I don’t normally get very sentimental about a car – but walking away from the Hellcat for the last time today hit me pretty hard… A bit like trading in a beloved family pet.
I spent so many years angling to acquire that car…
I wanted a Challenger back in 2008 when the new body style was announced, and then in 2015 when the Hellcats were announced I really started working towards one. Then, in May of 2024, I was successful in snagging a beautiful 2017 example with a mere 25,000 miles on it…
What followed was lots of car meets, weekends under the car or under the hood spinning wrenches, amazing road trips, and getting to see people’s expressions light up when they saw it.
Damn I’m going to miss that car… Though listening to the lot-apes at the Tesla delivery center race around in it as I pulled away in the Tesla did bring a smile.
So – here it is.
Yes. It’s fast. Really fast… But it’s also a genuinely nice car and has nice road manners.
I did just enough setup at the delivery center to get it on the road as I needed to be back at the office ASAP – and I let it use FSD on the way back.
FSD is still uncanny, but I’m getting used to it
As soon as I got back to the office my HR director walked in and started asking questions; he’d never been in a Tesla, let alone a new one with the hotrod motor in it, and was “Tesla Curious”.
As luck would have it, while we were talking I got a request from a PM for a new Roku for a project, so my HR director and I piled into the Model 3 and I made for Microcenter a few miles away.
The trip there was full manual so I could show off just what I meant by ‘it’s fast’, which led to a couple of “HOLY SHIT!” moments.
Then on the way back to the office I just “Hey Grok, take me to work.” and the car simply started moving all by itself…
FSD nowadays is super smooth and drives just like a person, and he was mesmerized by it. As we got up on I-225 and were moving along with the flow of traffic at about 70 mph, he asked, “So, what’s it do with the unexpected? Like, what happens if someone does something boneheaded?”
Before I could answer, the universe decided to demonstrate as the still-on-temp-tags white Subaru Forester next to the driver’s door just suddenly drifted into our lane. The Tesla apparently knew this was coming as it had already slowed slightly to match speed with the gap in the cars in the lane to our right, signaled, and moved over to avoid the Subaru.
All automatically with no jerkiness or hesitation. Just a smooth avoidance of someone too busy playing with all of the toys they put in a car these days to stay in their lane.
I simply looked over at him, hands in my lap, and said “That…”
We laughed the rest of the way back to the office.
Now I get to spend the rest of the evening out in the new car pressing all of the buttons – and there’s a shit-ton of buttons…
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