Love the Jeep Gladiator but wish it had more power? Well, you're not alone. And you could be in luck because this turnkey 2020 Gladiator with a full Hellcat swap can be yours for about $150,000.
Sure, that might seem steep, but this fully converted Gladiator at a dealership in Phoenix has everything you could want in a Hellcat swap. This is no shade-tree hack job. It's clean, mean, and very well thought out.
Jeep engineers have acknowledged that there's more than enough room to physically fit a 6.2-liter supercharged Hellcat V-8 into the engine bay of the Gladiator, but the company can't build it due to crash structure clearance issues. However, this swap is concrete proof that it can be done with OEM fit and finish.
The fabrication and wiring of the 707-horsepower V-8 installation look like factory efforts. The only obvious give-away is the mount for the Hellcat's air intake, which also houses the ECU and wiring harness interface.
The Hellcat is mated to an 8-speed automatic transmission, and the Wrangler's stock four-wheel drive system is retained. An off-road suspension from Terraflex and Falcon teams with a Yeti track bar to replace the OEM hardware at the corners. The work was finished with 22-inch wheels wrapped in 37-inch Nitto Grappler tires.
Since the Dodge Charger and Challenger SRT Hellcat models debuted in 2015, just about every enthusiast-oriented vehicle in the Mopar lineup has received an engine swap from the muscular pair.
In fact, this isn't even the first Hellcat engine that has been swapped into a Gladiator. In May, Dynatrac Products showed off a two-door Gladiator Hellcat at Overland Expo in West Flagstaff, Arizona (sensing a pattern?), getting Jeep fans hyped for both two-door Gladiator conversions and Hellcat power at the same time.
Jeep may not be able to build a Hellcat-powered Gladiator, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy these projects when they come along.
