The insanity of being able to walk into a Dodge dealership and spend well under $100,000 for a car with either 707 or even 840 horsepower is the good kind of insanity. These are wild times if you’re a fan of factory-produced horsepower. Ford is busy cooking up a new GT500 while Chevy has the monstrous 755-hp Corvette ZR1. We haven’t even dipped into the realm of super and hypercars that come bearing four-figure horsepower outputs.
http://hooniverse.info/2015/09/30/on-the-topic-of-potentialor-hauling-her-home-from-the-hospital-in-a-hellcat/
My favorite car from this era is the Dodge Charger Hellcat. It’s the car I used to bring my daughter home from the hospital just over three years ago. This is a 200-mph-capable, five-passenger, four-door Dodge sedan that’s a nicely outfitted production car and not a conceptual wonder of track-only stripper. It’s truly a wild car built during wild times.
Of all the cars built during this age of increasing power output, which one is your favorite?
Hooniverse Asks: What's your favorite vehicle built during this era of the Horsepower Wars?
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24 responses to “Hooniverse Asks: What's your favorite vehicle built during this era of the Horsepower Wars?”
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The new M5 Competition is an absolute beast dressed in a fine suit.
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The 2013-2015 Mustang GT500’s. They are the bonkers archetype. To quote C&D, “…it just hauls mind-bending ass”
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BMW X6M. Just because its so absurd. Let’s make a 2-1/2 ton SUV and slant the roofline so there’s no interior room. Then let’s give it 550 horses. Maybe if we computer-control the hell out of it, it won’t kill people instantly. What? It actually works well enough to go around curves? Well I’ll be damned.
https://media.ed.edmunds-media.com/bmw/x6-m/2010/oem/2010_bmw_x6-m_4dr-suv_base_fq_oem_1_400.jpg-
They are absurd, and I too am enamored with the idea. It’s bound to be the oddest example of corporate collusion ever that had M-B making the same crazy, unjustifiable vehicle at the same time.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cf6af6af4155c0ae273f0e392c0f5e099940fad3e5f8a6b7d279422b61252817.png -
Deutschland Uber Alles, probably, but we have to be careful with that one.
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Drove this at BMW Performance Driving School in Spartanburg and I was stunned how fast this thing was, even in corners. That is in no way a reason for me to ever want to own one but it is as quick as everything I have ever driven, and I’ve driven a Porsche Cayenne Turbo, and all the BMWs in 2012, c/o BMW.
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Jeep Trackhawk. We have this 707HP V-8, let’s see what else it fits in.
https://www.jeep.com/content/dam/fca-brands/na/jeep/en_us/2018/grand-cherokee/performance/overview/2018-Jeep-Grand-Cherokee-Performance-Trackhawk-Vs-SRT-Trackhawk-Red.jpg.image.1440.jpg -
I hate to sound like the old guy in the room, but if you look at any of the top (performance) trims of most cars, I’m likely to prefer a lesser one. Hellcat? Sorry, but no. There’s no way to use that performance on normal roads in a way that’s fun without being scary. Throw a rainstorm in the mix, and you’re white-knuckling it the entire drive.
I personally think that roughly 100hp and 100 lb-ft per 1000 lbs of car is just about right for a fun drive. That means for me, the Charger R/T Scat Pack (485/475 and 4300) would be plenty. The Mustang GT (460/420 and 3700) would be WAY more than enough.
The real winner of the horsepower wars is the insurance companies.-
Insurance is a weird thing. Sometimes the lesser performance versions cost more to insure, because those are the ones kids get and wreck. I know at one time in the early 2000s, insurance for a mid-late 1990s Mustang Cobra convertible was cheaper than a Cobra coupe. I seem to remember that the Cobra might have been cheaper than the GT. I know when we swapped my wife’s 1999 Honda Civic coupe (automatic, non-VTEC) for a 1996 Camaro Z-28 convertible, the insurance went down.
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Corvettes have been cheaper to insure than Camaros, or so I have read. That means Corvettes are more practical than a Honda Civic. See you at the Chevy dealer.
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I would have to go back and find the 15 year old paper work, but the sequence of events was like this:
1. Got married in March.
2. Wife quits job in May.
3. Bribe wife to go back to work with purchase of new Trailblazer.
4. Trade my 1994 Corvette in on a new 2004 Trailblazer in August.
5. I drive her 1999 Civic to work until I am sick of it, about 1 day.
6. Buy 1994 Z-28 Convertible in September/October.
7. Sell Civic in October.-
My sequence is much sadder.
1. Have kid. Baby seat is tight in the back of the E30, but do-able.
2. Have second kid. Sell E30. Buy minivan.
3. Sell house. Buy bigger house.
4. Have a third kid. Resign to owning a minivan for the next 18 years.
5. Buy E28, but never have the time/money to work on it. -
But at least you have it; that’s a victory unto itself!
I had a ’68 911 in pieces for at least ten years, while the kids grew up. Market exploded, now I have an ’87 I’ve done maybe ten track days in.
Just convince everyone around you you need to hold on to it…
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Maybe not the hyper-hypo-horsepower of those already listed, but it’s the last dinosaur. A 400+ horsepower, 4 door with a MANUAL transmission.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/762980c6c8199309c2c563b9ca527207fa9427b334a77b76c83b19b5ff728c40.jpg
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And track ready from the factory! https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/46ee9c9870e0cd4eafc145dc80385a5a1a0d9e8d0cfc1336b2450fa2b0155bf7.jpg
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That gets a big thumbs-up from me. Fits my equation perfectly at about 100hp/1000lbs. Bonus points for being a manual sedan. You did screw up the “under the radar” thing by buying red, though!
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I’ve only driven the supercharged HSV GTS version and didn’t feel like the extra 150(?) horsepower was a hindrance!
The bright green of the final GTS-R is crazy enough to work for me, rather than the ultimate W1 version that people were paying silly money for.
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GT350, please. The modern horsepower war era has us thinking of 500-something hp cars as mediocre. I’ll take that kind of mediocre.
I’ll also be a contrarian – 306 horsepower is plenty for me, especially in a small and ultra-nimble package. As for the boy-racer looks, to hell with what people think. Let people gawk if they see a “mature” person behind the wheel.
https://st.automobilemag.com/uploads/sites/11/2018/03/2018-Honda-Civic-Type-R-All-Stars-Contender-30.jpg
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Still 4.6 times the output of the S660. 🙂
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The fun thing about slow cars is driving them like you stole them, and still not breaking the law. It turns a mundane commute into an F1 race.
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For a “puller”, it is a pretty impressive performance machine, and I respect that. However, I’m one of those that thinks it looks like a constipated Pokemon dressed as a samurai. My neighbor and good friend drives a prior-generation Si sedan that is admittedly more sedate, but with much more mature styling. I’m personally more tempted by the manual Accord Sport 2.0T.
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Genuine LOL at that description.
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