In 2020, Dodge announced they’d be producing a very limited number of Hellcat Durangos. You know, the ones that came with the supercharged Hellcat Hemi engine, making 710 horsepower with fat slick-like tires, a mean-sounding exhaust, and a nearly six-figure price tag.

The company wanted it to be rare, so production was limited to just 3,000 units. Probably to justify the average price paid to be around $94,000. But, they sold, with the promise that their SUV would be rare and therefore always worth a lot of money, as Stellantis CEO Tim Kuniskis said.

“When we turn the order books over to the ’22 model year, the Durango Hellcat will be gone. So you’ve only got one shot. The 2021 Durango Hellcat is only a single model-year run, ensuring that it will be a very special, sought-after performance SUV for years to come,” was his exact quote.

So, imagine those owners’ surprise when it was announced that it was returning for another model year in 2023. Now, their SUV is no longer that rare, and they felt cheated. Seven owners called it a “classic bait and switch scheme,” where the main driving force behind the purchase was its rarity.

Dodge isn’t keen on letting the owners win that argument

Owners, though, cited several articles from esteemed automotive publications—like Motor1 and The Drive—that quoted Kuniskis stating several times the SUV would not produced in 2022, and that “competition for those few dealership cars will be fierce.”

They argued those articles, along with the Kuniskis’ official statements, led them to “justify the cost based on the claimed exclusivity, potential collectability, and uniqueness represented by [Dodge].” If there was a second model year to be produced, they said, they wouldn’t have paid the premium for the first one.

The seven owners pulled a quote from Kuniskis from a Motor Authority article saying, “Let’s be honest, it’s a publicly traded company. I have an obligation to the shareholders to make as much money as I can. So how do I look at the shareholders and go ‘Yeah I have 3k people willing to spend 85k for an SUV,’ and I told them sorry, too bad?”

Despite all this, Dodge/Stellantis essentially told the owners that they couldn’t prove they bought the car based on its rarity, or that any marketing campaigns they produced influenced their buying decision, according to the lawsuit documents.

The trail is ongoing, but the owners want to be paid for “damages,” their legal fees paid, and for Dodge to cease production of the new model year. However, Dodge currently lists the 2025 model year of the Durango Hellcat on its website.