2015 Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat review: Your four-door, 707-hp hauler awaits

For those of you who, like the author, grew up watching Bo and Luke Duke terrorize Hazzard County, the Dodge Charger has a special place in your heart. And if you, like me, bristled when Dodge resurrected the Charger as a sedan some 35 years after its 1968–1970 heyday, you’ve probably been loathe to accept the Charger quattroporte’s hood as something over which you could see Bo or Luke sliding across.

The Dodge Challenger has been a nice consolation prize, to be sure, but only after driving all forms of the reworked 2015 Charger — including track time in the 707-hp Charger SRT Hellcat — we can assert that, at last, the Charger has become worthy of its vaunted name. Four doors and all.

The day started in a hangar at Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, where we first encountered the new Charger family, which now includes no fewer than six trim levels: SE, SXT, R/T, new R/T Scat Pack, SRT 392, and the SRT Hellcat, the latter four powered by Hemi V-8s. All 2015 Charger trim levels look good and mean. Every body panel except the roof and rear door skins was reworked to make the full-size Dodge a little less, um, full-figured: overhangs were trimmed, the bumpers wrap around more, and the C-pillar has been stretched into more of a flying buttress. With its wide grilles bracketed by scary darkened headlamps and elongated C-shaped LED running lamps, the Charger’s lower, forward canted nose is vaguely evocative of the 1968 Charger’s full-width pocket grille. And of course, the racetrack taillamps return, now with smooth LED ribbon in place of last year’s dot-matrix effect. A total of 14 wheels options are available for 2015, 10 of them measuring 20 inches in diameter.

The steroidal Charger SRT 392 and the Hellcat models look even more menacing with their own grille and bumper treatments, NACA-ducted aluminum hoods (with the Hellcat adding two additional engine heat extractors), side sill extensions, a body-color rear spoiler, and diffuser-style rear valences into which the car’s (vocal) four-inch exhaust tips are nestled. Also available for 2015 is a new R/T Scat Pack model, powered by the SRT 392’s stonkin’ 485-hp naturally aspirated 6.4-liter V-8 and which also gets the SRT 392’s hood, a black spoiler, unique rims and upgraded brakes over the standard R/T.

To get us to the track, we resist the urge to jump in a Hellcat right off the bat and instead snatch the keys to the next best thing: a red SRT 392. We plop our asses into its alcantara-and-leather SRT bucket seats, situate ourselves before the new dashboard, and take in our surroundings. Dodge is deftly playing up its muscle car heritage inside, with tunneled primary instrument dials bracketing a slick new seven-inch information display for the driver, with Dodge’s highly acclaimed 8.4-inch Uconnect infotainment screen to the right, all encompassed by a large aluminum bezel. From floor to ceiling, everything is black or red. This place oozes with machismo.

We press the engine-start button, pull the electronic T-handle shifter (now with actual gates!) into Drive, grasp the thick-rimmed, flat-bottom SRT steering wheel and hit the streets. Within a block, we’re giggling like schoolgirls that just got a wink from their big crush, so inebriating is the naturally aspirated 6.4-liter Hemi’s exhaust burble. Soon, we’re summoning as much of the car’s 485 hp and 475 lb-ft of torque as road space allows. Dodge estimates that the 4,400-lb. SRT 392 can hit 60 mph in the low four-second range — fast for a car this size — and based on how we’re pinned to our seats, we believe it.