New 426 Hellephant A30: Beefed Up, Stronger—and Closer to a Production Car
Dodge just quietly did the one thing that matters more than hype: they fixed the foundation. The revised A30 Hellephant (426ci) drops with exactly the sort of upgrades you’d make if your goal was a production engine—yes, a path to street-legal duty. I said we’d see a “Hellephant” engine announcement this week; it landed a day early, and the changes line up perfectly with it going inside of a production vehicle.
This isn’t a cosmetic refresh. It strengthen the weak points we’ve covered with the 6.2L Hellephant that is in the 2023 Dodge demon 170. When you connect that to what we have seen being updated with this Hellephant A30 426 engine, I think the stars are starting to align for a future halo vehicle getting a new and bigger Hellephant.
What Dodge changed—and why it matters
Dodge didn’t just polish a spec sheet; they reworked the hard parts that keep engines alive at 1,000 horsepower. Headline items:
- Newly designed GEN III aluminum HEMI engine block includes select six-bolt main metal caps for added strength and precision CNC torque plate honed cylinders
- All-new, high-performance, 4340 forged-steel, eight-counterweight crankshaft with gun drilled mains and lightened rod journals
- All-new, high-performance, 4340 forged-steel, H-beam connecting rods, with increased cross-sectional thickness for strength and ARP 2000 bolts
- Upgraded IHI 3.0L twin-screw supercharger and New Litens high-performance, lightweight billet supercharger belt tensioner
That is not “marketing.” That’s exactly the checklist you hit when you’ve logged failures, torn down motors, and looking to fix what was broken. Given what many Demon 170 owners have quietly dealt with, this is the right response: reinforce the engines in the Hellephant family so it can handle the abuse owners throw at it—on E85, on sticky prep, in heavy cars—and do it while still looking like a warranty-able product.
The big tell: production intent
Ask yourself the simple question: if this were “just” a race-only crate motor, why go back and revise the block again? Why spend money on new crank/mains geometry, revise rods, and rethink blower? You do that when you want consistency across thousands of engines, not dozens. You do that when you’re thinking about model-year support, running changes, and consumer protection. You do that when you know the halo program needs no more questions about reliability with the engines in the Hellephant family.
With the regulatory climate loosening versus two years ago, the path for a limited-run street Hellephant looks better than it has any time since 2018. We already lived the “race-only” label being on the Hellephants and automotive journalist saying those engines will never be in production vehicles. The C170 architecture made it from the “race-only” label in the Direct Connection catalog to the Demon 170.
Where I think this goes (and when)
Short version: Dodge is setting up a final-form Demon inside the next 3–4 years using this reinforced 426 as the anchor. Call it Demon 426, Demon Aluminum—whatever. The point is the architecture now looks ready to carry warranty-grade power without repeating the early-run headaches.
And it won’t be one-and-done. Once you harden a 426 foundation that survives durability testing, you can scale it:
- Charger/Cuda halo: limited allocations, E85 calibration, 1,000+ hp headline.
- Ram TRX baja-oriented special: think ultimate offroad truck with a ton of power.
- Durango 426: 426 Hemi in an SUV to make it the ultimate famil hauler.
Will all of those happen? No promises. But now they’re possible, and that’s the point.
Bottom line
The revised 426 Hellephant A30 isn’t just a louder number. It’s a stronger block, stiffer bottom end, tougher rods, and a smarter blower drive—i.e., the ultimate version of the motor we all wanted in 2019. With CAFE fines set to $0 and CARB getting weaker and weaker everyday, the 426 Hellephant is looking more and more like we will see it able to go inside a production car. With these upgrades to an engine that wasn’t sold in massive numbers, I would bet these updates are to place it in production vehicles but not to have the same engine issues the Demon 170 had when it launched. With Dodge being proactive rather than reactive, I think the next halo vehicle will be totally fine when it finally gets revealed and hopefully with a 426 Hellephant V8
