You Can Buy A Hellcat-Baiting 717bhp Ford Mustang For Under $40k

At just over $60,000 giving you 697bhp (or 707hp, to give it the more famous figure), the Dodge Challenger Hellcat offers an absurd amount of power for the price. But, both the Challenger ‘Cat and its Charger sibling have been well and truly trumped in the bang for buck stakes thanks to a Ford dealer in Ohio.

The dealer in question is Lebanon Ford, which will sell you a Mustang with a Roush Stage 2 supercharger for the low, low price of $39,995. Yep, a shade under $40,000 for a car with 717bhp, a greater output than the $20,000+ more expensive Hellcat. Suddenly, that bang for buck phrase we chucked around earlier doesn’t seem quite adequate enough to describe such a performance bargain.

The guys at The Drive were taken aback by the price enough to give Charlie Watson - Roush parts manager at the dealer - a call to see how they’ve managed it. It turns out the dealer is just able to get the cars put together while still making a very small profit, and the management are happy to drastically slim down the margins on these cars in order to “focus on establishing a nationwide base of enthusiasts rather than making huge profits on each car,” as Watson explains.

It’s worth pointing out though that most customers don’t just drop down $40k on the base car and leave it like that, with $45-50,000 being a more common price once extras like beefier brakes (probably a good idea), durability upgrades and cosmetic changes are added. Some have even been optioned up to the $60,000 mark, but that’s still less than a Dodge Hellcat.

If there’s a new car which gives you more HP per dollar, it certainly doesn’t spring to my mind. Can you name a car that can beat this in terms of performance car value for money?