The hits just keep on coming with respect to the ADRL’s new SuperCar Showdown category. We’ve been unabashed fans of this whole thing since the initial announcement and we continue to be more and more jacked up about with with each passing release. We told you that Chris Holbrook is loaded up for bear in his Cobra Jet and now word comes in from bayou country that Jeff Teuton will be showing up with two Challengers in Houston. One of the cars will have the 6.4L Hemi V8 in it and will be piloted by stand out Stock and Super Stock racer Kevin Helms and the other will be driven by Teuton hisself and that one will be powered, we believe, by the 850hp, 512ci, V10 engine that Mopar rolled out at the SEMA and PRI shows late last year.

Teuton is a legend in his own right, having won piles of trophies and accolades during his long career and he has been working with Mopar on the Drag Pack Challengers, especially this V10 version since early 2011. Thinking back to the staging lanes at Capitol Raceway in Baton Rouge, Louisiana last February during the IHRA Nitro Jam, we spied a V10 drag pack Challenger from the Teuton sitting in the staging lanes one night. That may have been the first one ever, which Teuton says now resides in his Louisiana dealership showroom. He’ll be racing the third one ever produced at Houston.

In the release you will read below, Teuton is a bit coy when talking about the power output of the V10 that will send the car hurtling down the strip. Since we KNOW that all three manufacturers have been involved in bringing this thing to life and they will all be watching closely, there is not a chance in hell that Mopar would send anything but the heaviest piece of iron in the arsenal to match up in Houston.

BangShift will be there in Houston covering this race and we promise to bring you bleeding edge coverage of the SuperCar Showdown during the event!

Here’s the full release from the ADRL –

Jeff Teuton has accomplished nearly every drag racing goal in a career which spans more than a half-century but he plans to make a huge statement when Teuton debuts the first Dodge Challenger with a V-10 powerplant to compete in the American Drag Racing League’s highly anticipated new SuperCar Showdown division.

Moreover, the Houma, Louisiana, veteran has announced two entries from his Southland Dodge dealership’s racing team for the season-opening CarSafe Automotive Repair Protection Dragpalooza VIII, to be held at Royal Purple Raceway in Baytown, Texas, on March 30-31, 2012.

“We’re going to run the V-10 and a 6.4-liter V8-powered Challenger at the first race”, said Teuton, fresh from a semi-final finish in national competition at an event in Florida in the same Dodge Challenger, a 6.1-liter version, which he wheeled to victory at the NHRA U.S. Nationals last September.

Teuton’s dealership, which has offered many of the Chrysler Corporation’s most powerful vehicles for forty-five years, received the prototype of the 512 cubic inch, 8.4-liter V-10 Dodge Challenger DragPak from Dale Aldo, Director of Motorsports for MoPar, in early 2011. Teuton’s team at the dealership’s performance division, Southland Speed and Performance, made adjustments to the car and recommendations to MoPar for the final product and, after showing substantial performance gains with the radical new combination, Teuton was sent the very first production model.

“We still have ’number one’ in our showroom”, noted a proud Teuton, “but the car we’ll be racing at Houston is actually the third car Dodge produced. Although secretive of the monstrous engine’s rumored eight hundred horsepower output, Teuton admitted, “It’s the most powerful naturally-aspirated car ever produced in this country, I can tell you that”.

While his entry of two Challengers at the first ADRL SuperCar Showdown was big news, the most surprising aspect of the announcement was that Teuton would not be competing in either car. Instead, the driving duties will be handled by Jeff’s son, Joey, and three-time NHRA World Champion Kevin Helms. “Kevin and Scott Helms run the shop at Southland Speed and are two of the best racers in the sport“, said the elder Teuton. My son, Joey, is a tremendous driver who knows these cars, too. He has to know them; he runs the Southland Dodge dealership with me! We‘re approaching this as a very important program for our cars and I‘m going to concentrate on being the crew chief along with our shop foreman, John Morris“.

When the SuperCar Showdown concept was first created by ADRL broadcast personality Bret Kepner and ADRL President Tim McAmis, Jeff Teuton was brought into the fold as a consultant to form the first program which would present the world’s quickest and fastest production automobiles in national drag racing competition. He is also the Competitor Liaison for the SCS series.

“The manufacturers, the dealers, the racers and the fans needed this class for a long time”, stated Teuton. “Right now, there’s a global competition going on between just about every auto manufacturer on the planet but there was never any place for these cars to run in a true heads-up program. The fact that any car from any manufacturer in the world can race in this class is a first for drag racing. I can tell you the response we’ve gotten for the SuperCar Showdown not only has the racers and the factories all fired up but I can already see an increase in business at both my dealership and our performance shop. This series has a lot of important people interested and a lot of eyes are going to be watching what happens at Houston”.