2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat

This car, Lot 643, sold for $88,000, including buyer’s premium, at Barrett-Jackson’s Hot August Nights auction in Reno, NV, on August 6–8, 2015.

Dodge fundamentally changed the muscle car world with the 2015 Dodge Hellcat twins, the Charger and Challenger. These cars offer supercar performance at a small fraction of the price of a Ferrari or a McLaren.

Featuring a 707-horsepower, 650-foot-pound supercharged 6.2-liter V8, the Challenger could be had with a 6-speed manual transmission or an 8-speed automatic. Hellcats deliver 0–60 times in the “low three-second” range, with quarter-miles in the 10s and a top speed of over 200 mph right off the showroom floor. With the arrival of the Hellcats, the pace was set for everyone else to try and keep up.

I’ve driven both the Challenger and Charger Hellcats on the street and on the race track, and the reality lives up to the hype. Massive torque, high speed and great handling are all there in an attractive package. Plus, with a full suite of electronic driver-assistance features, you don’t have to be afraid of the gas or brake pedals in these Mopars.

Dodge ramps up production

Predictably, the muscle car world went nuts for the Hellcat. Sketchy reports told of dealers applying up to $75,000 of markup on the first cars to be sold, and Dodge quickly moved to prevent dealer price gouging. This car was going to be built for everyone — or at least everyone who could afford the roughly $60,000 price tag.

By March of 2015, Dodge had delivered over 2,000 Hellcats, and the orders kept pouring in. Late in July, Dodge announced that it was converting over 900 orders for 2015 Hellcats into orders for the 2016 model at 2015 prices. Further, Dodge stated that they were going to roughly double Hellcat production capacity for 2016.

With that announcement, Dodge has given every indication that the Hellcat will not be any kind of limited-production unicorn. Instead, Dodge is going to ride the unprecedented popularity of the Hellcat series straight to the bank for as long as it possibly can. That fact has a huge bearing on this sale at the Barrett-Jackson Reno-Tahoe auction.

Doing the math

The Hellcat that crossed the block in Reno was for all purposes a brand-new car with just 15 miles on the odometer. Pause for a moment and pity the original owner, who had this car in his or her possession and didn’t ever enjoy it. But then look at what happened at the auction.

This car sold for $88,000, including the buyer’s premium. Assuming the buyer was on-site, that’s 10%, or $8,000. The buyer’s premium was a little higher at 12% if the buyer was on the phone or bidding online. But the actual bid was probably about $80,000.

The seller also paid a fee to put the car in the auction, plus an 8% seller’s fee, so call that another $8,000 or so to Barrett-Jackson. Do the math and you’ll see that the seller pocketed around $72,000 for their brand new Hellcat. Configuring an identical car online yields an MSRP of $61,985, and most dealers are applying markups of less than $5,000, if they’re marking the cars up at all. The bottom line is the seller could not have made more than $10,000 on this deal.

Past auction sales show a trend. In January of 2015, the first Hellcat to cross the block sold for $96,800 at Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale (ACC# 258322), and then two weeks later at Mecum Kissimmee, the price was $88,560 (ACC# 263072). By April, the third to cross the block did not sell at Leake Dallas at a bid of $70,000 (ACC# 264968), but at that time you could still order a new 2015 car at something close to MSRP. The laws of supply and demand seem to be hard at work in the Hellcat world.

A good deal, but for whom?

In the near term, this buyer got a good deal. The 2015 Hellcats are all sold, and auction was the only way the buyer was getting a new car this year.

In the longer term, with Dodge telling us they’re increasing production, sooner or later the demand for Hellcats will be filled, and a lot of Hellcats will be on the road. That means there’s no big collectible upside for any Hellcat. You might as well drive it and enjoy it, because if you sit on it for 10 years, it will be just another outdated muscle car.

Taken together, all the factors tell us that this seller probably made about as much profit as anyone is going to make on any Hellcat from here on out. I have to call that well sold.

(Introductory description courtesy of Barrett-Jackson.