The golden age of fuel-injected internal combustion horsepower may be slowly walking into the sunset thanks to the rise of the electric car, but a new golden age of horsepower accessibility is only just beginning. Most of the ludicrously powerful cars launched in the past decade are already depreciating, and as prices come down, more and more people will be able to get a taste of serious flame-fueled horsepower. Case in point:Â A 2019 Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat just sold on Cars & Bids for $38,000, and it’s not the only supercharged Dodge weapon trading hands for less than $40,000.
Even almost a decade after its unveiling, the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat and Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat offer astonishing grunt. We’re talking about more horsepower than a Ferrari Enzo, a Porsche Carrera GT, or a Mercedes SLR McLaren, all in a practical family car you can get serviced just about everywhere in America. Sure, they might weigh as much as whales and be better at producing tire smoke than launching quickly, but that’s all part of the appeal. An eight-cylinder salute to the red, white, and blue.
This isn’t even a stripper Hellcat, either. It has the power-adjustable steering column, 19-speaker Harman/Kardon sound system, navigation, and ventilated red leather seats. It’s not a rebuilt title car, theft recovery, or stolen. Sure, it may have two minor hits on its Carfax, but it’s a reasonably clean, reasonably straight Charger Hellcat with two previous owners and some documented history of maintenance.
As you probably know by now, a 707-horsepower 6.2-liter supercharged V8 lies under the hood of this Charger. However, at $38,000, that works out to about $53.75 per horsepower. That’s pretty cheap, and with 86,700 miles on the clock, this relatively unassuming grey sedan has plenty of life left to give. Whoever scooped this up definitely got a bargain, although it’s not some crazy outlier.
A quick look at online classified ads shows a number of Challenger SRT Hellcat and Charger SRT Hellcat models for sale under $40,000. If you prefer your supercharged Dodges to have two doors, this 2016 Challenger Hellcat with 74,208 miles on the clock is listed for sale in Florida for $39,875. While that might be just under $40,000, under is under.
Or how about something wide? This 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Widebody with 40,636 miles under its belt is up for sale in Texas at an asking price of $39,995. Yep, you’re gonna want to stock up on rubber for this one.
Sure, $40,000 is still a lot of money, but for a 700-horsepower car without any aftermarket performance modifications, it’s a damn good deal. Now, many pearls have been clutched over imagining these cars’ third and fourth owners, but in reality, it’s largely classist fuckwaddery. As we’ve all seen by the number of Lamborghinis wrapped around light poles, money doesn’t buy skill or respect, and people have been buying once-fast cars for peanuts for ages. I know because I did buy a used performance car in college.
Alright, so by today’s standards, my old three-owner Infiniti G35 is not a rocket ship, but even in 2024, a zero-to-60 mph time of less than six seconds isn’t anything to sneeze at. Keep in mind, at the time, high-mileage BMW 335is were still out of reach for most college students, and compared to most of the cars in the student parking lot, it was quick, fun, and it definitely gave me an everyday appreciation for performance. It was a car to be used responsibly, when all conditions permitted. As the fast cars of today age and depreciate, some of them will give a new generation of drivers an amazing experience along with a healthy respect for speed.
Unless something drastic changes, these Hellcat Chargers and Challengers are only going to get cheaper as the miles and years pile on. Dodge simply made too many of them to assure rarity, a good problem to have as it meant more people could drive off the lot with serious horsepower. It’s time we stopped fearing their future and embracing it, for we might all be able to be Hellcat owners eventually, so long as we want one. Whoever bought this Charger Hellcat got one hell of a deal, and if we can all get deals on Hellcats in the years to come, the chance of a few bad apples getting their hands on fast Dodges doesn’t seem like the worst price to pay.
(Photo credits: Cars & Bids, Autotrader sellers)
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I’m of two minds about this sort of thing. For example, I have read a few stories about the wringing of hands and clutching of pearls in the UK about the Lotus Carlton upon its release. It basically boiled down to that poor people weren’t responsible enough to own such a fast car which is stupid.
But at the same time, I’ve seen a lot of folks stretch their meager budget to buy the car and then not be able to afford to keep it in good running order, skimping on tires, brakes, etc.
Remember all those “Autotrader” ads from the 80’s with 440 6 Pack Cuda’s going for the equivalent of $15,000 today? That’s what these will be seen as, some day.
I’d like to personally operate the crusher that every one of these should be thrown into. For every “responsible” owner of one of these death machines there are 3 bad actors who goes 100 on city surface streets with state minimum insurance and not a single asset to their name.
