It’s Mopar vs Godzilla for bragging rights…
The debate about which is better, American muscle cars or Japanese performance cars has been waged since the 1990s. For some it’s a simple question of patriotic allegiance or the need to go with a perceived counter cultural take on everything. However, when a Dodge Challenger Hellcat lines up against a Nissan GT-R R35 at a drag strip, ultimately it all comes down to the cars and the drivers.
Watch a Dodge Hellcat outrun the cops here.
These faceoffs are so interesting because the cars involved are so very different. The obvious thing is one is built in Japan and the other is built in Canada(yep, not the US) by an American-Italian-French automaker.
The Hellcat’s approach to performance has some old-school style but with some modern technologies. The supercharged 6.2-liter V8 uses 21st Century designs to push out a monstrous 707-horsepower, that is in factory form. We don’t know if this one has been modified, but that’s always a possibility. The rear-wheel-drive layout is pretty old school, making it a little hard to get a good portion of that power to the tires, not to mention prevent wheelspin from a standstill. The driver needs to be fairly skilled to manage this Mopar, especially if it comes with the manual transmission.
As for the R35 GT-R, it’s a technologically-advanced machine one could call a supercar. Some think it’s so advanced anyone could drag race it without any preparation and do just fine. That might be oversimplifying things a bit, but the fact it boasts a fairly advanced all-wheel-drive system does make it easier to hook up and get down the track in a hurry. The hand-built turbocharged V6 engine is a masterpiece with somewhere around 565-600-hp on tap, depending on the model. However, that mill takes to aggressive modifications quite well, and we don’t know if anything on these Godzillas has been tweaked.
There are actually several Hellcat vs R35 races in the video, so you get a good feel for how these two cars match up against each other. There are also a couple of Dodge Charger Hellcats. Check it out.
