Well that didn't take long.

Hellcat wrecked after owning for 1 hour

Ive seen how ALOT of people drive in CO. So im not really surprised. Would use to say that when you fail your drivers test in Nebraska, they would give you green license plates....

Repost

I'm okay with the repost in this section if people talk about why the guy lost control of the car.

In the pictures it looks like the guy came over a small hill and immediately lost it in a slight corner. I will say that at high speeds that small corner gets tough to handle. Especially with a heavy car that has unloaded tires by coming over the crest of the hill.

Anyone drive one of the new Challengers yet with stability control? I haven't driven one so I don't know how well they handle or if the stability control even helps.

I will say I've watched a bunch of rally races where the guy comes flying over a hill with the car in the air and he lands the car goes around the corner and doesn't miss a beat. Looks to me like this guy came flying over the hill, panicked and locked up the tires and drove it straight into a tree with the tires locked. Perhaps if he had lifted off the brakes and used his steering wheel he could've continued right up the road?

Glad everyone is OK.

Dibs on the powertrain!

Looking at the photos that's what I see as well. Crested a hill mid corner. Dipped a tire on the grass on the passenger side, corrected off of that too much.

Kind of what I did at Carlisle.

The Challenger with ESP on is pretty stupid proof. But, if he held down the button long enough, he had better know what he's doing.

The ESP is pretty invasive (in my opinion) and if it was on would save most people. If he flat out was carrying too much speed, there is nothing that's going to help him.

Yeah, my (somewhat educated) guess is that he was going around 100 mph when he came over the hill. I'm basing that on the damage to the car and the length of the skid marks. I figure he hit the tree at 35 or 40 mph to cause that much damage and that he scrubbed off 40 or 50 mph during the slide. 100 mph on a narrow two lane road with curves and whoop dee doos is higher than my pucker factor will allow.

Doesn't the Hellcat have ABS? Wondering why it appears to be a solid black set of stripes instead of some "chattering" looking tire marks on the pavement.

Or after your carrying the mail that fast the ABS just still smears the tires all over the road, or can the ABS be turned off in this car?

Just one more idiot ruining it for the rest of us. I can see it now,
"Hellcat banned in 24 states....." or "due to government regulation, you can no longer disable safety features on Chrysler vehicles...."

I don't think you can turn the ABS off (without pulling a fuse or cutting wires that is). I am pretty sure that you can turn the stability control off, but I don't think the Feds allow you to switch off the ABS.

My guess is that the skid marks are from the car sliding sideways but I'm not positive. Not sure why the guy would turn off the stability control but perhaps he wanted to do some burnouts.

Don't think we'll find out unless the drive holds a press conference. Doubtful that he is going to do that!

My guess is that the insurance company has already taken a look at the black box data and they know exactly what the poor dude was up to.

That black box deal from 2013? and newer cars having the black box is intrusive.......

Another federal mandate probably by the $$$$ of insurance company lobbyists.

One of the local Dodge dealerships is a customer of ours & when I took some Christmas goodies over to them, I asked the sales mngr how he liked the 2 Hellcats they just sold (both 6 spd manuals to the same guy!), and he said
it was absolutely scary to drive. He said if you punched it at 60 mph,
the tires broke loose. Man, I wanted a test drive, but got there too late.
Sad to see this green one get totalled right out of the box, but with that much power on command...maybe Mopar should include a driver's course with each one!

"black box" data has been around since 2000 or so if not earlier.