Dodge wants to send their V8 out with a bang, but this is definitely not what they mean.
If you’ve been following the brand’s rollout of ‘Last Call’ special editions, then you know what to expect: the seventh and final special edition tomorrow at SEMA. Thing is, it won’t be there — and with good reason, as explained by Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis. During a backgrounder for the SEMA show this week, he announced a delay on that seventh and final model. Why? At the moment, they keep blowing up engines.
They obviously wanted to charge full steam ahead at this year’s event, “But we ran into some problems”. Per The Detroit Bureau, “the modified V8 has been blowing up when pushed to the limits in the Dodge test lab. We’re not talking about a minor breakdown. Apparently, the engines really have been blowing up.”
That’s obviously a problem Dodge is going to want to fix, and evidently engineers are still hammering out a solution. “I think we’ve got it figured out,” said Kuniskis, “if we don’t blow up any more engines. We think we got it fixed but I’m still holding my breath.” Understandable.
The final upswing — you know, because your engine exploding would probably damper your day a little bit — is that we should see this mystery, modified V8 destroyer of worlds before the year’s out. Rumor has it, as noted by Mopar Insiders, that we’ll see a 900+ horsepower version of the SRT Hellcat Redeye, albeit with a more violent sounding name.
Hey, with as much of a headache as that sounds like, at least we know from a first-hand source. If anything, that has me even more curious to see the volcanic levels of power Dodge is planning here. And owners will literally have an explosive history to tell when they show off their ‘Last Call’ beast to their friends.
Check out more on the existing six special editions, as well as the last of the Charger and Challengers news below: