Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk World Record Drops to 8.58

While racing at the final event of the 2023 Modern Street Hemi Shootout season, the 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee owned and driven by Mel Varon and built by James Wall and his team at RSPDMV, ran an 8.58 at 161.52 miles per hour, setting a new Trackhawk quarter mile world record – and he did so in a grudge race against the Trackhawk racer who set the previous record.

Back in April, we brought you the news of Adam Schindler setting the Trackhawk quarter mile word record with am 8.62 at 163.43 miles per hour. Since setting that record, Schindler and his team at Ripatuned have been engaged in a bit of back-and-forth with James Wall of Real Street Performance DC Maryland Virginia (better known online as RSPDMV), who has built a collection of very fast Trackhawks. That online rivalry lead to Schindler and Wall going head-to-head at the final MSHS event of the season, in air that allowed these all-wheel-drive beasts to make big power.

“We do a lot of street action, with this truck it’s dialed for the street,” said Wall. “We called out the previous record holder to a race and the guys wanted us to post a slip as we didn’t post times. So we said screw it, took her to the track on the setup we had been racing on the street all summer and off the trailer she went 8.64@164mph, we kicked the tires trying to get greedy on the leave the next two passes so we didn’t get anymore data. Next time out at the track the tcase electric motor gave out on us and we didn’t get any data. Mind you we raced a few times in the street in between track days. We basically beat every late model car in the Maryland streets with this thing that isn’t a GTR.

So our next track day is the Modern Street Hemi Shootout. First pass she went 8.63@161, we kicked the tires a few times after then we were all in the lines for the last pass of the test and tune. Me and owner of the truck walked up to Adam (owner of Gaphawk, previous world record holder) and called him out to a race. He obliged, we locked in for 1k a side and the truck went out there and went 8.5@161. We were pretty happy, won 1k, got the world record and put 5 trackhawks on the competition.”

This Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk is powered by a 426 cubic inch TKM/Demon Performance Gen 3 Hemi that it outfitted with a set of MMX cylinder heads, a Gen 6 3.8-liter Whipple supercharger that has been ported by Kong Performance, a custom Demon Performance camshaft and a Forced Inductions interchiller. Wall estimates that the engine is making north of 1,600 horsepower, and a Sipple Speed and Performance Max Effort transmission is tasked with sending that power to the wheels. There has been some weight reduction done inside, leading to a track weight of about 5,100 pounds.

At the time of the record-setting run, the density altitude at the track was around 1,200 feet, for those wondering.

Wall explained that when he first met Varon, his Trackhawk had been assembled by a shop in Houston and RSPDMV was providing remote tuning, leading to a 9.2 at 146 with a stock displacement engine, stronger bottom end and a 3.0L Whipple Gen 5 supercharger. Shortly after, Varon sent the Jeep to Wall’s shop in Maryland, where he and his master tech Dan transformed this Grand Cherokee into the beast that it is today.

“We love racing, and we love competing. We have a few other Jeeps that perform at this level that just grudge race,” said Wall. “We do all the building and tuning in house. We have curated this recipe on the jeeps , I would argue no one has spent more time in the driver seat of a Jeep tuning and pushing them to there respective limits of each build. We love building these units and sharing our knowledge we have built from racing with our customers. We have experienced so many hurdles going fast and solving those problems along the way is what I truly enjoy. Moving forward we have been working on our own turbo kit to compete with.”