2019 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat

ELENA SCHERR: This is the 2019 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat. It has 717 horsepower and 656 pound-feet of torque. There's pretty much nothing like it on the market, except for this. This is the 2019 Dodge Challenger Hellcat SRT Redeye. It has 797 horsepower and 707 pound-feet of torque. Is it worth it to buy the Redeye over the Hellcat? Let's find out. It's sort of a Spot the Differences game when you're looking at a Hellcat and the Hellcat Redeye. It's not the hood. This dual snorkel hood is on the Redeye and it's on the Hellcat, and it is fully functional. There's a new vent down here for the brakes. When you go more than 200 miles an hour, you really need to keep those things cool. But the Hellcat gets that as well. The wide body fender extensions are the same on both cars. You can get either car without them. You can get a narrow body Hellcat. You can you get a narrow body Redeye. But why would you? The logo is different, though. Instead of being a bright chrome, it's this sort of dark smoked chrome, and it's bedazzled. Your six-year-old daughter is going to love that. The rest of the body is exactly the same. There are no changes until you get to the back, where the little duck tail spoiler is a tiny bit wider, wraps around, and has just the hint of a gurney flap. Dodge calls this the Hellcat HO, High Output. It's really the same engine that was in the Dodge Demon if you remember that car. You might. It made a little bit of a splash in the news. It was a nine-second car that lifted the front wheels and had all this crazy drag racing stuff. And it was also a limited production run. So if you didn't already get one, you can't get one, unless you're willing to spend a lot of money to get somebody else's. But you can get the Demon engine. Now, the Demon was 808 horsepower and the Redeye is rated at 797. Why the difference? Well, basically, just because it has a different hood. The Demon had a much bigger scoop, so it was bringing more air in. More air means more gas means more power. But honestly, there was no point in driving this car I was like, "Oh, my God! If only I had 808 horsepower, I would have been able to make that pass. But with 797, I just couldn't do it!" No, that didn't happen. If you are super nerdy, as I am, and you want to know the differences between this engine and the Demon engine, it's very simple. Basically, it has black valve covers. It has a different badge on the supercharger. The magical thing about this car there is never any sort of merging distance that is too short. Bam! Traffic speed. Is there any reason that you should be driving an 800-horsepower car on the street? No. No, there is not. That is not sensible. This is not a reasonable choice to make. It is probably an irresponsible choice to make, but it is so much fun. So the question for me is, what makes this better than the Hellcat? Because the Hellcat starts in the $50,000 range, and this car starts about $10,000 above that. And this exact car that we're driving with all the stripes and the really nice interior and every single option and the nicer radio and sunroof, it's like $90,000. It kind of ruins the horsepower per dollar value. I don't know that I would want to spend $90,000 for the Redeye. But you don't have to. I mean, again, this has a lot of options, and you don't have to do that. But you do need to think, if you're looking at these cars, do you want the bragging rights of 797 horsepower and then you'll give up some of the options like the sunroof or the leather interior or do you want a fully-optioned Hellcat? For the same amount of money, you'd get everything on it. You'd just lose 100 horses. The thing that blew my mind about this car when we first got in it and started driving was you would not know that it's so fast. Obviously, you know as soon as you put the hammer down. But right now, I've got about this much throttle cruising at 60 miles an hour. Totally comfortable. Air conditioning is on. I could have the radio on if I wasn't talking to you. And it's just like a normal car. It's not hard to drive. You don't have to be experienced with high performance cars to be able to drive this car around on the street. It doesn't feel outrageous or out of line until you get in the gas. But it has a bunch of safety stuff. So it wants to help you. It wants you to have a good time and not get into trouble. So you can leave traction control on. It'll still step out, but it will catch itself, for the most part. I mean, it can't do anything if you steer it into a tree. So don't do that. But it has lane change warnings and airbags. If you went back in time and told somebody driving-- I don't know-- a 1970 Dodge Dart that they could have 800 horsepower that was safer to drive than their Dodge Dart, they would never believe you. How is the handling? Really good, really nice. It's not twitchy. It isn't jumpy. In fact, everything about this car, I think, is even better