Texas cops seize supercharged V8 Dodge Challenger, now it’s a police car

A 2020 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat once used to evade police is now one of the fastest highway patrol cars on the planet.

Police in Texas confiscated a supercharged V8 Challenger used in a car chase – allegedly reaching speeds of up to 258km/h – after it was used in illegal street racing.

The Texas Department of Road Safety says the car’s 6.2-litre supercharged V8 had previously been upgraded by the civilian owner, increasing its power output from approximately 527kW to more than 800kW.

Like a scene out of a Hollywood blockbuster, a judge later awarded the Dodge to the state’s road enforcement agency – with State Troopers now using the Challenger to patrol the highway network in southeast Texas.

While Dubai is known to use hypercars such as the Bugatti Veyron and Lamborghini Aventador as police cars, law enforcement agencies in the US typically make do with the police-pack Dodge Charger sedan, which offers 276kW from its basic V8.

In 2019, Victoria Police began using a BMW M5 for Highway Patrol duties, with the German’s 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8 producing 460kW, and helping to propel the sedan from zero to 100km/h in a claimed 3.3 seconds.

The award for the most powerful cop car in Australia goes to NSW Police, which adopted a 2014 Ford Falcon GT-F – the last model to come from Ford’s performance arm – tuned by Dick Johnson Racing to produce 600kW from its supercharged 5.0-litre V8.