Dodge's 750-HP Manual Charger Drift Cars Carve Up Laguna Seca

The Boost Coupe and the "Rapid People Mover" drift taxi make their West Coast debut at GRIDLIFE Laguna Seca — and Dodge is handing out ride-alongs in 550-hp Scat Packs while they're at it.

The two most unlikely Chargers ever built just crossed the country. Starting today, Dodge's pair of SIXPACK-powered Charger Scat Pack drift cars — co-created with Hemmings and Suppy's Garage — are turning laps at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca for the GRIDLIFE Laguna Seca Festival, running Friday through Sunday, September 18–20.

It's the first time the cars have run west of the Mississippi, and the first real test of whether a manual-swapped, rear-drive, 750-horsepower inline-six Charger can win over a crowd that didn't grow up on Hemi V8s.

Two cars, two very different jobs

Both builds started life as pre-production 2026 Charger Scat Packs — the 550-hp, twin-turbo 3.0-liter SIXPACK H.O. models — before Dodge handed them to Hemmings Director of Programming Mike Musto and fabricator Suppy Wejpanich with a 60-day deadline.

The Charger BOOST Coupe is the hero car: a two-door, single-turbo weapon running a Turbosmart high-output setup in place of the factory twins. It's the purist's pick — the serious, pro-spec drift build.

The Charger RPM — short for "Rapid People Mover" — is the four-door, and it's arguably the smarter marketing move. Dodge built it as a drift taxi, caged and set up to carry passengers sideways at full tilt. A four-door drift taxi is a genuinely odd thing to exist, which is exactly why it travels well on a phone screen.

What both cars share is the hard part. Each was converted from the factory's AWD, eight-speed-automatic layout to rear-wheel drive with a GForce dogbox manual — making them, per Dodge, the first manually shifted SIXPACK-powered Chargers anywhere. On top of that: full roll cages, custom steering and pedal assemblies, rear-mounted radiators, quick-change rear-end work, and drift-spec brake and safety systems. These are not wrapped show cars.

Who's driving

Pro drifters Corey "The Boss" Hosford and Micah Diaz are behind the wheels, reprising the roles they played at the cars' public debut at Roadkill Nights Powered by Dodge at M1 Concourse in Pontiac, Michigan, on August 7. Laguna Seca gives them a considerably more serious canvas — and a full-course drift format rather than a drag-strip-adjacent pad.

Per GRIDLIFE's official Guide to the Grid, full-course drift sessions are slotted throughout all three days, with roughly four windows per day. Friday's run near 10:20 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 2:00 p.m. and 4:40 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday follow a similar rhythm, with Sunday closing on an extended 4:05–4:30 p.m. session. Times shift with any on-track incident, so treat them as guidance rather than gospel.

You can ride, too

Dodge is running Thrill Rides from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day in 550-hp Charger Scat Packs, alongside a static display of the current lineup. These activations are typically first-come, first-served and the line builds fast — showing up early in the day is the practical play.

The car underneath it all

For context on how much was changed, here's the production Scat Pack the drift cars were carved out of:

Spec	2026 Charger Scat Pack SIXPACK H.O.
Engine	3.0L twin-turbo "Hurricane" inline-six
Output	550 hp / 531 lb-ft
Peak boost	30 psi
Turbos	Twin 54 mm Garrett GT2054
Transmission	8-speed automatic
Drivetrain	AWD with selectable RWD mode
0–60 mph	3.9 sec
Quarter mile	12.2 sec
Top speed	177 mph
Starting MSRP	$54,995 (plus $1,995 destination)

Below it sits the Charger R/T with the 420-hp SIXPACK S.O. at $49,995. The drift cars are up around 750 hp — roughly a 36 percent jump over stock, achieved largely through boost and turbo architecture changes rather than displacement.

The subtext

Dodge doesn't build a four-door drift taxi by accident. The new Charger's move from V8 to turbocharged inline-six remains the most litigated decision in modern Mopar history, and factory-backed builds like these are a direct answer to it: proof that the platform will do things a V8 Challenger never really could — namely rev, rotate, and hold a manual.

Enthusiast coverage has been broadly favorable. MoparInsiders framed the pair as evidence the SIXPACK Charger can be pushed past straight-line, AWD-launch duty. The Hemmings/Suppy's Garage nine-episode build series has done the heavier lifting on credibility, documenting the manual swap (Ep. 2), the cage and turbo work (Ep. 3), the dyno and first track test (Ep. 5), and the Roadkill Nights debut (Ep. 7) — with view counts in the five figures on the strongest episodes.

Community sentiment is more split than the press coverage suggests. The recurring themes: real enthusiasm for the manual/RWD spec, genuine respect for the depth of the fabrication, and a persistent contingent of V8 loyalists for whom no amount of boost settles the argument. Laguna Seca — a road course crowd, not a drag crowd — is a reasonable place to test which group is louder.

GRIDLIFE Laguna Seca Festival runs September 18–20 at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, 1021 Monterey-Salinas Highway, Salinas, California.