than the lower levels, like I just drove a Scat Pack, and it's a little bit jumpier than this car, like it wants to do more. It wants to impress you. This car is like, I don't need to impress you. You're already impressed. And it's right. Not all love for the Challenger. There a couple of complaints that I have about it. It's never had the best visibility. Some people complain about the back. That doesn't bother me so much, because that's what all the mirrors are for. But it has a huge pillar here. And you will definitely come into situations where you're like, I would like to turn, and I do not know what's behind that pillar. So you get used to it if it's your car, but I don't like it. And I wish it was a little bit thinner. The other thing that I think isn't fantastic about Challenger is the seats. They aren't bad for the short term, but they're sort of in between race and comfort. And they're not quite doing either perfectly. I was sliding around a fair amount when I was on the road course in this car, because the seat is big and not quite bolstered enough to hold me in place. I feel like the seats aren't quite as comfortable as they could be. And that is definitely a point for Camaro, because I have never been in a car with more comfortable seats than the current generation Camaro. Aside from the horsepower, which I know I keep harping on-- (WHISPERING) it's so much-- the other thing that sets Challenger apart from some of the other cars that you might be looking at in the two-door high horsepower sporty grand touring category is the back seat. It's quite good. You can fit back there. I mean, I can fit back there, but even if you're bigger than me, you can fit back there. I don't think that this will be a very comfortable car for four very tall people. I mean, if the seats are all the way back, you definitely lose leg room in the back. But no problem for kids, and really no problem for a combination of adults. The Redeye is a really easy car to a fully nerd out on, because there's a lot of interesting tech in it that comes from Demon. It has this chiller system that reroutes the air conditioning to cool the intake charge for the engine. So that your engine gets cold, even though you're really hot. That's race track stuff. I mean, you would absolutely hate using it on the street. But it's cool. And again, it's this bragging rights thing. It's like you're hanging out with people and you're all talking about your cars, and they're like, well, you know, I have this very fine automobile and it has this much horsepower, and you know, traction control. And you're like, but do you have a chiller? And then you win. I really can't tell you enough how easy this car is to drive. It's not even scary. It should be scary. It's not scary unless you get on it, then it is very scary. Even though there are a ton of different versions of the Challenger, they all really share the basic interiors. So as you spend more money, you can get nicer leather and nicer trim pieces, but the overall design of the interior remains the same. And it's fine. It's nice enough. It feels good, and it's comfortable. It doesn't look really expensive. It's not going to impress people by the rarity of the materials or the perfection of the fit and finish. But there's nothing wrong with it. It's nothing that's going to bother you while you're driving. And it's really not why you buy this car, anyway. Infotainment is really easy to use and easy to go through. I don't love that a lot of the controls are in the Apps menu, because it wouldn't occur to me to look in the Apps menu to, say, figure out how to sync my phone, but once you know that they're there, it's no big deal. That's where there are. A couple of them are a little slow to load, in particular the Performance pages. So don't wait till the last minute if you're really excited to find out your G forces. You've got to set that up well before you hit the skid pad. The Redeye is only available in the automatic. It's an 8-speed automatic, the same as the Hellcat. You can't get a manual, because they just don't have a transmission that can back this much torque. Dodge gives you a lot of options for customizing the modes and a quick button to get there, the SRT. You can change all of this stuff, custom set up, say you want sport trans or paddle shifters off. Redeye doesn't have all the drag racing stuff that Demon has. So it doesn't have a trans brake. It does have a launch control and a line lock. So you can do the burnouts without using up your brake. So is the 2019 Dodge Hellcat Redeye a good catch? It has impressive horsepower and a ton of fun. But you can get 90% of what it offers in a Hellcat. It's up to you if you think that horsepower is worth an extra $10,000. To find out more about the Challenger Redeye and the whole Challenger lineup, please visit us at Edmund. If you like this video and want to see more like it, please subscribe. And don't forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. [MUSIC PLAYING]