The 1,025 hp (1,039 PS) Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 was a fitting finale to Chrysler’s gas-powered muscle car era, and the culmination of its Last Call push, but it turns out Dodge still had one more gift to give: the manual gearbox option for the Hellcat is back.
Dodge pulled the three-pedal option from the Hellcat configurator page at the tail end of 2021, and though it promised at the time that it would return, we’d kind of forgotten about it with all the Last Call stuff going on. The manual option has yet to appear on the Challenger configurator, but a post by dealer Koons Tysons Corner on the Hellcat.org site (subsequently picked up by Mopar Insiders) confirmed that it definitely is on.
“Great news! The manual transmission Challenger Hellcat just opened up for ordering in both narrow body and widebody, and best of all, we still have allocation!” the post from Koons said.
And as if that wasn’t already great news, the dealer added some icing to the cake. “We are doing the first five orders at MSRP,” it wrote, but in capitals and with five times as many exclamation points.
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The manual transmission is a TR6060 six-speeder from Tremec, and is fed the same 717 hp (727 PS) and 650 lb-ft (881 Nm) as the eight-speed Torqueflite automatic version receives from the 6.2-liter Supercharged V8. Even more powerful versions of the same engine are available making 797 hp (808 PS) in the Redeye, 807 hp (818 PS) in the Super Stock and of course, over 1,000 ponies in the Demon 170, but none of those tunes is available with a manual shifter.
The cheapest Challenger Hellcat shown on Dodge’s configurator is the $72,290 Jailbreak, but since that price includes the automatic transmission anyone buying a manual should be billed $2,995 less. Don’t go looking for a manual option on the Charger Hellcat sedans though. Those are, and have always been, auto-only.
Welcome as the manual transmission’s return to the Hellcat line is, it’s going to be a fleeting one. Chrysler is killing off the V8 engine and the Charger and Challenger at the end of 2023 as it prepares to switch to a new era of electrified muscle cars, so if you want one, you better move Hellcat-fast.
