Sports cars and fighter planes elicit a near-identical passion from fans of one or the other, or more often than not, both. They command the same sense of pantomime and a mild sense of danger that comes from pushing a machine to the ragged edge. Nowhere in the world is this more apparent than with a handful of sports cars from across the globe that were given their name in honor of some of our favorite fighter aircraft.
It makes perfect sense to name a hot sports car off a beautiful but deadly fighter plane, the cars we have lined up are proof of this.
Dodge SRT Hellcat/ Grumman Hellcat
It'd be a stretch to say the Dodge Hellcat line of engines and performance vehicles were given their names as a homage to the famed World War Two naval fighter. Still, it's not hard to find similarities between the two. Their respective engines use very similar methods to make gargantuan amounts of power.
In spirit, the 6.2 liter twin-screw supercharged Hemi V8 under the hood of the MoparHellcat line of Sports Cars SUVs, and Trucks is a bit like an automotive successor to old warbirds from seven decades ago. Solving the issue of making gigantic horsepower using lots of cubic inches, forced induction, and very little else
The Grumman F6F Hellcat sported a 2800 cubic inch (46 Liter) 18 cylinder Pratt & Whitney R2800 Double Wasp water injected radial engine with a two-stage supercharger. This monster of an engine made 2,200 horsepower at cruising altitudes where the supercharger worked most effectively.
The latest and greatest version of the Hellcat engine, the "Hellephant" makes an even 1,000 horsepower. Still less than half of what the Grumman Hellcat made taking off from an aircraft carrier in 1944, but plenty enough to gap just about anything at the drag strip.
Triumph Spitfire/Supermarine Spitfire
It's just as easy to find parallels between the all British Triumph Spitfire drop-top sports car and the equally British Supermarine Spitfire World War Two fighter. In a sense, it can be argued that they were basically designed to do the same thing, only one is in the sky and the other on windy country roads. There's almost the sense that Spitfire sports cars could've been made from melted-down old Spitfire fighter planes, especially when they broke down, but let's gloss over that.
Both are relatively lightweight, agile machines that use their agile disposition to gain an advantage. Of course, the puny series of inline four-cylinder engines found in most Triumph Spitfires won't hold a candle to the Rolls-Royce Merlin found in the RAF fighter.
Of course, it was the classic British convertible sports car that became a shining symbol of the United Kingdon after its victory in the War. A victory secured in no small part to the car's namesake in the air.
Ford Mustang/ North American P-51 Mustang
\And now, the one you've probably been waiting for from the very start. It makes sense that the highest selling and well-known American sports car shares a name with one of the most beloved and well-known military planes anywhere in the world. This was no coincidence, the name was meant to give a mystique of high performance and high build quality, traits the first-generation Ford Mustang and P-51 Mustang share in droves.
The P-51 was a bit of a hot-rod of its day, sporting an American-produced version of the same Merlin engine found in the Spitfire, this time build by Packard motor company of Detroit. Of course, the Ford Mustang's seen more performa+nce models than we could effectively list in one sitting.; Most notably though, the Roush tuning company recently released a P51 Ford Mustang with 727 horsepower on tap. That's sure to be a tribute that old warbird fans are appreciative of.
Sources: Roush