Finally, after months of cryptic teaser videos that looked to be created by the head of the Nickelback fan club’s teenager, Dodge introduced a car so powerful and so quick that only the old “Demon” name could do it justice. The Dodge Challenger SRT Demon is a limited-run muscle car that can attack the drag strip like nothing else.
And it really can do a wheelie.


It may not look like it, but a lot actually went into this car. It’s hard to find something mechanical that wasn’t beefed up or upgraded in the transition from Hellcat to Demon, and all of it contributes to the sole purpose of going stupid fast. It’s way more than just a Hellcat with some extra hardware thrown on.

Power comes from a supercharged 6.2-liter Hemi V8, but it’s more than a Hellcat motor with extra boost. It has a larger 2.7-liter per rev supercharger with a 14.5 psi boost pressure, higher 6,500 RPM red line, 25 other major component upgrades, and significantly enhanced cooling (including borrowing cooled air from the AC unit).
It’s also the first production car designed to switch from pump gas to 100+ octane race fuel on the go.

On 91 octane it’ll produce 808 horsepower and 717 lb-.ft. of torque or 840 horsepower and 770 lb.-ft. of torque on 100 octane fuel. Dodge says it’s the most powerful production V8 ever, assuming you ignore you everything Koenigsegg has done in the last decade.
All that power goes to the rear wheels through a standard eight-speed TorqueFlite automatic gearbox that also got significant upgrades to handle the extra power. It’s also the first factory production transmission with a TransBrake for drag launches.

It’ll go from 0-30 mph in one second flat, 0-60 mph in 2.3 seconds, and will run the quarter mile in 9.65 seconds at 140 mph. Dodge will tell you that it’s too fast for the NHRA – you know, the same NHRA that oversees sub four-second at 300 mph funny cars – but I’ll let Jalopnik explain how that claim is kind of BS.
And yes, it’s the world’s first production car certified by the Guinness World Records that can do a wheelie on a launch. It can lift its nose by up to 2.92 feet and can register 1.8 G under acceleration. This car is going to be crashed a lot.

The go fast goodness doesn’t stop there either. It comes with factory-installed Nitto drag radials (street legal), Drag Mode suspension (made up of Bilstein Adaptive Damping shocks) tuning that helps transfer more weight to the rear wheels under load, Drag Mode Launch Assist that helps mitigate wheel hop and prevents damage, available narrow “front runner” tires for use at the strip, and all passenger seats (including front passenger) are gone as standard but can be bought back for $1 each.
With all lightweight options checked, it weighs 200 pounds less than the standard Hellcat. It’s still not a featherweight, but it has more than enough power to make up for that.

Pricing wasn’t released yet, but it really doesn’t matter because only 3,300 will be built (with 300 of those going to Canada and the rest to America) and will only be built for a single model year. Anyone fortunate enough to afford it will surely have to put up with outrageous “market adjustments” from their friendly dealers. Production starts this summer.
[Source: Dodge]