Just to be brutally honest with you in collaboration with being captain obvious, the Dodge Challenger has never been much of a light weight type of sports car. As a matter of fact, the SRT-8 version of the car weighs in at over 4100lbs, rivaling boats around the world. Just to give you a point of comparison, that’s in the ballpark of most sport luxury sedans. In response, Dodge decided to do the most American thing they could think of and crank up the ponies under the hood. Thus, the Hellcat was formed and we must admit that we’re quite impressed with the results.

The video displaying Dodge’s latest creation opens up by saying “this car is not for everybody,” so from the jump we get the sense that this isn’t the the same Challenger that we’re used to. Subtlety wasn’t at the forefront of the drawing board on this one. Rather, Dodge was looking to send a message. It looks as if their latest installment will be doing just that.

The Hellcat features the first ever factory supercharged Hemi. The original 392 was torn down and completely upgraded to ultimately support the 600+hp supercharged application. Beefy brakes, adjustable suspension, and manual transmission complete the picture of the ideal Challenger. Dodge takes pride in having completely functional attention to detail. Traits such as a unique rear spoiler and air intake in one of the headlights show just that. Special attention was spent in the wind tunnel to make sure everything was absolutely perfect. As a result, the car seems to be the perfect balance of modern engineering and nostalgic influence. The tag line says it’s designed for the 5% of people for which the regular Challenger just will not do, and we can see exactly where they’re coming from.