Diving into the ‘Dodge Charger Ghoul’

Take the Dodge Charger Hellcat Redeye, with its 797 horsepower supercharged Hemi, and round up to the nearest thousand—or just take a Hennessey Performance Hellcat, which goes one-up with both a twin turbo and a supercharger to claim a thousand horsepower. Add in a name related to the limited-production, 840-horse Dodge Challenger Demon, and you get the Dodge Charger Ghoul.

Dodge Charger Ghoul Hellcat

Is the Dodge Ghoul real? The latest “inside information” on the 2022 Dodge Charger Ghoul SRT has the thousand-horsepower 426 cubic inch Hellephant Hemi hooked up to an Allison transmission. There are a few problems with this, including the fact that the 426 Hellephant is not street legal, and no street legal version is planned; it would be a tremendous amount of development money to spend on something that would end up sending more Stellantis money over to Tesla; and Allison has no “priors” with Dodge or any other part of Stellantis in North America. Allison does make fine transmissions for General Motors, but Ram hooked up with ZF and Aisin—Aisin doing for Ram what Allison does for GM.

That’s not to say Allison is impossible; after all, the Viper used a transmission created for the Corvette, and there was some buzz that Ram might switch to Allison for its upgraded Cummins diesels. But would the Allison transmission fit into the Charger? It seems highly unlikely, at best. As for Hennessey’s achievement, that’s fine, but does it have the 200,000 mile lifespan company policy demands? Can it pass emissions in 50 states? Can it be made for under six figures? Can it pass crash tests? These are all issues aftermarket modifiers don’t have to think about, but Dodge does.

So we have an improbable engine with an improbable transmission, for a one-year-only car with a unique powertrain that would require a tremendous engineering investment.

The original story created such a buzz that at least one person made a Ghoul and showed it off on YouTube; but a one-off does not make a warranted Dodge. (Nor does the Hennessey Hellcat Charger.) That story started as an April Fool’s joke.

It will probably end as one, too. So, in answer to “is the SRT Ghoul real?” Stellpower contacted a Stellantis spokesperson, who said they “can assure you it’s an April Fool’s joke.”

This SRT Ghoul story has been hanging on since 2019, but there is no basis for it. Nice as it would be to have a megahorse Dodge, chances are the next big thing from Dodge will be an electric Charger which can hit 60 mph in under two seconds—according to The Detroit Bureau. As evidence for that, Mike Manley brought in former Chevy Volt chief Micky Bly. You may not like the idea of an electric Dodge, especially one replacing the dream of a production megahorse Hellcat, but that seems to be the cost of topping Tesla. It’s probably better for Dodge to conquer both the gasoline and electric worlds than to be only the Chief of Combustion when electric drive is making the magazine covers.

Stay tuned for an exclusive test drive of an upcoming product tomorrow!

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