Hellcat-powered Miata headed to Barrett-Jackson

If you’ve got a stack of tires that needs to be turned into smoke one pair at a time, we’ve got the car for you: a Hellcat-swapped Miata with most of a 6.2-liter Hemi under the hood. In true hot rod fashion, this car shows off the supercharged savagery with a huge hole cut in the hood—because if you’ve got 683 horsepower churning the tires, you might as well show it off, right? The Hellcat’s top-mounted charge cooler isn’t as impressive as an injector scoop atop a Roots blower, but the results are pretty much the same, and since it’s a Miata, it’s no less shocking.

Available at the Las Vegas Barrett-Jackson event scheduled for October 3–5, the 1999 Miata backs the Hemi V-8 with a Tremec TR-6060 six-speed manual transmission, just like the one you’d find behind a Hellcat V-8 in a Challenger. The car includes such race car amenities as a roll bar, RaceQuip harnesses, and aluminum door panels. It also comes with some good ol’ shade-tree fabrication by way of a Lincoln locker in the Ford 8.8 rear axle to ensure that both rear tires go up in smoke equally.

After all of the parts stripping, reinforcing, and swapping, the curb weight of the iron-block V-8 Miata only increased by 260 pounds. Incredible.

The Miata was featured on the Hoonigan Daily Transmission, and a dyno video by VMP Performance. While it seems like it’s perfectly happy street driving just like any other Hellcat, it’s real strength is doing donuts and immolating tires. Any prospective buyer can see that this car was built to be driven hard and that most of the mileage this drop-top has seen since the swap was completed this summer has been racked up while it was going sideways. Even without any video proof, what else could you possibly think this car was for?

We are left wondering if there’s a Miata-powered Challenger somewhere in the world, struggling to merge onto the highway but hitting apexes with fluid precision. Let’s hope not.