The starting price for the 2016 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat will be $62,495, up $2,500 from last year’s model. The Charger will also get a bump to $65,945, representing a premium of $1,950 over the 2015 model year. Fortunately, the price hike isn’t just to meet strong demand, as Dodge has added new standard features like navigation and Laguna leather seats.
Ordering has already commenced, along with new rules for how each dealer can order Hellcats, imposing a pre-determined allocation for the entire model year. Hellcat allocation is based on Dodge sales performance along with historical Hellcat “days on lot” data. The new criteria are designed to ensure that dealers are only able to sell the volume of cars they are allocated, and won’t be able to load up order books without any chance of fulfilling the orders.
During the 2015 model year, dealers took orders for hundreds of extra Hellcat vehicles, knowing that Dodge couldn’t meet the production demand. Dodge was then forced to cancel about 900 orders and offer “coupons” to would-be customers for primary access to 2016 model year Hellcats.
Unchanged for 2016 is Dodge’s supercharged 6.2-liter HEMI V8, developing a pants-wetting 707 horsepower and 650 foot-pounds of torque. Zero-to-60 mph is dealt with in 3.6 seconds and top speed is somewhere in the neighborhood of 199 mph.
Chrysler also announced that production will double for 2016 to around 8,000 units. Let’s hope that’s enough.
