Drag Race: 2020 Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 Hennessey HPE850 vs Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat
The Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 and GT350R were designed and built to be excellent track machines, capable of carving corners with the best of what’s out there. Both are also pretty quick in a straight line as well, but not quite quick enough to hang with, say, a Hellcat Charger. Despite weighing quite a bit less, the GT350’s naturally-aspirated, 526 horsepower 5.2L “Voodoo” V8 engine just isn’t stout enough to match the Hellcat’s 707 horsepower supercharged 6.2L V8. But that’s where the Hennessey Shelby GT350 and GT350R HPE850 comes in.
The Hennessey Shelby GT350 package adds a host of modifications including a 3.0L Whipple supercharger, along with a high-flow throttle body, fuel injectors, air induction system, and heat exchanger. After tuning the car on the dyno, the HPE850 package is good for 858 horsepower and 673 pound-feet of torque, a 0-60 time of 3.3 seconds, and a quarter-mile of just 10.8 seconds at 133 miles-per-hour.
That’s more than enough to beat up on a stock Hellcat Charger, which does 0-60 in 3.6 seconds and the quarter-mile in 10.96, which is why Hennessey calls the HPE850 “the Hellcat killer.” And when these two cars line up in this video for a drag race, it certainly looks like a murder scene. The Shelby simply walks away from the Hellcat, putting a substantial gap on it by the time it reaches the finish line.
