Dodge Challenger SRT Demon

Posted on April 12, 2017 in Automotive News

After months of teaser videos and easter eggs, Dodge finally unveiled their latest project last night at the New York Auto Show. Designed in secret by a select group of engineers, it's described as the first production drag car that you would actually want to drive on the streets. You can watch the hour release video, but for those short on time we'll break it down for you here.

Built to be the industry's first, and only, purpose built, production, street legal drag car.
Comes stock with 315mm wide rear tires.
New production 6.2L Hemi with new billet steel camshaft and valvetrain upgrades.
Larger 2.7 liter supercharger, producing 14.5 lbs of boost.
Demon specific crankshaft, connecting rods, and pistons.
Dual fuel pumps and high flow injectors.
High speed-stall torque converter and 3.09 rear gearing.
Produces 840 HP and 770 Ft/lb of torque.

Built in Innovation

Intake chiller system - in drag mode, the air conditioning is diverted to cool the air entering the engine, reducing the intake air temperature by 45 degrees the ambient.
Front suspension electronically dampens during launch to allow the front to lift and more weight transferred to the rear wheels.
New direct connection engine controller allows on demand switching from pump gas tune to race fuel tune.

With all these features, the Demon launches harder than most traditional hydraulic brake systems can handle, so Dodge pulled together some old tricks:

Cut fuel to individual cylinders
Pull timing
Prefill the supercharger
Lock input & output shaft of transmission

All of this stages the Demon with 8 lbs. of boost and reaches full first gear boost pressure within 6 feet of the starting line. So if you were to shell out for the almost 6-figure MSRP, what would a day at the track feel like in this car?

Use the red key to bring the most powerful production V8 to life.
Activate drag mode and suspension instantly recalibrates for maximum lift while diverting the AC to supercool the intake air charge.
Roll into the water box and activate line locks, spinning the massive rear nittos at nearly 200 degrees with precision control.
Pull up to the yellow lights - torque reserve ✓, trans brake ✓, supercharger bypass valve closes and 8 lbs of boost builds in the manifold.
The yellows go out and there's 1.8 Gs of force as you clear the tower.
1 second in you're doing 30mph, 2.3 seconds in you're doing 60mph, 5.1 seconds in you're doing 100mph, at 9.6 seconds and 100mph you've completed the quarter mile.

It's so fast that the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) banned it from competitions.

The Demon was not an incremental change to an existing vehicle. The challenger is a car that was born to drag race, so Dodge owed it to the challenger to evolve it to its purest form. As Tim Kuniskis said, "This isn't just a Dodge, this isn't just a challenger, this is the most technologically advanced street legal production drag car, ever!"

So what are your thoughts? Would you buy the fastest production car in history to daily drive during the week, and blow the hats off bystanders at the track on the weekend? Or would you rather build your own track monster from the ground up?