It’s hard to beat a decommissioned Dodge Charger Pursuit when it comes to the cool factor of a civilian vehicle, but this build throws that statement behind bars. We’re looking at a former Charger police car that’s now been promoted to the rank of an… aftermarket military vehicle with Hellcat firepower and then some.
From afar, one might mistake this for a Dodge Charger Hellcat Redeye. And while that’s partially true, as mentioned in the intro, this piece of Mopar is way above the factory level.
Enter the Helljet 2, a Charger that now packs a Hellcat Redeye’s V8, which has been gifted with twin turbos. The turbochargers feed the boost into the factory supercharger of the 6.2L HEMI, with the compound boost pushing the motor to around 1,300 hp.
YouTuber Westen Champlin bought a Charger, got another one free* from Dodge, and shuffled them around to make this build happen
Back in the fall of 2020, YouTuber Westen Champlin, who was busy building a Cummins-swapped S550 Mustang at the time, decided to buy a pair of Charger police vehicles, a crashed silver example with a 5.7L HEMI V8 and a white one. And the former ended up donating its shell to this project—you can check out that affair in the second video below.
As for the 1,300 horsepower part of Helljet II, this has also been repurposed. It all started last summer, when Dodge gave Champlin a free Charger Hellcat Redeye, asking the vlogger to attend the Roadkill Nights street-legal drag racing event that involves closing down the iconic Woodward Avenue in Pontiac, Michigan.
The YouTuber also received $10,000 to invest in mods and the muscle sedan certainly got its fair share of custom hardware, which probably required a more serious investment.
For starters, the 6.2L V8 kept its supercharger, but also adopted a Hellion Turbo Kit involving a pair of Precision units—there’s a reason for which this sounds familiar and we’ll get to it soon.
Tuned by Tim Bart of Freeport, Illinois
Subsequently, the vlogger took the car to Tim Barth in Freeport, Illinois—Barth is a famous HEMI tuner whose builds terrify drag strips and set world records. For one, his work is sometimes referred to as the “Barth sauce” on social media.
And once things got sorted out and the engine made around 1,300 hp, the machine was baptized Helljet and got put to racing work.
Among others, it featured a military theme with the Shark Mouth side wrap reminding one of WWII bombers.
However, *Dodge had given vloggers pre-production models, which don’t come with a VIN and aren’t street legal.
So, while sending the VIN-less shell back to Dodge for this to be crushed, Champlin kept the mechanical goodies and recently finished installing them in the said Charger Pursuit.
As YouTuber Tavarish, who also went on a somewhat similar adventure with Dodge, Champlin had to figure out how to convert a standard-body Dodge Charger into a Widebody. Then again, it was all part of the fun.
It has custom Hellcat badges for a full Helljet 2 conversion
As one would expect from the second iteration of this build, there are plenty of upgrades compared to the original iteration of the project. For one, Helljet 2 comes with custom fender badges—such items are a thing in the Mopar community.
In addition, the wrap is even meaner-looking than before and packs plenty of aircraft-inspired details. As for the interior, well, that pre-production model had been stripped down for racing, but this time around, there’s a back seat. For one, the vlogger could use that to store his YouTube plaques, as he currently has 2.09 million subscribers on YouTube (at the time when this story was published).
And what better way to pull a maiden burnout if not doing it inside the shop that wrapped the Helljet II?
