The 2024 Roadkill Nights Grudge Match was the first to feature the Hurricane inline-six engine that will soon power the 2025 Dodge Charger Six Pack. A handful of teams built the vehicle of their choice around the high-output, twin turbocharged 3.0-liter I6 and among them was the Dodge Dakota of Allison Kovalik. Kovalik lost in the semifinals of the Roadkill Nights Grudge Match, but since then, she has continued to work on her Hurricane-powered Dakota. Her efforts, and those of her Gen 2 Garage team, have lead to her Dodge pickup being the very first vehicle in the world to run a 9-second quarter-mile with the new Hurricane engine platform.
Tom Bailey, who also competed in the 2025 Roadkill Nights Grudge Match in a Hurricane-powered Mexican market Dodge Ramcharger, recently held his popular Sick Week drag-and-drive event in which Allison Kovalik campaigned two vehicles. One was a 1967 Dodge Dart with a 340-cubic-inch small block and the other is her 1999 Dodge Dakota, which was the vehicle that her and her team built for 2025 Roadkill Nights. Allison drove the Dakota while her mom and dad, Tiffaney and Jeff, drove the Dart, with both vehicles making strong runs at all five stops, with her Hurricane-powered Dakota turning in an average elapsed time of 10.34 and an average speed of 127.2 miles per hour.
Those averages allowed her 1999 Dodge pickup to finish 8th in the Sick Week Freaks class, but more importantly, during the stop at South Georgia Motorsports Park on the Sick Week trail, Allison Kovalik became the first person in the world to run a 9-second quarter-mile with a Hurricane twin turbo inline-six engine. To be more specific, Kovalik ran a 9.98 at 132.83 miles per hour, with a 1.611 60-foot time and a 6.373 8th mile at 111.41 miles per hour. Now, some of you are likely reading this and thinking that she got into the 9s by adding gobs of power, but the most surprising aspect of this story is that the 3.0-liter engine under the hood of her Dakota is still using all stock engine and transmission components.
This 1999 Dodge Dakota features Strange front and rear disc brakes, Strange axles, QA1 adjustable shocks, a Tin Soldier rear end housing, an AEM dash cluster from Holley and a Summit water pump to ice tank system to better cool the intercooler. The engine and transmission are both stock, but the engine has been tuned using a standalone system and the Gen 2 Garage team has added a 50-shot of nitrous, but the turbochargers, all of the engine internals and the transmission torque convertor are all stock. The Hurricane high-output engine is officially rated at 550 horsepower and the truck has not been on a dyno, between the tuning efforts and the small nitrous shot, this truck is likely making somewhere in the area of 600-700 wheel horsepower. When coupled with the other upgrades mentioned above, that was enough power to make this Dakota the world’s first 9-second Hurricane-powered vehicle.
It should be noted that this was her first time using the nitrous oxide and the team was not sure how the truck would handle that, so Kovalik only sprayed in second, third and fourth gear. Also, she is launching with no boost, but she is currently shopping for a new torque convertor that will allow her to leave with more engine RPM and more boost. Between the added boost on launch and fine tuning of the nitrous system, Kovalik and her Dakota could be the first to the 8s as well.
Allison Kovalik wanted to thank her dad, Jeff Kovalik, and her boyfriend, Tommy Hoskinson, for the help in building this truck for Roadkill Nights. She also wants to thank Tony Politano of AV Boys for providing the nitrous setup and for helping the team get the setup installed and working on the last day of Sick Week, as the record run would not have happened without him. Finally, she credits Summit Racing, Holley, Tin Solider Race Cars, Mancini Racing, Nitrous Express and Strange for the items that they provided for this build.
We will likely see more 9-second Hurricane vehicles once the new Dodge Charger Six Pack has reached owners, but Allison Kovalik will forever be the first person to run in the 9s with this new engine architecture. They chronicled the entire event in the latest Gen 2 Garage video, check it out now!
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