The innovations that Chrysler had to make in order to put the Hellcat engine in a street car

“Did you say 707 horsepower? No. That can’t be right.” When you first heard that the 6.2-litre Supercharged HEMI Hellcat V8 engine offers a jaw-dropping 707 horsepower it definitely can be excused if you’re a little apprehensive or downright skeptical. I mean, let’s just compare that to the rest of the Dodge lineup; with the 2.0-litre Tigershark I-4 engine and the 1.4-litre MultiAir I-4 Turbo producing 160, and the 2.4-litre Tigershark I-4 producing 184 to start us off you can definitely appreciate the hesitation in such a huge leap.

Check out the award-winning 3.6-litre Pentastar VVT V6 that steps up the game to 305 horsepower but still falls far from matching up with the latest V8! Speaking of V8 – the 5.7-litre HEMI VVT V8 makes an admirable charge at the figure with 375 horsepower and the larger SRT 6.4-litre HEMI performs exceptionally-well with 485, but numbers are numbers and 707 is still 707.

Now, the 6.2-litre Hellcat is recognized as the most powerful production car any major American automaker has ever created – and you’ll probably be wondering how they managed to fit this much energy into vehicles that had been constructed with the intention of dealing with over 200 fewer horses under the hood.

This was no easy task – and changes had to be made that range from exhaust, transmission, and an augmentation in structural noise-reduction to meet government noise standards. When you have 707 horsepower under your hood you need to anticipate a lot of heat generation – to accommodate this Dodge added two heat exchangers in addition to the pre-existing engine cooling system. This serves to lower the intake air from 250 degrees to 140 degrees – learning as much as they could from the then-available 6.4-litre Apache engine that was offered on the 2014 Challenger and that’s where we get the supercharger component – capable of pushing 30,000 litres of air every minute.

Looking at the transmission side of things, the 6.2-litre Hellcat is offered with either 8-speed automatic or, borrowed from the Viper, the 6-speed manual transmission with additional oil cooler and twin-disc clutch to give you command over the power it presents.

When you have this much power you want to be able to have accommodating stopping power – that’s why Dodge equipped the Hellcat with the largest-ever Brembo brakes – 15.4-inches.

A fantastic addition to the Hellcat is something rather unexpected and seemingly innocuous – it comes with 2 keys.

“Why 2 keys?”

Simple: When you want to really get going you choose the red key – which unlocks (heh) the full potential of the 707 horsepower on the Hellcat.

When you have a friend who wants to give it a spin (and they will, of course) hand them the black keys. These will limit the engine to 500 horsepower and restrains the overall performance for a more relaxed driving experience – that is, if you want to count 500 horsepower ‘relaxed’.

Available on the Charger and the Challenger – the Hellcat engine is a real feat of engineering – from the fact that it takes a startling 80 horsepower to simply get the supercharger spinning and therefore requires a crankshaft pulley that is extremely durable – something regular steel washers are incapable of supporting. The solution? Diamonds. Seriously – Diamonds. These Chrysler sourced diamond-embedded steel washers aren’t new but they aren’t cheap – offering zero slip and total grip. At a fuel efficiency rating that would make the supercar segment blush, the 6.2-litre Hellcat is sure to impress!

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