What is it that drives car owners to place fake badges or stickers on their vehicles? This sort of label deception takes many forms: some of these graphic elements are downright ridiculous, while others simply put a smile on people’s faces. Oh, and sometimes one of these real-world shenanigans will make waves on social media, as is the case with the Nissan Helltima. Or is it a Dodge now?
Last week, I came across a pair of renderings from an Instagram pixel prankster I had been following for a few years. Aptly nicknamed carfrontswaps, the label, which has 30,000 followers (at the time when this story was published) thanks to executing the stunt mentioned in its name via quick Photoshop edits, had been absent since November last year. So it made quite a comeback when mixing the Nissan Altima and the Hellcat to create the Helltima.
The Helltima CGI takes many forms
I was left staring at a family offering joining the L33-generation Altima front end with the Dodge Charger Hellcat, and a more design-oriented (whatever that means in this context) approach, which places the front fascia of the current L34 Altima on a Challenger Hellcat Widebody.
As mentioned, the said Insta label exists for the sheer reason of doing this and I had seen tons of similar 2D works in the past, with some of these portraying surprisingly appealing mixes. So, I introduced our readers to the Helltima duo and that was that. Except it wasn’t.
During a subsequent Facebook stint, I was greeted by another incarnation of the Helltima. Summoned by the Unnecessary automobile nose swaps. Facebook page, this sticks to the L34 Altima+Challenger Hellcat scrip, while adding the Dodge’s dual snorkel hood and using silver instead of the original red. There are also a few aftermarket bits in there—those multi-piece wheels look mean—but, at this point, such items hardly make a difference.
After crossing digital paths with the Helltima again thaks to the said FB page (more than 98,000 followers), I started wondering if there was more to the unholy union than the usual pixel giggle.
The real Nissan Helltima is a simple Altima with a Hellcat sticker, apparently brought to social media by Hoodville
As it turns out, the Helltima isn’t just a nickname for Instagram renderings. It’s a real car. No, nobody has given a Hellcat a Nissan face transplant—that would be more troubling than the 2022 Challenger Hellcat losing its six-speed manual (Dodge says the stick shift is coming back).
Instead, it looks like social media meme account Hoodville, whose strongest presence is on Instagram (currently at 8.1 million followers), had posted a real-life L33 Altima that had been gifted with at least a Hellcat sticker on the driver’s side rear door two years ago. And, judging by what we see in this image, it doesn’t look like the four-door packs the kind of hardware that would match its peacocking.
A Google search led me to a Hoodville Tweet from April 24, 2020 (the account has over 299,000 followers right now) showcasing the car and branding it as a Helltima—you’ll find this below.
And while multiple people seem to have photographed other Altimas wearing Hellcat stickers after that point, there’s just one previous Twitter mention of “Helltima”. Coming from user @devinrul3z, this dates back to 2010 and has no connection to the Hellcat (launched in 2014). Instead, it reads “If I drove an Altima I would call it the Helltima and always play metal in it“, which, to be honest, sounds quite fair.
At least one social media user has tagged Hoodville, who seems to have a thing for Altimas and Hellcats (in isolation rather than being mixed up) in the Instagram posts showcasing the Helltima rendering(s), which is why the pixel face swap—the original Charger one—is now also found on the massive-following meme account. So, as you can notice in the Insta post below, the circle is complete.
The actual Helltima? It could be brilliant
Slapping that Hellcat sticker over the L33 Altima in real life? A master move. You see, if the used Nissan sedan simply came with the GT-R sticker visible on the quarter panel, people could’ve reported the thing to the Common Sense Police for upbadging. By the way, please don’t do that: the only people who will notice it are probably the enthusiasts, who know it’s not real. Non-car folks, who might be mistaken for a potential audience to trick by the “creator”, will most likely not care enough to pay attention.
But adding the Hellcat decal might just make the result amusing enough to not trigger the said alarm.
