The Hellcats with a different powertrain swap than a V12

Forza Horizon Forza Horizon 5 FH5 Discussion
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With an understanding that the Charger and Challenger Hellcats are the most traditional modern muscle in the game. With the only way to make these vehicles comparable to the other vehicles in it’s category, we would have to swap with the V12 option, which ultimately takes it out of it’s true character.

The powertrain of interest would be the 7.2L Racing V8, giving similar performance number as the V12 ultimately. I am aware of the other V8 powertrains that also have high horsepower numbers, so anyone of those will do…

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All Hellcat-powered road cars are bottom tier performance and only the Demon can be saved by swapping in the Speed 12 V12.
Trackhawk is by far the worst A800 SUV, Hellcat Challenger & Hellcat Charger are the weakest Modern Muscle with the Charger arguably being the worst A800 road car. And the severly overrated Hellcat engine is the main reason.
Simply swapping the Speed 12 engine into the Demon reduced its lap times on Copper Canyon by 3.5 and on the Marathon by 12 seconds.

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I think I understand the direction @MotownMettz is going here though. It’s more about keeping the cars in their correct lineage. Going with the 7.2l is an equivalent 440 V8. And a 426 would be approximately 7.0l. The Hellcat should be fitted with a 6.2l HEMI. Also available HEMI options are a 5.7l and a 6.4l.

I don’t care too much about realistic driving or racing in the game, for me that part is ok. But I’d like to see more realism in the car mods, tuning, and in the paint shop. In the paint shop as in a bigger variety of base vinyls. And full access to all available colors and finishe textures.

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I understand that. 7.2l V8 from the Trophy Truck and the Viper V10 are the only two that would make sense. SRT 10s were a thing.

From a performance perspective I would gladly take any swap because I can’t think of many engines that are worse than the Hellcat one.

Especially frustrating with the Charger being the only modern Charger and it’s so awful.

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How is 840 hp “overrated”? That particular engine is the base for the crate “Hellephant” at 1000 hp and the new 1500 hp engine in conjunction with DSR Performance. The engine isn’t the problem (IRL anyways) it’s the pig of a car that it’s installed in. If you have ever seen the Hellcat’s engine bay IRL, you would know that 12 cyl. wouldn’t fit without removing the front seats and driving from the rear.

But, alas…Forza and their fictional engine swaps win again…

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How true, I love how people get so wrapped up in “exactly what engine” these fictional engines are and exactly what vehicle they come from.

And if you “fictionally” call it some other kind of engine you get blasted all over the place for calling it the “wrong” engine.

:roll_eyes:

Gimmeabreakdude

But really, the Hellcat Challenger should be a lot more car than what PGG has it as stock. As with many stock high performance cars. It’s almost like the high performance versions of cars are just simply based on standard stock vehicles. And almost every PGG stock car has that wobbly wobbly handling.

All this leads me back to this conclusion. PGG hasn’t a clue about cars and or car culture.

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Did anyone see that “LS swapped” Charger Hellcat? :smile::grimacing:

(I don’t think that guy ever actually popped the hood)

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I get it (to an extent). The modern LS is the small block 350 for the current generation. It’s light, fairly small in dimensions and receptive to boost of all kinds. It’s become what I hated about the 70’s, every custom build ends up taking the “easy route” when it comes to drivetrain. I hated that just about every 30’s and 40’s custom car had a 350 in it. Just take a look at the formula drift cars we have in game. Baring a couple of 2JZs, the rest are LS swaps.

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Formula Drift drivers don’t have a lot of options in terms of engines, to be fair. They need something easy, cheap, and reliable. That leaves the LS as the best option, so naturally that’s what everyone goes for.

Out of the 16 FD cars we have in the Forza franchise, 8 have LS swaps.

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Only 8? I could have sworn there were more than that…

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In real life, there is way more than that. But in PGG’s defense, they’ve given us a decent variety of cars with different engines.

If the game included the full 2022 grid, most of the cars would be LS.

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That is a fact, like the 2002 corvette. All i ever heard growing up was the 7.0 v8 swap put that car in winning odds vs the viper. There is plenty that could’ve been done but. They stay missing the mark. They want realism or promote it. 917/20 is the most realistic driving car in fh5 hands down. Im on wheel so i know for sure

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I call it overrated because to me, it’s introduction represents the exact point Dodge stopped caring about anything but being the loudest jerks in the room (that’s probably the most PG way I can put it). It’s 4200 lbs. and 840 hp of raging American stereotype. It’s a Grand Theft Auto meme given a tangible form. And that is not nearly as awesome as it should be, particularly once you drive one and realize that they let the Viper die to keep that stupid nonsense going.

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I dunno, I find it fairly impressive to get a 4200 lb car into the 9’s from the factory. Whether the Hellcat or the Demon came to be or stayed on the design floor, the Viper was on it’s way out. It wasn’t going to continue to compete in the same market with it’s design staying front engine. FCA wanted it gone, and that was it.

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Ugh, rules and standards. We need to go back to homologated versions of cars. Carbon reduction kit needs to be a thing in forza. A 4th reduction option lol.

