For a while now I’ve been pondering what to do with the Hellcat…
See, it’s not exactly ‘practical’ – it’s exceptionally weather-adverse and that means for a decent portion of the year it hides in the garage and is undrivable.
Even on dedicated winter tires and in eco-mode, where it’s limited to 500 horsepower and starts off in second gear, I essentially drift it to work and back if the pavement is cold and / or wet.
For the last few years this hasn’t been a problem because my roommate worked at the same place and had his Ram Rebel 4wd truck – so I’d just ride with him… But with the whole blind-thing and him selling the truck, I’m looking at a long, hard winter of either $50 a day Uber rides or taking the bus.
So I started looking at getting a second car; the proverbial AWD “beater” that I could drive on the off-days… Unfortunately, these days a shitbox Subaru with 190,000 miles on the clock is about $10,000, The tags / title on another car is expensive, and then there’s the insane cost of insurance these days – a second car would put me in the neighborhood of $5000 a year.
So – as much as I disliked the idea – I started looking at replacing the Hellcat with something else…
Initially I was looking at high-performance SUVs – but those are pushing $100,000 now. Then I looked at new AWD commute-appliances and, while I could afford one, I just couldn’t stomach the ‘formless blob’ nature of them – they all look identical, have zero personality, and have all of the rough edges sanded down to where they’re a perfect sphere…
And right when I was about to give up and just pay Uber, my CFO showed up in his wife’s new 2026 Tesla Model Y and, for the fist time, I got to ride in one.
I’m still not sold on the full self-drive – which seems to work really well – but I like driving a car around and have no real interest in being a passenger.
Anyway, the Model Y was pretty nice and even in it’s base configuration was plenty zippy – so I decided to give Tesla a more serious look.
Then a buddy of mine, a hardcore Corvette guy, sold his 2022 2LT Stingray and bought a Tesla Model 3 performance – because it was faster and handled better!?
So he spent a week proselytizing the virtues of electric at me until I gave in and signed up for an extended test drive…
And a week ago I started the process of trading the Hellcat for a 2026 Tesla Model 3 Performance. And after a week of arguing with that stupid app-based sales system Tesla uses (I actually wrote up two showstopper bugs just getting to the finance portion of the process), yesterday I signed the papers on the deal.
This is the first car I’ve ever custom ordered, and accordingly it has to be built and delivered – so I won’t actually get it for 4-6 weeks.
I still don’t want to trade in the Hellcat – it’s kind of a dream car for me – but life, as usual, has decided things for me… The Model 3 shouldn’t be too much of a step back though as it has the same performance characteristics even if it doesn’t have the same ‘soul’. So while it doesn’t shake like a caged animal, make violent engine noises, or have that high-octane smell – it’s at least fast.
Up-sides are that the Model 3 is okay to use in the winter and the silent nature means I don’t have to wait until 7am on weekdays or 10am on weekends to start it and drive away. The creature comforts are pretty nice as well – the stereo in the Model 3 is unbelievably good, which is compounded by the silence of the drivetrain…
It’s not the best possible outcome for the problem, but I think I’ll be okay with it over time.
Leave a Reply