutely zero frills, aside from some a Hellcat graphic on the digital dash and SRT logos embroidered into the seats. It’s by no means an ugly cabin, but it’s not like Dodge has tried very hard to make the Hellcat look or feel all that different to a regular Durango.
Naturally, they were only sold in select right-hand drive territories, making them somewhat of a rare find in the UK. This one’s a POA, but for reference the Durango Hellcat commanded a price tag of around $84,000 in the US. Expect to pay more than that, given this one’s been imported from mainland Europe, but it ought to be a chunk cheaper than most of its high-performance and prestige-badged SUV rivals. And that, folks, is what makes the Durango Hellcat so wonderfully absurd. It doesn’t pretend to be supercar on stilts or a track day demon, it's entirely comfortable with the fact it's a six-seat people carrier with a ridiculously big engine up front. And for that, in this day and age, I salute it.
SPECIFICATION | DODGE DURANGO HELLCAT
Engine: 6,166cc, supercharged V8
Transmission: 8-speed automatic, all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 710@6,000rpm
Torque (lb ft): 645@4,000rpm
MPG: 13
CO2: 410g/km
Year registered: 2022
Recorded mileage: 33
Price new: $84,000 (US)
Yours for: POA
I dont get why if anyone mentions a potentially large/thirsty car all the, "f
k you Greta" etc thing comes out.Personally I think we should at least err on the side of caution when it comes to the environment, as we will have to still live in it and potentially we have had a few events recently that suggest that it may be a bigger problem. Now I am not 100 percent convinced, maybe a bit more than I was but even so there is an ebb and flow of the planet over millennia anyway, but perhaps be a little more cautious than we have been and definitely stop the worst transgressions.
But, a fast supercharged SUV, even one like this isn't really making that much difference in the scheme of things when we have air travel, plastic being dumped into the oceans, oil spills, massive additional industrialization, populations rising etc etc. They wont be around much longer anyway by the sounds of it.
I think its perfectly plausible to have one eye on your environmental impact and running a thirstier, bigger car, you dont have to go fully one way or another and choose a hill to die on. This is a behemoth and will release loads of CO2 but its still better than most stuff of thirty years ago, and most owners wont do huge mileages. Eco folk used to favour the 2CV, would rather walk through a city centre full of these than the old Citroen blasting out their fumes.
Think it is perfectly possible to do your bit, consider the environment and still have some nice things and a bit of fun, dont drop litter, recycle stuff, dont waste food, dont buy more stuff than you need, dont waste energy for the sake of it, dont burn piles of old tyres, dont tip noxious chemicals into rivers, its pretty simple and if you want a honking great 700 bhp SUV, thats fine, enjoy it but dont feel you need to abandon any thoughts of the environment. I suspect owners of these wont be doing 30k a year.
I think sometimes with the anti SUV thing, some of it is genuine concern, but a lot seems to be perhaps steeped in jealously, like a lot of life if you read between the lines it may be just that an SUV is perhaps evidence of wealth and they dont have any, so its an opportunity to try and make someone else do without, to at least try to make them feel guilty about it.
I dont get why if anyone mentions a potentially large/thirsty car all the, "f
k you Greta" etc thing comes out.
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