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It’s impressive, but that’s also it’s only party trick. Not to mention that the moment it debuted, the NHRA took one look at it and said “HAHA NOPE” and effectively locked it out of the competition class it was benchmarked for without undergoing extensive safety modifications.

Part of the reason FCA/Stellantis is in so much deep water with Dodge as they are now is because Dodge, upon debuting the Hellcat, decided they didn’t need to do R&D on anything else but putting that engine into everything that would accept it. Say what you will about other manufacturers, especially the ones based here in the US, but they at least recognized that they have to come to the party with more than one dish, and they do so while still getting to make those halo cars that they love. Dodge went all-in on the meathead market, and now that the well is drying up, they have nothing but products made for people who don’t need to be anywhere near a steering wheel in the first place. And their concepts aren’t inspiring confidence that the brand will exist for much longer.

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And yet the most wrecked “muscle car” in the market continues to be the Mustang…
The Viper’s engine started in the Ram as an alternative to the diesel Cummins. They stretched that thing as far as it could go.
Most cars are 1 trick ponies, it’s the nature of the beast. Teslas handle like barges, sports cars make horrible people movers and muscle cars go in a straight line (for the most part). If you want to blame anything, blame SUVs. Sedans are all but extinct for American manufacturers, and the signs on the wall lead to the Camaro and Mustang being next to go. Eventually everything will be a 7 ft. tall 8 passenger EV SUV.

Edit: The NHRA has walked back it’s decision to keep new performance vehicles from competing. I’ve seen many new cars running low 10’s to high 9’s in stock form at the track.

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I disagree. Sports cars are never going away, and the automotive landscape is not going to devolve into a three-row, seven-passenger SUV wasteland enough to make that a reality. What they are powered by and what they are fueled with will change, but that’s largely it as far as seismic shifts in the geography.

The question is who will be there to make the sports cars. Dodge’s problem - and by extension, Stellantis’ - is that they have nothing to offer anyone in the US but simplistic nonsense, unless you’re actually looking for an Alfa Romeo Giulia. Chrysler’s all but underwater, Jeep’s probably the last place you want to look for a reliable SUV, Ram is…well, Ram, and Fiat and Alfa Romeo will never be the draws that the C-suite’s been wanting for years now. They wasted valuable resources pushing the Hellcat motor so hard that they have next to nothing to adapt to changing circumstances. Time that they could have spent working on new platforms, they wasted Hellcatting ALL OF THE THINGS. Now they’re so far behind that it’s questionable if they can recover. Ford and Chevy don’t have that problem. Most other manufacturers don’t really have that problem. That is entirely on the people up there in Auburn Hills.

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Let’s take Porsche, for example. The venerable 911 sold just above 30k units, while the Cayenne more than doubled that at just under 67k units. Even the Macan almost doubled that with more than 59k units. The sports car won’t pull any company out of a sales slump, there isn’t enough of a market for it. In comparison, the total number of 2022 Challengers and Chargers with the Hellcat engine is just over 6,500. That does not include Jeep or Ram, but I can’t imagine it wasn’t stratospheric.

I love the Viper, but even I know when it’s time to take a horse out back and ya’know…

Ford made the GT in very limited numbers, the Corvette is, well, the Corvette and unless a meteor strikes Kentucky, I don’t see that ever ceasing to exist. But the Mustang and the Camaro are in the same position as the Challenger. The more strict emissions standards coming and Ford already played their hand with the “Mach-E”.

Other manufacturers:
Toyota - Pseudo Supra
Nissan - 400Z (still slow, still heavy, still on an aged platform)
BMW - See Toyota
Mercedes - Limited production AMG-GTR/GTS
Porsche - See first paragraph
Ford - Mustang, Mach E (SUV)
Chevrolet - Corvette (Icon of a vehicle, Chevrolet would rather die than stop production)

I won’t bother to include Ferrari, Lamborghini, or other Italians as they are all pretty limited in their production across the board (Yet both Ferrari, Maserati and Lamborghini have or are about to jumped into the SUV ring). Even Aston Martin has an SUV now.

I’m not sure where you going with the “Jeep is not reliable” stuff. The 4.0 straight 6 is bullet proof and is in most of their line up. Maybe you mean the FWD platform Jeeps, which were always trash, even when Daimler had it’s hands in Chrysler/Jeep.

The U.S. isn’t even the top purchaser of SUVs at this point (China being #1).

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Man! Whoever said this never owned a Jeep. I was never a Jeep guy until my wife wanted an SUV. We sat in a Jeep Liberty (what I always considered a fake jeep) at a dealership. When I shut the door, the rock solid thunk it made sold me on the spot. We put 275,000 trouble free miles on that beast. With some off road miles too. Traded it in for a new Jeep Renegade (yes, a Fiat from Italy) and have had the same experience with it as the Liberty. It may be built in Italy (same place as the Liberty V6) but it’s a Jeep through and through. Except for the Ferrari/Chrysler/Hyundai/Fiat designed engine. Yup, the engine is based on Ferrari F1 technology. We will buy another Jeep.

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