What does it take to make a Jeep Grand Cherokee faster than pretty much any production car you can buy? Before we answer that question, you’ll notice we said pretty much any production car. That’s because this Hennessey-tuned Grand Cherokee Trackhawk recorded a quarter-mile time of 9.66 seconds, which stalwart fans of the Dodge Challenger Demon will note is precisely one hundredth (yes, hundredth) of a second slower than the factory-built muscle car. Sorry Hennessey, you’ve completely failed. And for the record, yes that’s tremendous sarcasm on our part.

Folks, this is a freaking Jeep Grand Cherokee – a portly SUV weighing over 5,300 pounds (2,404 kilograms), outfitted with seating for five and enough cargo capacity for a week-long cross-country camping trip. Conveniently, it also has room to haul a set of drag radials to the track, and you’ll need them to get the most from this insane animal. That’s part of the answer to our question above, and here’s the other part: The Hennessey-tuned Jeep produces 1,200 horsepower (895 kilowatts) from its already-potent Hellcat V8 engine.

Mind you, getting that kind of power from the engine isn’t just a simple case of cranking up the boost. Hennessey basically replaces all the internals including the pistons, connecting rods, and camshaft. The cylinder heads are ported. Long-tube headers are added. A bigger supercharger is bolted on. 109-octane racing fuel is added. A new engine calibration is plugged in, and then the boost is turned up – specifically to 22 pounds. Yikes.

To help get that power to the ground, Hennessey also adds a special system to disable the Jeep’s all-wheel-drive allowing drivers to do massive burnouts heat up the rear tires for maximum grip off the line. All-wheel drive is then put back in play for the run.

Still, even with grippy rubber at all four corners and 2.5 tons of Jeep pushing down on the prepped track, this Trackhawk still experienced a bit of slip off the line. That didn’t stop it from cutting a 1.5-second 60-foot time, or hitting 60 mph in 2.3 seconds. The speedometer in the Jeep reads 150 mph at the end of the run, though the official speed through the trap was 145.49 mph.

If you crave such a crazy SUV, Hennessey will sell you an HPE1200 Trackhawk for the cool price of $179,000. Better hurry though, because only 24 are planned for production.

Source: Hennessey Performance