While the idea of a Hellcat-powered Mazda RX-7 may sound sacrilegious to Japanese car enthusiasts, one such car is currently being built in the U.S. and is thought to be a world first.
Currently being built by YouTuber Rowdys Garage, transforming an RX-7 into a Hellcat-powered beast is quite a laborious process and the video below shows the first step in the engine swap that saw the standard 13B pulled from the engine bay.
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As you can probably imagine, fitting a Hellcat engine into the Mazda requires a fair bit of work. For example, the builder’s needed to lower the steering rack but apart from that, the engine bay actually accommodates the 6.2-liter supercharged V8 without too much fuss. Admittedly, the engine sticks out of the quite a lot when the supercharger is fitted on top but with a custom hood, or no hood at all, that won’t be much of an issue.
Work on the car is still in its early stages and simply slotting the Hellcat engine in as part of a test fit is relatively simple. Actually getting the engine to run will prove to be much more of a challenge. It also remains to be seen how well the Hellcat’s eight-speed automatic transmission will fit in the Mazda.
However, once the build process is done, there’s no doubt that the massive power from the Hellcat engine and the low overall weight of the RX-7 will make this thing an absolute beast to drive.
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