I finally had my first encounter with another performance vehicle out on the road

I'm at a red light, in the right of two lanes. The right lane ends about 1/4 mile after the intersection. There's a car beside me, and a modern Dodge Challenger behind me. Light turns green, and I accelerate normally, but faster than the car beside me, because I want to make sure I'm ahead enough to merge out of my lane before it ends without being a dick and cutting this other car off.

I notice that the Challenger is staying very close to my rear bumper, probably waiting for enough gap between me and the car that was next to me so he can change lanes and pass me. I shift into 2nd at a fairly normal RPM because I'm not showing off at this point.

Then I see the Challenger make his move. I see an aggressive lane change and hear the Hemi start to roar a bit. No time to downshift at this point, so I just step on the throttle in 2nd, but I'm not quite up to the RPM where full boost kicks in. The driver of the Challenger must have noticed I suddenly started accelerating more, because I then heard the Hemi transition to full roar, and the Challenger lunged forward.

Right as the Challenger gets beside me, I transition to full boost. Couldn't have timed it more perfectly if I tried. Next thing I know, I'm several car lengths ahead of the Challenger, can still hear the Hemi roaring, but he's still falling back. I also notice at this point that I'm now going faster than I would prefer, and my lane is going to end soon, so I merged over and let off the gas to coast down to to more appropriate speed.

The Challenger quickly catches up to me just as the right lane ends, and rides my rear bumper for a few seconds. Then he aggressively passes me at full throttle, flips me the bird, and speeds excessively up to the next red light. I had not cut him off, blocked him from changing lanes, or anything else rude. His rude gesture can only be the result of being a sore loser.

I thought that was the end of it, but I was wrong. It turns out that "sore loser" is an understatement for this guy...

He stops at the red light way ahead of me, but I can see he keeps inching forward, trying to get a jump on the green light. As I approach, he just takes off, running the red light before it was even close to changing (cross street still had a green light).

There's another red light just about 1/8 mile ahead with two lanes now. This time he actually comes to a complete stop, but at a slight diagonal,partially occupying both lanes. I guess he really didn't want me to pull up beside him.

I was actually going to be turning right at that intersection anyway, so I slowly/carefully squeezed past him, stopped, checked to make sure traffic was clear, and proceeded with my turn (right turn on red is legal here). The driver of the Challenger sat still, hands on the wheel, facing straight forward the whole time.

I hope he's still trying to figure out wtf happened. I wonder if he could hear the turbo, or just watched me quietly pull away with my stock exhaust.


Unfortunately, I forgot to check for badging to see if it was an R/T or SRT. I did some simple math based on dyno results I have found for Challengers and the difference in curb weight between them and my Jeep (Challenger is 400 lbs heavier than my Jeep!), along with Prodigy's recent 380 whp claim, to determine how the power:weight ratio compares.

Newer 6.4 SRT: Nearly identical power:weight ratio (I have 3% advantage). This car was definitely not a 6.4 SRT, unless he never really went full throttle near the beginning, or else it would have initially blown past me, then I would have just barely maintained the gap between us as I transitioned to full boost.

Older 6.1 SRT: Actually has nearly identical peak hp/tq numbers at the wheels, but due to weight difference, I have an 11% advantage in power:weight. This might be a possibility. He was definitely quickly gaining on me before my boost kicked in. An 11% advantage would definitely allow me to keep increasing the lead as long as I was in the upper RPM range, but I'm not sure if an 11% advantage is enough to let me increase the lead as quickly as I did. Really hard to tell.

5.7 R/T: I have a 30% advantage in power:weight! That could make sense too. It seems like that big of an advantage would have put me further ahead more quickly, but I could be wrong.


Wish I would have looked for the badge. Oh well. It was thoroughly entertaining and made me smile for the rest of the day.