The Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat Is the Perfect Road Trip Car if You Love Stopping for Gas

A good road trip car has to check a lot of boxes. As an enthusiast, if you want to have a pleasant time with a big group of people in one vehicle, your options aren’t exactly vast. Sure, vans do the trick, but they’re not exciting to drive. Same goes for full-size SUVs like the Chevy Tahoe or Ford Expedition; they’re designed to be normal, practical cars, not toys. But the Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat manages to be both a useful, functional vehicle and deeply, hilariously entertaining on long road trips—at the cost of being absolutely terrible on gas.

Digital editor Aaron Brown and I, along with three of our friends, got the chance to take a Hellcat-powered Durango on a week-long 5000-mile drive to Wyoming and Montana to see just how well the 5710-pound SUV could handle the quintessential American road trip. Over ten days of driving, we managed to average just around 15 miles per gallon. Keep in mind the vast majority of that driving was uneventful highway cruising with the Hellcat in Eco mode. The few times we did leave the beaten path to blast down an exciting backroad or do a few launches, our onboard mpg calculator displayed a number in the 11s.

Of course, terrible fuel economy is about the least surprising thing about the Durango SRT Hellcat. It’s a full-size SUV with a supercharged V-8 designed to haul thousands upon thousands of pounds of people, gear, and anything else you can attach to the tow hitch. More surprising is the truck’s ability to hide its ferocity when you’re just trying to get from point A to point B.

Thanks to its onboard SRT drive modes, flipping the Hellcat into a more relaxed setting and popping on cruise control makes this hot-rod truck no more intrusive or less relaxing than a normal Durango when you want it to be. The lightened steering, softened suspension, and dampened throttle almost make you forget the type of power you’re packing under the hood. Almost.

Flip the Durango SRT into Track, its most aggressive mode, and it fully assumes the mantle of the Hellcat badge. The throttle is quick and snappy, exactly what we’ve come to expect from the legendary 6.2-liter engine. Though redline is set to a relatively low 6000 rpm, there’s no shortage of thrust, with a fat, torquey powerband that carries all the way to redline. The noise? It’s enough to make me want to get a massive American flag tattooed on my forehead. You don’t ever get tired of it.