We Can’t Have a Hellcat Chrysler 300 Because Hellcat Engines Are a Finite Resource

Chrysler wakened and gave us a jolt this week with the shock announcement of the 2023 300C, packing the 475-hp 6.4-liter Hemi V8 that powers Scat Pack variations of the Dodge Challenger and Charger. After all, we’re a grasping lot, and a mere 475 hp will hardly do after we know Stellantis has a 707-hp supercharged engine that matches simply about anyplace the 6.4 can go. So why no Hellcat 300? The reply is disappointingly mundane: Hellcat engines, like old-growth lumber and anthracite coal, are a non-renewable useful resource, and once they’re gone, they’re gone.

This week, I reached out to Chrysler’s PR division to ask particularly why the automaker took the coward’s route and caught a non-supercharged engine within the 300’s engine bay. The official reply from Chrysler was “capability constraints performed a job in selecting the 6.4-liter Hemi engine.” Armed with this relatively imprecise reply, I spoke with somebody inside Stellantis who is aware of what’s up, and who instructed me a bit of extra in regards to the scenario.

See, Stellantis dedicated to construct a restricted variety of 6.2-liter supercharged Hellcat V8s, and whereas they’ve discovered houses in a frankly astounding array of Stellantis autos — Challenger, Charger, Durango, Ram 1500, Grand Cherokee — the automaker has already earmarked each Hellcat engine it plans to construct. From what I used to be instructed, this isn’t an arbitrary restrict, both: Stellantis is actually constructing each final Hellcat engine it might probably make.

I wasn’t in a position to get a transparent reply as to precisely what limits Stellantis’s capability to make Hellcat engines. Is it restricted availability of a sure engine part? Does it need to do with regulatory constraints concerning company common gas economic system? We all know Dodge discovered a option to preserve stuffing Hellcats into a brand new mannequin 12 months of the Durango, after swearing up and down that this may be a one-year-only automobile.

Regardless of the cause could also be, the info are clear: The world is sitting on a restricted and dwindling provide of Hellcat engines, and that’s why Stellantis is displaying uncharacteristic restraint and withholding the supercharged 6.2 from the 300. Now you already know.