Demon-ic dragster
Street-legal 2018 Challenger SRT flexes its muscles
Yellow, yellow, yellow, GREEN. The “Christmas tree” of lights fronting the drag strip at Lucas Oil Raceway flashes so fast, there’s only time to inhale one last gulp of oxygen before launch.
Buckled in tight, I grip the wheel of the 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon and approach the staging line, about to willingly launch into U.S. airspace. I feel like Major Tom. “Check ignition and may God’s love be with you.”
The sky is blue and thunder crackles at my feet. The most powerful V8 engine ever bolted into a production car is now dripping 100+ high-octane fuel into all eight cylinders of this 840-horsepower atom splitter. Somehow, someone at Dodge convinced regulators this car qualifies as street legal.
Here in “drag mode,” the suspension is already pre-calibrated for maximum pull straight off the starting line, bringing with it 1.8 g of force that will not only flatten my spine, but lift the front tires clear off the ground if I manage the launch sequence correctly: 770 pound-feet of controlled explosion routes from the 6.2-litre Hemi Demon engine, through the TorqueFlite eight-speed automatic transmission, down a reinforced prop shaft and through a limited slip differential to the rear wheels wrapped in Nitto radial 315/40R18 drag tires. Having activated Line Lock, roasting the rear wheels to make them hot and sticky — and creating more smoke than a house fire in the process — launch is mere seconds away.
GREEN. A hellacious scream erupts as the gas pedal hits the floor. In just one second, our velocity pierces 48 km/h. In another 1.9 seconds, the Demon sears 98 km/h. In 10.6 seconds of straight, gravity defying trajectory, the quarter mile — the yardstick by which drag cars are judged — is destroyed with a speed of 208 km/h. And yet the Demon can run faster still. In the hands of a pro it will beat the quarter in 9.65 seconds at 225 km/h.
This is the Dodge Demon, a vehicle so outrageously powerful it might very well represent the most revered muscle car to roll off the factory floor, cementing its place in the pantheon of other highly sought after muscle cars, fitting in alongside the Daytona, 454 LS7 Chevelle SS and GT350 Cobra. Those cars helped define their respective brands, giving the companies that made them not just valuable street cred, but coveted machines that left indelible marks on their owners. Those cars made history.
The Demon is making a similar mark today. Only 300 will come to Canada, 3,000 to the U.S. The front passenger and rear seats come as $1 options. This car is so huge and so fast, Mustangs and Camaros will refuse to pull alongside any Demon sitting at a stoplight. Even sophisticated speed merchants such as the Porsche 918 Spyder or Bugatti Veyron would be wise to shy away from a straight-line dance with the Demon, because they will lose. Heck, FCA’s own 707-hp Challenger Hellcat is almost a house kitten next to this.
The Demon is now the fastest quarter-mile production car in the world, banned by the governing body for drag racing because it breaks the NHRA’s 10-second rule for how fast a factory car should be. And yet it’s perfectly civil when driven obediently.
It would be easy, of course, to dismiss the Demon as a Hellcat Challenger with more boost. That, however, would be a mistake. While the Demon does share engine architecture with the 707-hp, 6.2-L supercharged Hemi Hellcat V8, the heart of the Demon has 25 component upgrades over the Hellcat engine, including a larger supercharger (2.7 L versus 2.4), which in turn leads to increased boost pressure, 14.5 psi vs. 11.6. But there’s also a higher rpm limit, two dual-stage fuel pumps, strengthened connecting rods, pistons and valve springs, and improved lubrication. Fasteners are 40-50 per cent stronger. Only two dynos of the more than 100 available to FCA engineers were capable of hanging on to this engine and its power. It will run on regular unleaded, but power drops to 808 hp and 717 lb-ft of torque.
The Demon is also 90 kilograms lighter than a Hellcat, with a different torque converter, unique rear axle and an air-conditioning system that can divert cold air from the interior to a “chiller” that cools the heat exchangers in the supercharger. And then there’s that hood scoop, wide enough to swallow a Toyota Prius. The 115-centimetre “Airgrabber” seals itself to the intake box, sucking air through the hood itself, the inside headlamps and the wheel liner.
The Demon achieves its record times with the help of something never used in production car before: TransBrake, which locks the output shaft of the transmission to hold the car before launch and lets the driver increase rpm for higher torque and quicker response. It’s engaged through the paddle-shifters and some left-foot braking. But it controls the volcano of torque and prevents the rear tires from spinning wildly, which they will do with utter abandon even under a slight application of throttle. There’s also Line Lock to brake just the front wheels in a burnout, and the more traditional Launch Control.
None of this will make sense to some people. And yes, on the surface, $110,000 for a muscle car sounds like a lot of money in something that doesn’t look a whole lot different than a regular Challenger, a design that’s been with us for almost 10 years now.
But the Demon, built in Brampton, Ont., is unlike anything we’ve seen before. It can do things no other car can do.
It’s not a sports car, per se. But it’s a car that exceeds so many benchmarks for speed and has so many performance firsts for a production vehicle that it will long be tattooed into our subconscious as the car that defined Dodge.
And it comes, like any other Dodge, with a full factory warranty — regardless of rocketing quarter-mile runs.