For Five Bucks More Than a Nissan Leaf, You Can Get a Hellephant Instead

Apparently, today is Hemi Day in our vast autoverse, though Twitter tells me it’s also Lesbian Visibility Day, while Wikipedia informs me that John Wilkes Booth was shot through the neck in a Virginia farmhouse on this day in 1865.

But yes, Hemi Day. April 26th … 4/26. Get it?

Appropriately, Fiat Chrysler waited for choose this calendar date to open pre-orders for its monstrous “Hellephant” 426 crate engine, a 1,000-horsepower, 950 lb-ft beast of an powerplant designed to turn your pre-1976 Mopar into an object of fear and testosterone-fueled lust. It now has a price tag.

Officially named the Mopar “Hellephant” 426 Supercharged Crate HEMI Engine, the retro-themed tribute mill can be had for $29,995, which happens to be just five dollars more than the pre-destination price of an electric Nissan Leaf S.

Oddly, just last night a friend was mulling the feasibility of shoehorning an 8.0-liter Magnum V10 into a Leaf out of spite for the green crowd.

Available starting today via the Mopar brand’s crate engine site, the engine pairs with a $2,265 plug-and-play kit containing: a powertrain control module (PCM), power distribution center, engine wiring harness, chassis harness, accelerator pedal, ground jumper, oxygen sensors, charge air temperature sensors, fuel pump control module, and CAN bus interface device.

The Hellephant sits atop of mountain of muscle in the Mopar catalogue. Beneath it resides the 707 hp, 6.2-liter Hellcrate motor, a recent option for enlivening tired old iron. With the new 426, the company borrowed valve covers from the Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Redeye and a valve train from the Demon, then mated the all-aluminum engine with an improved supercharger. Metric displacement is a bored-and-stroked 7.0 liters.

Of course, the expense in replacing that smog-strangled 318 doesn’t end there. You might want that front end accessory drive kit, exhaust manifold kit, rear sump oil pan kit, and oil filter adaptor. Maybe a Tremec transmission, too.

Should you choose to drop money on the Hellephant, just know that you can’t boast of those 1,000 horses without 93-octane gas.

[Image: Fiat Chrysler Automobiles]