Hellcat of the Month: The Mopar Community Says Goodbye to TopCat

Rather than having the members of the Hellcat Group Facebook page vote on the September 2016 Hellcat of the Month, the admins of that page have decided to honor John Toutkoushian – better known as TopCat in the Mopar performance community – who passed away earlier this month while still holding the record for the world’s quickest Hellcat car.

Our Hellcat of the Month feature is generally based on a nomination and voting process on the Hellcat Group Facebook page, but shortly after running the nominations for September 2017, we learned that John Toutkoushian had passed away after a hard fought battle with cancer. John was better known as TopCat and he was best known throughout the Mopar performance community for owning the world’s quickest Hellcat car.

TopCat’s Hellcat Challenger has been in the news a great deal over the past year or so, as he and the crew at High Horse Performance took their turn breaking the record for the quickest Hellcat Challenger. Other cars and drivers would occasionally step up and set their own record, but John, his wife Linda (who owns the world’s quickest Hellcat Charger) and Josh from HHP kept coming back – reclaiming that record.

Most recently, John’s wicked fast Hellcat Challenger laid down an awesome 9.46 quarter mile at 145 miles per hour in early August, setting the record for the world’s quickest Hellcat car of any kind. While there have been plenty of Hellcat owners trying to topple that time, no one has beaten TopCat’s time thus far.

In addition to owning the quickest Hellcat Challenger in the world, John Toutkoushian was known for being one of the people who others just enjoyed being around. He had a great reputation for being a great guy to chat with at the track, making as many friends as he did quick quarter mile passes. I never had a chance to meet John, but of the many people whom he met over the past few years, I’ve not met one who had anything bad to say about him. By all accounts, John was a great person and a great racer, and the drag racing world has a whole has lost a great member of the community.

Considering John’s untimely passing, his reputation amount the community and his record-holding place in the Hellcat world, we have decided to name John Toutkoushian – aka TopCat – and his world’s fastest Challenger as our September Hellcat of the Month.
The video below shows John’s Hellcat Challenger making that 9.46 record run.

From everyone here at TorqueNews and from the Hellcat community, our condolences to John’s friends and family, and may he rest in peace.