Looks like SUV fever is a real thing as we’re now seeing more family haulers at the most unlikely of places. The drag strip. The performance SUV really took off about thirty years ago with stuff like the GMC Typhoon. Today, such cars are big business as each automaker tries to outdo themselves and others for sheer speed. Cadillac recently gave us a new V variant on the Escalade, while Aston unveiled the world's fastest SUV, the new DBX 707.
Anyway, coming back to today’s face-off, it's a Mopar vs Mopar Battle coming to you from Orlando, Florida. A Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk takes on a Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Widebody. Now it’s unlikely that either of these vehicles are stock. Drag Racing and Cars Stuff Channel, which put up the video on YouTube, didn’t have the exact numbers or the mods done to these cars, at hand.
The Numbers
But, to give you some context let's at least look at the baseline figures so that we have a rough idea of how the two vehicles here stack up. Let's start with the SUV. Lurking under the hood of the Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT is a 6.2-liter Supercharged HEMI V-8 that puts out 707 horsepower and 645 pound-feet of torque. The Jeep weighs 5,363 pounds.
The muscle car meanwhile, i.e the Dodge Challenger Hellcat SRT, also features the 6.2 Liter V-8 mill, that produces north of 700 horses. The regular hellcat produces 717 horsepower. Now I can’t really tell from the video if this one is a red-eye model, that churns out even more horsepower at 797 and 707 pound-feet of torque. What I can see though is that the Challenger is sitting on some proper drag radials at the back. So it's rear-wheel drive in the coupe against all-wheel drive in the SUV.
Dodge Challenger Hellcat SRT vs Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk
Round 1
The whine of the supercharger on the Dodge really does sound like something else. After pulling some elevens, both cars line up for launch. Off the bat, as expected, the Challenger took off and got the head start, however, what I didn’t expect was to see the Jeep stay with it.
In fact, the Grand Cherokee managed to get the Challenger by the line. The Jeep punched in a ¼ mile time of 10.91 seconds at 129.32 mph, while the Challenger managed 11.10 seconds at 127.6 mph.
Round 2
Okay, so if you aren’t convinced by those results, the two cars did turn around to do another pass. The Challenger put down even more rubber this time around, to ensure that it the right temperatures to maximize traction. However, come go time, it all went wrong for the Dodge, as the reaction time of the driver in the muscle car was off.
The driver in the Jeep meanwhile got the perfect launch and was already a couple of car lengths ahead, within a couple of hundred feet. There wasn’t much that the Challenger could do from that point on. The Grand Cherokee clocked in an even faster time of 10.49 seconds at 131 mph with the Dodge coming in at 11.63 seconds at 128 mph.
To Sum it up
Well, this just goes to show what a couple of mods under the hood and tires can do. I just wish I knew more about what’s been done to this Jeep. Did the owner throw out the seats to make it lighter? All this would add up and make far more sense, had I had that information.
You can watch how it panned out in the video below