No, but it does typically buy decent insurance and implies personal assets to go after in the event of a crash. A broke-ass deadbeat stretching his 500 credit score to the max to afford a clapped out Hellcat on tires with the cords showing on state-mini insurance isn’t going to provide you with any financial recourse when he blasts through a stop sign at 70 mph and T-bones you.
That’s why this development is bad news.
I love depreciation. 3.4 years ago, someone paid $57k for my (now) $32K car with 27,000 miles. They also ticked every option box.
I’m already going to get in trouble with a baby M car. I might end up in jail if I had a Hellcat.
I absolutely hate Hellcats, my neighbor owns one and is the biggest prick. It’s truly a shame to everyone that these depreciate so much and are becoming affordable. We’re going to see more and more videos of idiots crashing and being way too confident in their horrible driving skills and killing innocent people.
It is something to be scared of if you’re a cyclist or pedestrian given the type of person that buys the non-hellcat version of these cars. More power can only make them more dangerous.
I’ve seen depreciated Hellcats and been tempted before, but once you remember the sorts of owners and attention these attract they become a lot less appealing. If you go on a car listing website of your choice, search for Chargers or Challengers, then eliminate any that have been in accidents more than half of them go away. It’s ridiculous but unsurprising how many of these get into wrecks.
On top of that, good fucking luck owning one. These are some of the most stolen cars on the road. If you are in a major city it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. Doge pulled a Hyundai/Kia with these and they’re ridiculously easy to steal. They’re also favorites of criminals because they’re fast enough to outrun cops.
And that doesn’t even begin to take how goddamn much you’re going to be spending on gas and insurance into account. In the real world these get single digit fuel economy and while I haven’t gotten a quote on one I have received insurance quotes on Mustangs and Camaros over the years and buddy…you’re going to be paying out the ass. Combine the power with how often they’re stolen and how many accidents they get into and you’re in for pain.
You are also going to attract every single idiot within a 10 mile radius. People will want to race you constantly. People will come up to you to talk about it constantly. You will not be left alone if you have one of these. If you’re into that sort of thing then by all means go for it, but I’m an introvert with a lead foot and I know damn well having a Hellcat would not be the move for me.
All that being said, they’re objectively cool. They’re ridiculously fast. They sound great. They look great. And if you’re patient there are lots of Boomer owned ones out there that pop up with low miles and meticulous maintenance histories. I’d be patient, wait, and pay a little more for one of those. A lot of people bought them as collector cars and babied them and Doge definitely did us a solid by making so many.
If you live in the country or burbs, can afford the significant ownership costs, and don’t mind all the attention you’ll attract then go for it. They’re cool as hell (pun intended). But if you live in the city there’s a significant chance you’ll wake up one day and never see your Hellcat again…and the price of admission is only the tip of the iceberg. These aren’t all that different from owning a depreciated luxury car at the end of the day. You’ll have to pay to play.
What’s fascinating to me is how similar all this is to what happened during the first muscle car era.
The top end models were just as cool but hard to live with on an everyday basis, so in the end, relatively few people pulled the trigger.
We have this collective fantasy (urged on by tv and movies for sure) that everyone in the early 70s was driving around in some street-legal dragster; in reality, most people had to be – – and were, largely – content with the lower levels.
The way enthusiasts have retconned muscle cars into these driver focused, balls to the wall, manual-only, hardcore skill machines has always perplexed me. Nostalgia’s a hell of a drug.
Were those cars out there? To an extent. Were they the norm? Absolutely not. It’s rather amusing to me that today there are so many people like IF IT AIN’T A V8 AND MANUAL TRANSMISSION IT AIN’T VALID. That’s…not really ever how it worked.
It’s a great point. Most of the vintage muscle cars I’ve seen over the years have been automatics. Pony cars, sure with the manuals, but full-on supercars from the era, I’m always (pleasantly) surprised to see one.
Something I read years back that I absolutely love is that the true heirs to the actual ethos of that era…are our SUVs.
Many of them are quite fast, given their size, but they’re mostly automatics, have at best adequate braking and handling, and represent taking an everyday, practical vehicle (here, a spacious hauler) and adding power. The essential American-ness of it all shines through.
Escalade V anyone?
I find those SUVs fascinating – they’re like creating a performance vehicle by sheer blunt force. They’re nearly as capable as actual sportscars, but with an insane amount of resources expended to overcome their inherent limitations. If you started with an actual sportscar and added the equivalent, you’d have a street-legal F1 car!
