2022 Heck-Kitty Redeye

[njsteve]

Originally Posted by Tenney

Hides brake dust when the fridge is runnin' ...

No, the brake dust just makes the black wheels look like fuzzy, black wheels.

[njsteve]

Heading out at zero-dark-thirty tomorrow to get the Heckitty. Picking up my son at college on the way. I got the truck and trailer all ready to go. Fingers crossed!

[njsteve]

Left at 5:15 am and got back to the house at 6:30 PM. Mission successful, including dropping the boy back off at college just in time to get ready for his Saturday night date.

The old 1995 diesel K2500 Suburban ran great and pulled the 1991 Pace trailer just fine. Used around 35 gallons to go 450 miles so that's about 12.85 MPG

I'm exhausted.

Here's couple shots for the moment.

BTW, I learned today that this dealership (Koon Tysons Corner) isn't just the largest Hellcat dealer in the US, they are actually the largest Dodge dealer in the world! I'll post more lot photos tomorrow of all the "ready to deliver" Hellcats that are sitting in what they call their "pit" area. They have a separate off-site lot that serves as a massive staging area for incoming cars. They said that 90% of the cars in their facility are ordered/sold cars.

[scuncio]

Congrats!

[Too Many Projects]

[njsteve]

My son and I just returned from our trip from NJ to VA to pick up the Octane Red with Demonic Red interior Sveltebody. We had a great experience overall. Very professional outfit. No waiting - we had a 10:00 AM appointment and we were moved along the process very rapidly from intake to financing to going over the car's features (in whatever amount of detail you desire). We got there at 9:30 and checked in and then immediately went out to see our car in the "pit area" of the lot, where they have the cars ready for customer pickup, staged and blocked off from theft with a couple of TRX's. Craig came out and humorously chided us for going out of order by looking at the car first but I told him: "You gonna tell a kid on Christmas day that he can't go see his presents and instead had to do his math homework first?"

Koons advertises the 6% below invoice price on their Hellcat Redeyes with the caveat that you lose $1,000 of the 6% if you don't finance through them. This eligible financing is different than the Dodge incentive offered financing such as the current 0% for 36 months offer. The upside is if you take Koons financing you still get to take the Dodge $1000 April rebate in addition, giving you $2,000 off right from the start. Compare this to doing the Dodge 0% offer which loses you both the Koons $1,000 incentive and the Dodge $1000 incentive. Just food for thought. The downside is Koons percentage rates are somewhat less than competitive. But that is irrelevant if you are just going to take the financing to get the extra $1000 and then pay off the loan after the third payment (a requirement specified in the deal)

So I applied for their financing and ended up with a 3.99% offer which isn't very competitive for a person with an 824 FICA score. (I could get a 2.29% at my own bank) This initially didn't make me too happy since I could just as well have paid the car off in full and not financed it. So I brought this up with the finance guy during our checkout and he dropped the 3.99% to 2.67% and said I could finance as much or as little as I wanted, so I paid for 85% of the car with a personal check and took out the financing on the remaining 15% of the price and paid the rest with a check. BTW, if you go through the financing application beforehand, they allow you to pay with a personal check instead of having to bring a certified check with you for an exact amount. (They don't do wire transfers). He also said I could pay off the loan immediately when the first payment is due in June or continue to pay the $184 monthly payment for 60 months. After you do all the paperwork...and I use that "Boomer" term loosely since it is all done digitally now on a giant interactive tabletop with a magnetic pen, you get a dealer logo'd thumbdrive with PDF's of everything on it. They also gave me hard copies at my request, just to humor an old man.

I was quite pleased that they followed most of my crazy requests for:
1) NO FRONT LICENSE PLATE TO BE INSTALLED which I actually put in every single email I sent them with and even wrote it on our purchasing contract. Craig joked at the end when he asked if we wanted him to install the plate bracket now.
2) Saved every piece of inspection paperwork, labels, plastic wrap on the car. They did keep all the paper stuff and labels but didn't save the plastic seat wrap. When I mentioned this, he grabbed the plastic wrap from a nearby just delivered car and put that in my trunk. (I know, I'm crazy but I love all that original shipping stuff for collector value).
3) The car came with two red and one black keyfob (I made sure to ask beforehand after hearing about other dealers "losing" or claiming that only one red key comes with the 2022's - yeah, right!). It also came with the full owner's manual package and fashionable bright red storage pouch.
4) In the trunk were the fancy pedals, the infamous front license plate bracket, and the brake cooling deflectors.
5) An original green "Koons" cardboard file folder to put all my paperwork in and the black plastic pouch that they use at the dealership for keeping track of each car's paperwork and keys - something they normally just throw out.
6) A dealership decal that they don't put on the car and nobody wants but I wanted one for the file just for future collectible value.

The hardest part of the day was loading the car into our old 1991 24" Pace trailer. This car is WIDE. I don’t think a widebody would have fit in the trailer. For comparison, our first gen '93 Viper has 3/4" clearance between the side pipe outlets and the trailer inner fenders. There was maybe 1" to the inner fenders on this car but the entire car is that wide, versus the viper which is much narrower once you get above the side pipe covers. Then came the other hard part - trying to get the hold down straps on the lower control arms without having the straps rub against the belly pan ducting. I had to switch out several strap setups and wrap the strap in towels in that area so the strap wouldn't be sawing away at anything fragile during the trip home. Same thing out back, only this time it was the exhaust pipe that the strap buckles were too close to, so switched out those and also wrapped the sharp areas on the top edges of the stamped steel lower control arm bracket that could have cut into the strap sleeves.

And then I made the mistake of using the key fob to lock the doors before sealing up the trailer and hitting the road. Turns out the alarm system is rather sensitive to movement and bumping, so at our first traffic light we wondered what rude impatient butthead was honking at us...and the figured out it was me, for setting the alarm. So I unlocked the keyfob and no more honking.

The trip was uneventful other than the car being rather heavily loaded. The trailer load was around 500 pounds heavier than my old 1970 426 Hemi Charger I used to haul, and certainly heavier than the Viper. You really knew there was something behind you. I trailer with my old 1995 K2500 6.5 diesel Suburban that I bought new. Got around 12.8 mpg with the old gal.

For your entertainment I thought I post some photos of our car and all the other ones in the pit area for future reference.

BTW, Koons also has a mega-sized Chevy dealership on the same property and had a bunch of new Corvettes being delivered at the same time. I don't know if they do similar deals on those, but I could ask Craig if anyone is interested.

[njsteve]

more lot photos.

[njsteve]

BTW, the cars you see with their dealer logo plates on them are trade-ins and used cars that appeared to already have had a front plate attached beforehand.

My son also took a bunch of photos and we shall see if he wakes up sometime before dinner to read my text and send them to me.

[Too Many Projects]

After seeing the side-by-side pics, I don't care for the wide bodies. They don't look as svelte, as your style.

[njsteve]

Yes, 4 out of 5 enthusiasts with taste prefer the Svelte body to the Rubenesque body.