Nothing good lasts forever, and the Dodge Hellcat is a casualty we’ll see sooner rather than later
by Robert Moore, onShortly after we turned the calendar to 2021, Dodge CEO, Tim Kuniskus did his best to prepare us for the inevitable death of Dodge’s supercharged, 6.2-liter V-8. The good news from that was that report was that Dodge wouldn’t abandon the muscle car, but now we know – if reports from Motor Authority are accurate – the exact model year that Dodge will kill off Hellcat production. I’ll give you a hint: It’s not far away.
Motor Authority’s report seems pretty legitimate, and actually quotes Kuniskus himself, who said “ will have this car, this platform, this powertrain as we know it through the end of ’23. There’s two more years to buy a Hellcat, then it’s history. But why is Dodge killing it off so soon when there’s a good chance it could be modified enough to keep it within compliance? Well, it all comes down to cost, and it wouldn’t be cheap:
"You can still meet emissions with these cars. You're going to pay a lot of compliance fines," Kuniskis said, noting a line in the sand had to be drawn.
All of this also makes logic sense if you really think about it. We all knew the Dodge Durango Hellcat wouldn’t be around long – it was designed at its core to be a limited model. Reports even suggest the next Durango will fix everything that was wrong with this one – including the lack of a body-on-frame design. As for the Challenger and Charger, well the main reason why Dodge never released a new-gen model was because future models will be electric. There’s even an electric muscle car coming in 2024, as confirmed by Dodge back in July of 2021.
The only particular thing of note here is that Kuniskus has previously suggested that there may be at least some overlap between the next-gen electric muscle cars and the outgoing hellcats. It’s quite possible that Dodge will perhaps extend production for limited-run models or, perhaps, a final edition model that will undoubtedly be too popular for its own good. We should see a prototype of the new electric muscle car in 2022, so that could possibly be the overlap that was previously suggested.
You can also expect a number of special edition models to roll out over the next two years. Dodge recently revealed the Challenger SRT Hellcat Redeye Jailbreak and Charger SRT Hellcat Redeye Jailbreak models, that come with an increase in power to 807 ponies. These will not be the last we hear of the Challenger and Charger. Despite their age (and that outrageously old Mercedes platform) both cars are very popular, and Dodge won’t make the mistake of giving them a lazy goodbye.
Source: Motor Authority