That’d be the Camaro ZL1 my friend. It’s as capable as a lot of supercars and you can get into them in the 50s these days. They’re so under appreciated it’s criminal. If I recall correctly a ZL1 1LE lapped VIR faster than the second gen Ford GT in Car and Driver’s testing.
Get one while you can because they won’t be under appreciated forever….and if you can deal with a convertible (I love drop tops and have never really understood the MUH RIGIDITY argument….no regular person is going to be driving them hard enough to notice a real difference) they’re shockingly doable.
I see moderate mileage ZL1 convertibles in the low to mid 50s a lot, especially if you want the 10 speed. The tremec tends to command a little more, but in a car with that much raw power and tire melting ability I personally don’t think I’d want a stick.
It was riveting to follow the Garage 56 Camaro at Le Mans this year. Sure, it’s a purpose-built race car, but I enjoyed seeing her hold her own against way more “sophisticated” Euro machines. The best part was the size differential from most of the competition. Car and Driver (I think) had a great waist-level photo of her towering over everything else at the starting grid, with the caption “she’s a big girl.”
That nobody really wants those kind of cars but will go nuts for TrackHawk Jeeps or whathaveyou seems to speak to peoples’ innate pragmatism when it comes to cars.
Like the sheer amount of 4-door Wranglers on the road these days used as dailies – in reality, they’re still a fairly niche, purpose-built thing (with most of the compromises inherent) but adding 2 more doors seemed enough to convince people to overlook all that.
Having gotten my drivers license in 1977 and subsequently owned several V8 manual cars, I can assure this is exactly how it worked. Sure the 318 2bbl automatics vastly outnumbered the 440 6-pack 4-speeds, but which one did people talk about and aspire to? Which one had the bragging rights? No, my high parking lot wasn’t full of big-block manual muscle cars, but everyone had a buddy/neighbor/uncle with one and that’s what we talked about.
I was going to post that I wonder how many of these are being dumped with the recent rising of insurance rates in general that surely must be hitting these cars even harder.
And that happened back in the ’70s too. Barring something unexpected, we still have cheap gas, but the insurance situation is no joke.
Esp. as unlike back in the day, coverage can be quickly confirmed at multiple points, so I don’t think there’d be a huge overlap in ownership of these and running around uninsured.
The parallels occurred to me, as well—two generations of Hemis killed by insurance! (Not exactly, but certainly contributors.) Mine went up about 25% for a car with not much more hp than a plug-in Prius with a clean record and reduced annual mileage, though it is RWD and there are probably a greater number of dummies crashing them than average. Regardless, if these rate increases are based on risk instead across the board increases, insurance on these Hellcats must be completely outrageous.
Got it all in one fell swoop. It’s the sort of thing I enjoy playing pretend with in GTA or Forza, but the real world problems are too real and too numerous to ignore.
I’m not sure I’m too worried about being the second or third owner of one of these…
Let me ask, just how tore up could you tear up a 707 horsepower motor if you kept up to date on maintenance? When you have hundreds of ponies more than you ever need, how hard is it to wear each of those ponies out?
Racing up the onramp. Passing in anger. Stoplight burnouts. All of these seem well within the ordinary capability of a 500 hp car, much less a 707 hp monster motor car.
I’m sure there will be some epically trashed examples out there, but it also seems to me there will be plenty of good ones out there to choose from, too. Even if they were used hard from time to time.
I can partly imagine that’s because these cars bring the attention of sticky fingered pukes…….
Is that what we call police officers now?
You can also buy a new LS big block crate engine on Amazon and swap it into your 92′ Ford Ranger but that’s not a good idea.
Why not?
I was looking on the reviews on Amazon and someone did just that. They broke their differential within a minute and included pictures. I don’t blame the Ranger, it wasn’t made for that.
It would certainly behoove one to upgrade the entire driveline, but most who are doing an engine swap of that expense and complexity would already know that.
Woah, that Carfax on the wide body Challenger.
Totaled in June 2021, but apparently not a “salvage” car afterward?
But wait, it gets wrecked again in February 2023. Totaled again.
Re-emerges as a salvage title in May 2023. Looks like it might have been sitting at this dealer since then.
Cheap Hellcats mean wrecked Hellcats. Wrecked Hellcats means Hellcat swaps. This is an absolute good.
