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We’re always excited when an automaker announces an interesting new engine, such as the Hurricane inline-six unveiled last spring by Stellantis, the corporate owner of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram. We are also always excited when an automaker tasks its engineers with hopping up said engine. That’s exactly what Dodge told its engineers to do for the 2027 Dodge Charger Super Bee. The “quickest, fastest, and most powerful” member of the internal-combustion Charger family debuted last weekend before the street-legal drag-racing festival known as MotorTrend Roadkill Nights Powered by Dodge, held on a short strip of Woodward Avenue in Pontiac, Michigan.
We sought out Andre Lorico, the chief engineer for the Hurricane engine family, to tell us more about its most powerful member yet. And because this is Woodward Avenue, we also spoke with an experienced tuner, Bryan Kiefer of Kies Motorsports, who modified his 2026 Charger Scat Pack for the strip as part of Dodge’s Grudge Match competition. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Hurricane Standard Output (S.O.). Stellantis was considering both inline- and V-6 options, but ultimately chose the I-6 for its better inherent balance, deciding those benefits outweighed the challenges of packaging a longer engine.Stellantis
At the most basic level, the Hurricane family includes the Standard Output (S.O.) and High Output (H.O.) versions of the engines. (Ram uses the Hurricane name, while Dodge uses “Sixpack.”) Those engines power the Ram 1500 half-ton pickup and the gas-powered Dodge Charger. More specifically, the S.O. powers the entry-level Charger R/T, and the H.O. powers the mid-level model, the Charger Scat Pack. The third Charger model, introduced this past weekend, is the Super Bee. So far, it’s the most powerful Charger with six cylinders and a gas tank, and it features an upgraded version of the H.O. that Lorico referred to as the Track Pack. (The press release doesn’t mention that name.)
Hurricane H.O.Stellantis
It was no coincidence that Lorico’s team chose the H.O. as the engine to hop up for the Super Bee. Though the S.O. and H.O. were developed side by side, they were always designed with different missions in mind: Lorico describes the S.O. as the “all-around engine,” intended to be fuel-economy focused and to make very good horsepower (420) on regular fuel. The performance-focused H.O. was always meant to make high horsepower (550 in the Scat Pack) on premium fuel. As our own Nate Petroelje wrote at the engine’s debut:
“Peak boost from the variant-specific turbos climbs to 26 psi [from 22.4], and there’s a dual-inlet charge air cooler in place of the S.O.’s single-inlet unit. Specific internals, such as the unique cylinder head, forged steel crank, forged steel rods, and forged aluminum-alloy pistons are meant to withstand the added stress that outputs over 500 ponies will require. The H.O. runs dual chain-driven fuel pumps for its injectors vs. the S.O.’s single-chain unit.”
Interestingly, Lorico points out that both S.O. and H.O. fall into the same, stringent emissions category, BIN 30. “Take your standard four-cylinder car that’s driving around; that’ll be [in compliance with] the same emission standard as the Hurricane High Output.” Especially for the Super Bee’s 600-hp mill, that’s most impressive.
© 2026 Stellantis
The hopped-up version of the H.O. in the Super Bee is mainly differentiated by its turbos. Dodge worked with Garrett, the company that supplies the 52- and 54-mm turbos for the S.O. and H.O., respectively, to develop the new, 56-mm units. The difference in boost isn’t that big; the H.O. makes “up to” 30 psi, and the Super Bee makes “over” 30 psi. The difference comes primarily in efficiency. Though the 56mm turbos are “essentially the same form factor,” Dodge and Garrett focused on the internals, specifically the compressor wheel, to create a turbo that could spin up to 200,000 rpm while not getting quite as hot. Turbocharging tech has progressed since the H.O. was originally designed, says Lorico; the shape of the compressor wheel, in particular, “has come a long way.”
If you improve the performance of a turbocharged engine, it’s critical to also improve its cooling system. The Super Bee wears a different front fascia than the Scat Pack, one that increases airflow to the main stack by 30%. We say “main stack” because the Super Bee has a set of auxiliary radiators in the corners of the front fascia. Cooling capacity is up by 50% in the high-temp radiator circuit and over double in the low-temp radiator circuit. That front fascia helps in more ways, too, improving downforce by over 100 pounds at 150 mph and providing dedicated ducts to cool the brakes. Dodge’s engineers also added a thermal wrap to the charge air cooler duct.
© 2026 Stellantis
What’s all that come out to? “The temperatures are lower across the board, and we make a lot more power,” says Lorico. Indeed: The Super Bee’s hotter H.O. makes 600 hp, or fifty more than the Scat Pack’s, and the same amount of torque. That said, the larger Garrett turbos allow the Super Bee’s H.O. to make peak torque earlier than the Scat Pack’s regular H.O.: 400 rpm earlier, or 11.8%, at 3000 rpm. Peak torque is also available 400 rpm later than in the Scat Pack, up to 5900 rather than 5500 rpm. That sustained figure is thanks, in part, to the larger displacement of the turbos, which push 7.5% more air through the engine.
Of course, the performance upgrades don’t stop at the engine. The Super Bee boasts 305-width tires standard (they’re optional on the Scat Pack) and nearly 10% stronger halfshafts to stand up to the extra grip. The 16-inch vented rotors from Brembo are a first for the Sixpack Charger family, one inch larger in diameter than the rotors on the Scat Pack. The brake pad surface is also 27% larger. The battery-electric Charger Daytona Scat Pack is no longer the only variant with adaptive suspension, because the Super Bee has it too, along with springs that are 12% stiffer in front and 6% stiffer in the rear, working in concert with a 20% stiffer rear stabilizer bar.
