Dodge Charger SRT Redeye costs from £58k

The new Redeye has more than 800hp for less than $80,000; what more do you need to know?

UPDATE, 01/09/2020:
Even many years after their introduction, the Dodge Hellcats continue to stagger and amaze. Because while Europe now sees RS6s specced up beyond £130,000, the M2 CS beginning at £75,000 and a Porsche Panamera Turbo S starting at almost £140,000, the USA now has this: the Charger SRT Hellcat Redeye, from $78,595. Or £58,508 at today's exchange rate. That's four-cylinder F-Type money. Or about $100 per horsepower...

Now, obviously, that price excludes any options (or even the US-specific destination charge), plus there will be the usual observations made about perceived quality, but that remains an enormous amount of performance for not all that much money. For some context, an M5 Competition in the States is $110,000 and an E63 not much less, at $106,350. And how good do you really need the infotainment to be?

That's about all the extra info now available on the Charger, with all the salient points detailed below in the original story. Oh yes, and one more thing: buyers of the new Redeye will receive a full day session at the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving in Chandler, Arizona, to "have the opportunity to learn how to get the optimum performance from their new vehicles in a controlled environment." And who wouldn't want to have a go at that? Orders will open later this month, with deliveries expected for US customers early in '21. And while there isn't a hope in hell of official European cars, we can surely expect one or two imports to make their way across the Atlantic. After all, there are a dozen Challengers already on PH, and one lonely Charger Hellcat as well. If you can make do with just a little more than 700hp, it's £60,000.

ORIGINAL STORY, 04/07/2020:
Alongside the just-launched Durango Redeye, Dodge has introduced two similarly ferocious versions of its hot-selling Charger and Challenger models. The former takes Dodge’s four-door and ramps it up to SRT Hellcat Redeye levels, creating the “most powerful and fastest mass-produced sedan in the world” thanks to a 203mph top speed and 797hp output. The latter goes further in SRT Super Stock form, with 807hp, giving the rear-drive car a 10.5 second quarter-mile capability.

While the Challenger leads the new trio of models for outright power, it’s not as potent as the old Demon, leaving the Challenger – which has a terminal velocity 13mph higher than BMW’s M5 Competition – to offer the most compelling new package. It uses the familiar setup of a supercharged 6.2-litre HEMI V8, mixing 797hp with 707 lb ft of torque, and distributing it to the rear via an 8HP90 eight-speed automatic transmission.

Improvements over the ‘regular’ Charger SRT Hellcat engine include a rev limit raised from 6,500rpm, 300 revs higher, higher boost pressure of 14.5psi versus 11.6psi and the use of two fuel pumps rather than one, with both force-feeding the HEMI under full throttle. So high is the volume that a Charger Redeye can empty its tank in 11 minutes – which, to put that into perspective, is four minutes faster that was quoted for the Veyron and its quad-turbo W16 motor.

Additionally, Dodge claims that the Hellcat Redeye’s intake, which has an 18 per cent greater air-flow rate than the Hellcat, inhales “the equivalent flow rate to 89 adults simultaneously emptying their lungs in one second” under full throttle. Whoever calculated that in the Dodge PR department, pat yourself on the back. Alongside those other preposterous numbers, it illustrates the scale of performance on offer here. And that’s in a car with five seats that can be wound back for regular use with adaptive dampers. It looks the nuts, too.

The Challenger is unquestionably the more aggressive looking machine, and with 807hp the latest SRT Super Stock is unashamedly focussed on straight-line performance. It’s geared for the dragstrip, hence a 3.25 second 0-60mph time and a tyre-limited 168mph top speed. It uses the same HEMI 6.2, but with a 10hp boost over the Challenger Redeye and jump of 100 revs to 6,400rpm for the peak ‘shift point’. The enhancements under the bonnet are all said to be calibration-related; the rolling chassis’s biggest improvement comes with a set of sticky 315-width Nitto NT05R drag radials.

So honed for straight-line racing is the Super Stock that it comes with Launch Assist, Launch Control and Line Lock systems, while a Race Cooldown setting – said to be an industry first – is there to help reduce heat soak after sprints. Essentially, it keeps all of the engine’s cooling systems running even when the car is completely off. Handy, we’d imagine, when you’re out burning rubber on sun-baked asphalt in a Deep South summertime. On that subject, with no official presence in Britain, neither model is headed here. But as specialist machines, expect to see one or two arrive as imports.