I’ve seen the oddballs, like the Hellcat Prius and the one-off Hellcat Miata, and they are entertaining to consider. But unlike the LS, the Hellcat just doesn’t fit into a lot of interesting cars that could use a juicing.
This strikes me as a car you don’t want to buy used.
Right. I feel like the Challenger/Charger Hellcat buyers either 1) beat the piss out of them or 2) lock them up in a garage as an “investment” and they have 100 miles on them.
No, I’m sure that the people who buy these are very diligent about the break-in period…
This is a bucketlist car for me, although not near the top of that list. I love what they stand for. A top speed of 198 mph is nothing to turn my nose up at, either.
“I love what they stand for.”
Underinsured manchildren?
Vehicular jackassery. Lots f overlap with underinsured manchildren though.
Pretty sure that Venn diagram is a perfect circle.
The thing is you dont need anywhere near 707 HP for vehicular jackassery. God knows I saw plenty, even in sub 69HP (and probably much less than that) Datsun 1200s.
All you need are bald, bias ply tires and no fucks given.
I plan to commit vehicular jackassery with about 25-30 horsepower, but that will be with an AWD vehicle of about 100 lbs, perhaps 260 lbs with me plus tools in it. Should be fun.
Sounds like fun.
Best of all, it’s CHEAP. Per mile, cheaper than taking the bus! Legally, it’s a bicycle of sorts and is functional as one if I disable the EV system. Something that a Hellcat is not.
If this works out, I must translate this design into an actual full-on microcar, and not a car pretending to be a “bicycle” for legal purposes.
So exactly what kind of jackassery can you do in such a vehicle with out it being legally or medically regrettable?
Legally, pretty much anything as long as I’m not in a jurisdiction where it’s illegal. In Illinois, I have to limit the assist to 28 mph/750W, but there are (increasingly fewer) places where this vehicle is undefined and the closest fit is “bicycle”. Not being medically regrettable is any activity that doesn’t involve getting into an accident.
The vehicle may be the complete and total opposite of what a Hellcat is, but it still shares the Hellcat’s philosophy on a number of things… Underinsured manchildren would probably love it!
I’m thinking more about vehicular speed limits. Those still apply whether its a “bicycle” or not.
Also burning rubber and other such hoonery is generally frowned upon by our legal community.
Underinsured manchildren would probably love it!
Maybe. No insurance needed is good but no chance to be a loud, obnoxious, pushy, intimidating asshat is bad.
They could always ride it into a crowded area. A Walmart, any non-defunct shopping mall, a parade, a bike trail… The possibilities are endless! But the consequences of a screw up would also be a bit more direct to the rider given the reduced mass and reduced safety features.
“You Can Now Buy A 707-Horsepower Supercharged Dodge Charger Hellcat For Less Than $40,000 And That’s Nothing To Be Scared Of”
I dunno about that. Hellcat Charger getting affordable is nothing to fear as long as someone with some level of responsibility buys it. But that’s not really the typical Charger buyer, is it?
i mean, the current owners are not the poster kids of responsibility either, so it is same car different idiot behind the wheel.
That’s fair, and I can’t even say people are more careful with expensive cars. Look at the idiots who wreck Lambos because they don’t know what to do with them.
I think you can be virtually assured every used one of these has been beat to crap just based on who buys them new, no less the second or third owners.
The joke with Chargers/Challengers has always been that the displacement matches the credit score.
Not sure what to think… Great that these are becoming affordable. But now that just means it’s accessible to even more dips…
Even the base V6 models still go plenty fast enough for “dips” to break stuff.
I do hope all models come with the same brakes as the Hellcat versions. With how close they tend to tailgate, they sure need top spec brakes.
V6s ones are actually ones that are driven most recklessly in my experience. Everyone who had to accept the minivan engine seems to have something to prove…
The average Nissan Altima owner will soon have access to a 707hp death machine. Just think about that for a second
Sorry, not without yellow splitter guards.
I have my pride.
“It was owned by a little old lady who only drove it to the grocery store and church on Sundays. She had a hard time explaining the trim level to the pastor.”
“HELL” yeah, this is AWESOME
My friend owns one – same color too, Destroyer Gray IIRC. He insists the value of these will only go up. Hope he doesn’t come across this article.
Do they really call it Destroyer Gray? Holy crap that’s funny.
They have one called Maximum Steel too. It’s kind of pathetic
Nah, you’re just hating on Geometric Mean Green and Local Minimum Mauve