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 in 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 weekend 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.
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