Ferocious Feline Bound for the Dodge Durango Den?

It seems Dodge, the most flag-wavingly patriotic of all domestic brands, may have something fearsome in store for its aging Durango SUV.

Amid a flurry of Super Bowl ad spots Sunday night, Dodge offered up an orgy of tire-smoking horsepower and Vin Diesel, no doubt prompting its viewership to immediately envision themselves tearing up the local soccer field under the cover of darkness. But did it also offer up a clue?

Again, it seems so, as the spot — titled Dodge House of Power — shows a Hellcat logo pasted to the front fender of a vehicle with unusually tall flanks. No Challenger or Charger, this.

In the screengrab seen above, the wheel arch and fender crease are clearly that of the Durango, which has been luring buyers away from more sedate crossovers for years. The following scene featuring a Durango powering past the camera seems to confirm this. And is that hood scoop just a bit wider than the SRT model’s? Hard to tell.

The current-gen Durango entered production at the tail end of 2010, making it an ancient entry in the marketplace — but a fairly youthful member of the Dodge household. It’s also no stranger to power. Hemi V8s lurk beneath the hood of the R/T and SRT models, but the model has so far avoided the hottest of Dodge’s V8s: the 6.2-liter supercharged V8 found in the Charger and Challenger SRT Hellcat. That mill also found a home in the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk.

Making 707 horsepower in its most tepid form, the monster powerplant’s inclusion would be a good way to stimulate interest in an aging vehicle. It’s also been Dodge’s go-to tactic for years.