Fiat Chrysler has many talents: making cars go fast in a straight line, keeping an old platform relevant for ages, and coming up with names that sound like a joke but are, in fact, not. Enter the Hellephant, which sounds like a parody of Dodge muscle cars, in fact, a very real 1,000-horsepower crate engine costing nearly $30,000.
If the name—a mix of the “elephant” nickname for the 426 Hemi engine and the Hellcat brand—wasn’t enough, that nearly $30,000 will go toward buying this logo, which is also somehow completely authentic. It’s wonderful, really.
The Hellephant is far from an April Fools’ joke, even if it sounds like one—one, because it’s the end of April, and two, because this thing debuted in October of last year.
Fiat Chrysler simply announcedpreorders and pricing on Friday, with the supercharged, 426 Hemi crate engine getting an MSRP of $29,995 and the engine kit that goes along with it costing $2,265. That’s compared to the 707-HP Hellcat crate engine, which runs just over $20,000.
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The Hellephant also comes with all of this, plus all of the optional accessories a person could want—so long as they can afford them—via FCA:
Dropping in the “Hellephant” is almost turnkey with the engine kit, which includes a powertrain control module (PCM), power distribution center, engine wiring harness, chassis harness, accelerator pedal, ground jumper, oxygen sensors, charge air temperature sensors, fuel pump control module and CAN bus interface device.
Topping the Hellcat by nearly 300 HP, the Hellephant engine’s claimed 1,000 HP also gets 950 lb-ft of torque—almost as much as the 2019 Ram Heavy Duty, which hit 1,000 lb-ft in effort to top the torque wars among American trucks. But there are limits, even if not in the realm of power: FCA makes sure to note the Hellephant is “designed for installation on pre-1976 street and off-road vehicles,” and a footnote on the Mopar website reminds everyone it’s “not legal on pollution-controlled vehicle or vehicle registered for highway use.”
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Too bad. It would’ve been great in your 2010 Camry.
But, even if your Camry can’t share in the power of the Hellephant crate engine, the two of you can at least share a laugh over its gloriously funny name—and maybe even a jersey with “HELLEPHANT” embroidered across the back, since it would be a great nickname for an athlete.
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