Dodge Charger Product Manager, Ashton Munoz, details the upcoming 2020 Dodge Charger Hellcat Widebody to the media on July 31, 2019:
I want to quickly talk about the overall Charger first, before we start getting into the Widebody, we’ve seen some great success with this car in the past few years. The past five years in retail, we’ve sold more chargers than any other standard full size car. In the past seven years, we’ve sold about 80,000 chargers per year. There’s a lot of chargers on the road.
There’s a few things that we think that make this car pretty unique and successful in the marketplace. Two things, it really has multiple personalities. And there’s nothing really like it, it is the only four-door muscle car available in the market. And when I say it has multiple personalities mean that in two ways. So first way, we have a huge breadth in the lineup. We start with a 3.6 liter V6 rear wheel drive, the V6 comes in a few different flavors, we have the rear wheel drive version, you can get that an all wheel drive, and then we have a performance V6. And then on top of that we have three V8 trim classes. Obviously the top one being the Hellcat with 707 horse.
The other reason why I say this car has multiple personalities we’ll use this Hellcat as an example, if you get in this car started off, it’s awesome daily driver, quiet, smooth, easy to drive, and then you hit the track button or the sport button. And it totally changes the car. It stiffens up, steering stiffens up, the car becomes louder, and it’s just a totally different animal.
So, I know you guys want to hear more about the Widebody. So we’ll start getting into it, I’ll get into every single nut and bolt that we changed for the 2020 model year and added the Widebody. We’ll start off in the front. As you can see, we added a new grill and fender flares. So our body guys did an awesome job with this. If you look at the 19 model years, there’s a strip under here that we eliminated we’re able to bring the grill and the grill textures up a little bit making a little more modern looking. And then wrapping around the sides. You’ll see the both the front and rear facias are integrated into the fender flare. We have updated side stills as well that kind of bring the front and rear facias together pretty nicely. And then in the back you’ll see a duck bill and dirty flap style spoiler standard on every Hellcat Widebody.
Under the hood is the proven 6.2 liter 707 horse 650 foot pound torque it’s a beast of an engine. We did actually add under the hood one new thing for the 2020 model year We added EPS. So electronic power steering to the Widebody. Hellcat Charger was the only one not to have electronic power steering in the lineup. But with these big wheels and tires, it really makes turning and parking lots very easy and on the track ultra responsive. So moving on to the probably the biggest visual thing that you guys are seeing these massive wheels and tires and brakes. So the outgoing Hellcat was 20 by nine and a half inch wheels. These are now 20 by 11 inch forge wheels. You see the six piston Brembo brakes with the two piece rotors.
And then a lot of the hard work our engineers did you can’t see from the outside. They’ve specially tuned the suspension to account for all the Widebody parts that were put on this car. So the springs are 32% stiffer. We’ve revised the valve tuning in the Bilstein adaptive damping system. And we’ve upgraded both the front and rear sway bars. So bringing around you see everything that we’ve done to this car and you guys are probably wondering, yeah, what does it actually do? We made it look bad ass we put a bunch of cool performance parts on it.
But at Dodge, and SRT, we all are about performance. So we had to do something for us for performance. So I’ll start with handling and then we’ll go to talk drag strip and straight line kind of what we’re known for. So handling, we can confidently say this is the best handling Dodge Charger Hellcat that we’ve ever produced. It pulls .96 g on a skid pad, which is insane for a four door family sedan. And on a 2.1 mile racetrack we are able to coincidentally get 2.1 seconds faster than the outgoing Hellcat which equates to about 13 car lengths. One car length is huge but 13 is incredible. But under a straight line performance and drag strip. Obviously that’s what Dodge is known for. We were able to improve both of our zero to 60 and quarter mile times. So zero to 60 we were able to improve by 10th of a second. And drag racing you guys probably know better than most people a 10th of a second is everything. We are also able to improve the quarter mile time. So we’re now at 10.96 seconds at 125 mile an hour trap speed which is pretty incredible. We also get this car up to 196 mile an hour top speed.
You can go buy this car (Not right now) but you can go buy this car from the factory and get it up to that speed which is pretty amazing. With that all being said I want to talk about where we’re actually offering this for 2020 every Hellcat will have the Widebody kit included on it. We’re also offering it for the Scat Pack owners so maybe if you don’t want 707 horse or you can’t afford 707 horse we’ll be offering this on our 485 horsepower Scat Pack. I know some of you guys were able to drive them today, the Challenger version, but we’ll offer it on the charger as well. Some of the additional features that you’ll get when you get it on the Scat Pack are all the components we talked about on the Hellcat. But then you’ll also get the six piston front brakes with the two piece rotor and the adaptive damping suspension system. You can change it on the fly it’s really nice. With that being said, we know all these cars are daily drivers people take them to the track you can take them to work.
So we didn’t want to forget about some of the little features that people see every day the interiors. So for all the V8 for 20 model year on Charger, and Challenger, we’re offering a carbon fiber and suede package. So it’s real carbon fiber bezels with a nice satin black finish. And then a suede headliner, A-pillars and sun visors. And we’ve also touched almost every single wheel in our entire lineup from the SXT all the way to the Hellcat. These are personally some of my favorites. This is an optional wheel on this Hellcat. We dubbed it the “warp speed” wheel and it’s finished in a low gloss grey and last but not least, colors. I want to talk quickly about colors. You’ll see this Frostbite we’ve not had this color before. So we’re offering three new colors for 2020 model year. Frostbite as you can see here we have a dark metallic purple that we’ve dubbed “Hell Raisin’ ” and an orange kind of copper metallic that we’ve dubbed “Sin-amon Stick”.
Yes, like SIN.:)
So last but not least timing… I’ve gotten this question from a bunch of people today. dealers and customers will be able to start placing orders at the end of 2019. And then we should start seeing them arrive on dealer lots of beginning 2020. So I just want to thank you guys very much for letting me talk to you guys about this car and having this car here. Obviously we’re really excited about it. Hope you guys are too.
James grew up in an Indiana community where the auto industry was at its heart. His first car was an Olds 442, and many of his classmates had their father’s hand-me-down muscle cars. Met his wife in college. They have three children. Survived esophageal cancer. Is passionate about enjoying his second chance and his automotive interests further that goal.