The Dodge Muscle Car That Was Too Extreme For The Streets
Muscle cars were originally built for the streets, but many went on to be drag racing legends. Ever since the quarter mile became a popular spectator sport in the late ’40s and ’50s, the combination of big power and light weight has been irresistible. Muscle Cars were the perfect tool for the job, with tech from the track filtering into street cars, and the most extreme production models being tuned for racing. But every now and again, a muscle car comes along that is simply too outrageous to ever see a public highway. We aren’t talking about the ’60s either. It wasn’t that long ago that Dodge offered a muscle machine that was just too extreme — this was the time when Mopar went too far.
The Muscle Car Was Designed For The Streets
Many pints of beer have been consumed, and many nachos have been crunched, over the question of what was the first muscle car. The Oldsmobile Rocket 88 can lay a good claim to being an early muscle car, but most people agree the term itself was coined for the Pontiac GTO. Young engineers John DeLorean, Russ Gee, and Bill Collins were tasked with improving Pontiac’s image in the early ’60s, and would meet on Saturday mornings at the Milford Proving Grounds to talk, drink coffee, and come up with ideas. One morning, the trio put a 1964 LeMans coupe on a lift to look at the mechanicals, and Collins turned to DeLorean and said: “You know, John, it would take about 20 minutes to stick a 389 in here.” DeLorean’s reply was “let’s try it,” and the street-legal GTO (and the muscle car genre) was born.
But, Muscle Was Never Far From The Track
Big V8s and relatively low weight were always a recipe for duking it out at the drag strip. The Ford Fairlane Thunderbolt predated the GTO but employed a similar strategy. The Thunderbolt was a straight-up race car that was technically legal to use on the road, as improbable as that may have seemed. The cars rolled off the line without radios, heaters, sound-deadening material, or seam sealer, with a racing 427 shoehorned into the engine bay by Dearborn Steel Tubing.
NHRA rules dictated that parts used on the track had to be available for purchase by the public, and while cars like this had license plates and VINs to satisfy the rules, they were nothing but race machines with turn signals. But fast forward a few decades and Dodge made a car that was never designed to be roadworthy, pushing the boundaries of what was possible in a muscle car on the drag strip. The result was a car way too extreme for the streets.
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The Challenger Mopar Drag Pak Is a Seven-Second Dodge
Fourth-Gen Dodge Challenger Mopar Track Pak Specs
|
Engine |
Supercharged 5.8-liter V8 |
|
Power |
Around 1,500 hp |
|
Quarter Mile |
High 7s |
Source: Dodge
When the Challenger Mopar Drag Pak was unveiled in 2019, Dodge was clear: this car was for the racetrack only. True, the silhouette wasn’t far from a standard road-legal Challenger, but the heritage-inspired graphics were a dead giveaway. The red, white, and blue color scheme harks back to the original muscle car era of the 1970s, with a Mopar logo and red “dragpak” badging on the quarter panels above the rear wheels. Power comes from a supercharged 354-cubic-inch HEMI V8 engine, mated to a T400 three-speed transmission with Kwik-Shift manual shifter. The output is close to 1,500 horsepower.
Mopar hinted at the potential of the car by pointing out that the “body-integrated SFI-specification welded rollcage is certified for ETs as low as 7.50 seconds”, but at the SEMA launch gave an even clearer steer on the quarter mile figures. “The modern version [of the HEMI] will power the Drag Pak to high-seven-second quarter-mile ETs, a far cry from the original engine’s old-school roots of dual Holley carbs and a cross-ram intake manifold.” Then, at the launch of the 2021 car, Dodge said, “This is an extreme high-performance machine that’s capable of sub-eight-second quarter-mile ETs.”
The 2021 Drag Pak Was Too Wild For The Streets
The Mopar Dodge Challenger Drag Paks begin life as a Body-in-White (BIW) Challenger shell straight from the line at FCA’s Brampton Plant in Brampton, Ontario. They were transferred by truck down Highway 401 through Ontario to the Detroit/Windsor Ambassador Bridge and on to a bespoke build shop in Detroit, where the engine and transmission were fitted.
The Drag Paks also receive a lightweight driveshaft, Strange nine-inch rear axle assembly, adjustable rear coilover shocks, Bilstein drag race-specific double-adjustable struts, four-link suspension, and an anti-roll bar. The cars even receive wheelie bars as the front has a tendency to lift off the ground at take-off. Mickey Thompson nine-inch wide slicks are mounted on WELD Racing forged aluminum wheels. Dodge made a limited production of 50 serialized units of the 2021 Challenger Drag Pak. Price was $143,485.
The Mopar Drag Pak Can Obliterate Almost Anything In Its Path
On paper at least, the fourth-gen Drag Pak should have the edge on its rivals. The 2016 Cobra Jet was Ford’s limited edition, factory-produced turn-key race car. Ford says: “As delivered, its supercharged 5.0-liter V8 engine is capable of powering the Cobra Jet to eight-second quarter mile times.” The 2016 COPO Camaro was also widely reported to be an eight-second car. Of course, the difference of a few tenths of a second can be insignificant at the start line, with the best driver getting the best out of the car. But you can be sure that the Mopar Drag Pak will be one of the fastest turnkey race cars ever to hit a drag strip.
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The Challenger Mopar Drag Pak Channeled the ’60s
The 2020 Challenger Drag Pak harks back to the tradition of supplying factory “Package Cars” to racers, which began in the early 1960s with the factory production of Max Wedge package cars. In 1968, Mopar brought 426 HEMI-powered Dodge Dart and Plymouth Barracuda models to the strip. In 2008, Dodge returned to the genre with the first factory-prepped drag race package cars in four decades, releasing 100 examples of the first V8 Mopar Dodge Challenger Drag Pak.
The 2010 Mopar Dodge Challenger Drag Pak came fitted with a 6.4-liter HEMI engine, and a year later, Mopar became the first original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to offer a 500-plus cubic-inch V10 drag package car. The third-generation 2015 Challenger Drag Pak introduced the supercharged 354 HEMI (with the option of a naturally aspirated 426 Gen-III HEMI) and was capable of 8.0-second ETs straight out of the box. Then arrived the fourth-gen car we see above, but it wasn’t the last of the line…
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The Challenger Mopar Drag Pak Wasn’t Quite The Last Of The Line
At a time when we might think that EVs and hybrids would spell the end for track-only ICE muscle cars, Dodge pulled a surprise. The 2026 Dodge Charger Hustle Stuff Drag Pak is the latest in the line of Drag Pak cars, limited to just 50 units. The cars are hand-prepped by Riley Technologies in Mooresville and fitted with a 354-cubic-inch, 3.0-liter Whipple-supercharged Hemi V8 under the carbon-fiber hoods. With a 700-horsepower Hellcat Charger expected for the streets next year, it is likely that the ICE Charger will be around for a while longer. Which means the Drag Pak may have some life in it yet…
Sources: Dodge, Hotrod, Ford Performance.
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