© 2026 Stellantis
© 2026 Stellantis
So, what’s next for the Hurricane six? It depends on who you ask: the factory, or the aftermarket community. “You see a potential next step with the Jeep out here,” says Ashton Munoz, brand manager for the Charger. He points outside the Dodge hospitality trailer parked next to Woodward, toward the experimental Jeep Trackhawk developed by Stellantis’ SRT performance division. Its H.O. inline-six uses an electric compressor to spool the turbos off-idle to minimize turbo lag, a setup SRT calls eBoost Air. On the Jeep, it adds 90 hp, and that’s apparently nowhere near its limit. Is the system coming to the Charger? As far as the factory is concerned, the next move is up to the in-house performance division, SRT.
We got a glimpse of what the aftermarket can do with the Hurricane six last weekend. Before the lime-green-yellow car drove onto the stage (doing a burnout, obviously), the eight members of Dodge’s Grudge Match competition unveiled their Charger-based builds. In a few hours, they’d all compete against each other on the temporary drag strip on Woodward Avenue. It certainly was a diverse group, including Rob Dahm, who specializes in Lamborghinis and rotary-powered RX-7s, and Dave Sparks, aka Heavy D, founder of Diesel Brothers.
“I thought it was a scam at first,” says Bryan Kiefer, of Kies Motorsports. “They said, ‘Hey Bryan, we want you to build a Dodge race car.” And I thought, I’m a BMW and Porsche shop. There’s no way this is real.”
Once he got on a Zoom call with Dodge and Stellantis leadership, he no longer had such doubts. He grew more curious, in fact, because the engine he’d be modifying was a twin-turbo inline-six, the same configuration as the S58 in his 1400-hp BMW M4. “We build a ton of thousand-horsepower versions of a similar engine. And when we looked at [the Charger’s inline-six], it was funny because it really looks like the same engine, except BMW puts the turbos on the other side.” Indeed, others have pointed out that the bore and stroke of the Stellantis engine are identical to those of BMW’s S- and B-58 engines, variants of which power the 2015–2019 340i and the current M4, respectively. Both the Hurricane/Sixpack H.O. and the S58 also feature closed-deck designs and use a wire-arc cylinder coating in the cylinders to reduce friction.
Dodge doesn’t shy away from the comparison.
Says Munoz: “Our outgoing Charger Challenger, we were heavily compared to Mustang, Camaro, Corvette maybe a little bit. I feel like now today where our car’s at, it’s even harder to say who our competitor is. Some people might compare against the Mustang because they’re equal power levels and they’re kind of like emerging cars. But if you compare on paper, it almost compares to your typical BMW M series or a Mercedes-AMG.”
Surely that comparison is no coincidence. Lorico confirms as much: “We’re looking at them—be silly not to, right? But I don’t think that copying gets you very far either. There are multiple ways to get to the same end goal.”
When he got a close look at the Scat Pack’s engine, Kies saw an immediate differentiator between the Dodge and the BMWs he works on: price point. His shop does a lot of business in Stage 1 tunes, which add 100 hp same-day with tuning and a flex-fuel sensor. “If you come to me with an M3, we can give you a hundred horsepower on 93 [octane]. Or if you want to do like 40% ethanol, I can give you 200 horsepower on the same day on an M3.
“What’s cool about the Dodge is if you can do that, but now at a $58,000 price point, you could say, “Hey, I have a car that’s sub-60 grand, and I can beat Lamborghinis and Ferraris. That’s the dream that we’re trying to help people attain.”
That can’t happen until the industry cracks the Charger engine’s ECU, he points out, something that Dodge did not facilitate for its Grudge Match participants. But it’s likely just a matter of time.
Steven Pham
Kiefer modified his Scat Pack with simplicity and attainability in mind, aiming for an OEM-plus build that other people could easily replicate. (No $20,000 Motec engine computer, for instance.) He started by swapping out the transmission and driveshaft for ones from Pure Stage 1 and from East Coast Driveline. His Charger boasts “first and only set on earth” of Pure turbos for the Sixpack engine, good for up to 700 hp, complemented by Turbosmart blow-off valves that Kiefer’s shop uses on “a ton of BMWs.” An intake manifold, catch can, piggyback tuner, flex-fuel kit, and 1000cc injectors rounded out the engine modifications. He also stripped the interior, pulling about 600 pounds out of the four-door, glass-roof car Dodge provided him.
Kies placed second last Saturday in the Grudge Match competition, losing to O’Malley’s 1000-horsepower, two-door Charger whose build was far more involved than Kiefer’s. For example, O’Malley started by tearing the engine down to the block and crankshaft and rebuilding it with upgraded internals. O’Malley’s Charger boasts a single HPT turbo, billet intake manifold, a Holley fuel system, and a Pure transmission. In the end, his car was fastest on the short, 370-foot drag strip set up on Woodward.
Steven Pham
Is Dodge taking notes? Yes and no. While Lorico is encouraged by seeing his engine handle higher horsepower figures, he acknowledges how hard it is to compare OEM and aftermarket. “To be honest, it’s such a different world. It’s kind of like saying if you didn’t have a budget, would you do things differently? Because there are so many limitations in the production world that they just don’t have.” The main one is emissions: “As we’re trying to increase the power of the engines, we have the emissions limits coming down at the same time.” It’s not unique to Dodge, either; “that’s just the challenge that the entire automotive industry is facing.”
With that context, we can appreciate the Super Bee’s 600-horsepower six not only for its high power and broad torque curve but for its balance between power and compliance. We don’t expect that Dodge is anywhere close to done with the Hurricane six, which is already proving itself highly adaptable and tunable both inside and outside of Stellantis. The platform appears to be doing exactly what Stellantis needed a new engine to do: Take the company into the future.
Steven Pham