Was the Durango able to ‘Dodge’ the GT500, or was it left ‘Shelb’ shocked?
by Sidd Dhimaan, onHennessey Performance had two new visitors at its facility, both of which came to be tuned up to around 1,000 horses. One was a family SUV with a sports car alter ego called the Dodge Durango Hellcat, and the other one was a two-door, rear-wheel-drive sports car from Shelby called the GT500. Both makoverof 700 horses and took under four seconds to 60 mph from rest. These are the stock specs, in case you were wondering. So, before they were injected with steroids, the folks at Hennessey decided to race the two of them because, well, why not! Who do you think will win?
It’s Outrageous For An SUV To Be That Fast!
The Shelby GT500 comes with a 5.2-liter, supercharged V-8 Predator engine under the hood. It churns out 760 ponies and 625 pound-feet of torque. Power is sent exclusively to the rear wheels via a seven-speed Tremec dual-clutch automatic gearbox. It weighs roughly around 4,200 pounds and takes 3.3 seconds to 60 mph from a standstill.
The Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat features a 6.2-liter, supercharged V-8 HEMI engine. It dishes out 707 horses and 645 pound-feet of twist. Power is sent to all the wheels via an eight-speed TorqueFlite automatic gearbox. The Durango Hellcat takes just 3.5 seconds to sprint to 60 mph from rest despite weighing 5,710 pounds, almost 1,500 pounds heavier than the GT500! The SUV here features all three rows, but you can opt for a third-row delete from the factory for no extra cost to shave a few hundred pounds if the last row is useless to you anyway.
Both The Vehicles Had Their Moments
In a perfect world, you’d expect the GT500 to win quite comfortably. However, that wasn’t the case here. The Durango sure made the two-door sports car sweat. In fact, it smoked the GT500 off the line. Not taking anything away from Durango here, but the GT500 has had this problem of launching explosively. The Shelby was able to catch up with it, but was it too late by then, or did the Durango get a good head-start only for the GT500 to win at the quarter-mile mark? Let us know your predictions in the comments section below before you watch the video.
