Dodge beats Ford, Chevy for fastest muscle-car ever with Challenger Hellcat

If Dodge seemed to have taken a pause in the past couple of years while the old muscle-car rivalry between the Ford Mustang and Chevy Camaro reached new heights, it's making up for lost time with a quickness. Hot on revealing the 707-hp Dodge Challenger Hellcat for 2015, Dodge came forth today with an official proclamation: The Challenger Hellcat is the fastest factory muscle car to ever sprint a quarter-mile. Put that in your tires and smoke it.

Dodge says under the auspices of the National Hot Rod Association, it timed the Challenger Hellcat at 11.2 seconds and 125 mph down the strip on stock tires — faster than any production Mustang or Camaro, excluding those purpose-built for drag racing. When Dodge swapped the stock Pirellis for drag slicks, the Hellcat made it 10.8 seconds at 126 mph. The closet competitor to the Hellcat would be a 2013 Shelby GT500 with 662 hp, which lags about 0.3 seconds behind on stock tires.

You can watch the video below to see Dodge's versions of events and a run versus a 1971 Challenger for comparison. The rest of Detroit won't let itself see only the Hellcat's tail lights for long.