When the Hellcats were introduced, I watched them closely thinking I might just pull the trigger on a good used one. After Dodge started building all they could sell, the depreciation on them was averaging over $550 a month. At one point, the original owner of a red one with 8,000 miles offered me the car for $42k. I thought hard about it, but thought why not wait a couple more months and get one for under $40k. So I offered $39.5k. He declined. And at about the same time, they started regaining value.

What will happen to Hellcat values in the near term seems to indicate another round of steep depreciation. How deep, how long? Who knows? And that will vary between certain models and even certain colors.

The moral of this story is typical of all cars. They are a volatile commodity. Just look at our Mopar muscle cars. They went from near worthless to total market value setters. Who knew?

So right now, buying a Hellcat is for those that can afford to risk losing a good amount of their purchase price. At least in the short term. And since miles are such a big deal, the more a buyer would enjoy driving their car, the more dollars that are flying out the window, too. Not a good situation for a lot of buyers.