Dodge’s 707-horsepower Challenger SRT Hellcat has been coming up lately, mostly because people have been using that power spinning the tires, racing every car under the sun, or just smacking them into roadside trees. In this video on the /Drive youtube channel, the challenger lives up to its name taking on its toughest adversary yet: an F-16 fighter jet.
Yes, the 6.2-liter turbocharged HEMI V8 is powerful, but 707 hp and 645 pound-feet of torque are in no way able to best the fighting falcon’s 32,500 pounds of thrust. The question is if the Hellcat can beat the falcon off the line.
The driver of the Challenger, Road & Track Editor-in-Chief Larry Webster, takes the Dodge to a rainy runway in Miami, Florida, where the rainy weather offers him and the car no advantage. Even so, could the Challenger beat the jet to a quarter mile?
As badly as we car fans we car fans wanted to see the muscle car claim some screed of victory, the Challenger SRT Hellcat just wasn’t going to win this one, especially with the weather conditions working against it. By the time the fighter jet reached the end of the runway, it was traveling at over 500 mph, and the Hellcat wouldn’t be able to even come close to half of that.
Still, We’ll take any chance to see either a Hellcat or an F-16 scream down a runway at high speeds, whether they’re racing or not.
