From this side of the Atlantic, the muscle car's resurgence has been a joy to watch. There's been 15 years of it now, really, beginning with the Mustang's rebirth as something desirable back in 2005. Since then we've had Challengers, Camaros and Corvettes back at the best they've been in decades, and soon it's about to get dafter (and therefore better) still: this is a Dodge Charger Hellcat Red Eye Widebody. No surprise there isn't a boot badge, there wouldn't be space...
Let's break that name down to understand quite what this car is. The Charger Hellcat is a reasonably familiar prospect; launched soon after the Challenger equivalent in 2014, it's a 707hp, 200mph four-door saloon car, that's still on sale at a scandalously low $68k. The Widebody option was introduced last summer, again following the Challenger's lead, with a body kit that added another 3.5 inches to the width of an already broad machine. More than the pumped-up aesthetic, though, the wider tyres and revised suspension made it significantly faster around a circuit than a standard Hellcat.
Then there's the Redeye. Again a model first seen in the Challenger range, the Redeye essentially took a host of the upgrades from the I-live-my-life-a-quarter-mile-at-a-time Demon, then packaged them a bit more suitably for the road. All things being relative, that meant 797hp instead of 840, and the ability to run on fuel without a three-figure octane rating.
Bring that all together - the four-door Charger shell, the Widebody option and the 797hp engine upgrade - and you have the Dodge photographed here. Because so much of the package is familiar, this already looks a recognisable car, the only difference at the moment being the camouflaged bonnet. Expect that to change in line with the Challenger, which gained a couple of nostrils up front to keep that monstrous supercharged V8 cool. Otherwise, imagine it painted one of those excellent Dodge colours like Plum Crazy or SubLime and it's the street-ready Redeye that those lucky US customers will be offered.
According to our spy sources, the Charger Widebody Redeye will be launched as part of a 2021 model year refresh. To think European manufacturers add a new grille or some additional equipment to keep people interested in an ageing line up... Expect the Charger to make its debut at a US motor show - assuming any of them go ahead - later in 2020.
Images | S.Baldauf/S.B.Medien
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