This Dodge Dakota Has a Hellcat's Heart

Mopar loves to put Dodge's Hellcat engine in things. You can currently get it in a Charger, a Challenger, and a Durango on the Dodge side, plus the absurd TRX 1500 over at the Ram side of your local Stellantis super-dealership. The company has limits, though; it will not sell you a Chrysler Pacifica Hellcat, no matter how promising the sketch by designer Ralph Gilles looked six years ago. It also will not sell you a smaller truck with Hellcat power, in no small part because Ram no longer actually makes a smaller truck. Fortunately, that can be solved with a used Dodge Dakota and everybody's favorite supercharged 6.2-liter engine swap.

This build is from Boosted Motorsports, and it is exactly what you expect: a Dodge Dakota with the components of a modern Dodge Hellcat, right down to the cabin. The truck runs and drives in its current state, and it seems to be exactly as obnoxiously, loudly powerful a thing as you would hope. It may not be all that useful to drop 700-plus supercharged horsepower into a truck so small that Stellantis no longer actually makes anything in the segment, but it sure beats not having a Hellcat engine in your truck.

The shop also has a Hellcat-swapped short cab Ram 1500. Logically, that swapped truck is also used to tow the Hellkota. When you have a finished 700-plus horsepower truck sitting around already, why tow your project truck with anything else?

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