Will Dodge Ever Give Up on the Hemi V8?

First, a little disclaimer. This article will be highly speculative, and is mostly based off a handful of rumors that have been going around over the last few months along with a newly revealed Charger Drag Pak. Click elsewhere for more tangible flips.

In 2023, Dodge officially discontinued the Hemi V8 in all of its performance models. The Challenger was axed and a new line of SRT Demons churned out to mark its passing, and the iconic Charger was transmogrified into a two-door, all-electric screamer.

Gone was the howling whine of a supercharged V8, replaced with a thousand pounds of batteries and motors. An amplifier has been stapled to the rear in an attempt to mimic an ICE exhaust note.

Resellers have been especially cool to the EV revolution. Sure, we turned early profits on the Hummer EV and Tesla Cybertruck, but EVs are notoriously bad at holding their value. Even Ferrari is struggling, with their stock price tumbling over 15% after the reveal of their first all-electric.

Dodge expected the Charger name would be enough to move the car, and that consumers would actually be excited to drive an EV Charger.

They were not.

In fact, early interest was so weak that Dodge launched the “Sixpack” ICE model powered by a thoroughly juiced twin-turbo inline six Hurricane engine rated for 550 horsepower with the Scat Pack tune.

But no V8, at least not yet. During yesterday’s NHRA Nevada Nationals, Dodge showed off a Charger “Drag Pak” powered by an authentic Hemi V8. This is obviously a purpose built dragster and far from a production car, but it serves as proof of concept that you can in fact stuff a Hemi into the 2025 Charger.

Many auto bloggers have been saying a Hemi Charger is just around the corner, but yesterday’s reveal has spiked new interest in the idea.

With how poorly the Charger EV has been received, it’s not terribly surprising. Dodge might have made a half-assed attempt to keep the focus on their electric powerplants, but the quick spin-up of the Charger Sixpack indicates more ICE models are on the way. They’re clearly caving to consumer demand, and the consumer is demanding more displacement and less efficiency.

Timelines? Hard to say. If the V8 Charger is already in the works, we might get our eyes on it before 2025 comes to a close, but that’s entirely speculative. At this point, we’re essentially waiting for Dodge to tell us what we already know is coming.

As for whether these are worth reselling, that’s another question that invites speculation. In 2023, we wrote about the last run of Dodge Demons. 3,000 cars rolled off the line and were heralded as the final production of both the Challenger and the Hemi V8 before Dodge completely electrified their performance line.

These cars were extremely popular and some early resellers managed to turn quintuple digit profits from their allocations, but it’s worth noting that the Demon had been sold for “the last time” in 2019. This second production run completely pissed off the original buyers, and made it clear that Dodge is not above reneging on their promises if their bottom line gets red enough.

So take whatever claims Dodge makes with a healthy dose of salt. Stellantis has put out a press release confirming that 50 serialized units of the “Charger Hustle Stuff Drag Pak” will be sold (yes that’s the real name), so these cars are clearly not a one-off skunkworks project. A V8 2025 Charger will be sold, although it’s not what most were expecting.

Reservations will open November 7. You can register interest right now through Dodge Garage, but we expect these to run a few hundred grand.

We’ll take our chances on the full production run of V8 Chargers, which might be more than a year away at this point.