Is the Demon the Best Sounding Muscle Car Ever?

Kyle from Saabkyle04 skips the usual 0 to 60 numbers and spends his time with the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon doing one thing, listening. Between the supercharger’s mechanical whine and 840 horsepower on tap, the video turns into an open question: is this the best sounding muscle car ever made? The comment section has been arguing about it ever since, split hard between two very different definitions of muscle.

Some cars are famous for a number. The Dodge Demon has several ridiculous ones, 840 horsepower, a nine point six five second quarter mile, a factory installed transbrake, but the number people actually argue about in the comments of this video has nothing to do with any of that. It is a sound. When Kyle from Saabkyle04 spent an afternoon simply listening to a Demon idle, rev, and launch, he stumbled into a debate his channel still has not settled: is this really the best sounding muscle car ever built.

A Review Built Entirely Around Sound

Unlike a typical road test, this video is built entirely around sound rather than performance figures. There are no 0 to 60 runs shown on screen, no lap times, no track footage, just idle, throttle blips, and full-throttle pulls recorded up close so that the supercharger’s mechanical whine becomes the actual subject of the video rather than a background detail behind a voiceover about acceleration numbers.

⚑ Featured Gear

Start Car Conversations →

← Prev Next →

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Where That Whine Actually Comes From

That whine comes from the 2.7 liter IHI supercharger fitted to the Demon’s 6.2 liter Hellcat-derived Hemi V8, running higher boost than the standard Hellcat engine it is based on. The result is a distinct mechanical note layered underneath the exhaust sound, something no naturally aspirated muscle car engine, however loud, can physically replicate no matter how it is tuned or how the exhaust is configured.

840 Horsepower on Pump Gas, Barely

The headline figures viewers already associate with this car anchor the video even without a single dyno pull shown: 840 horsepower on 100 octane racing fuel, 808 horsepower on ordinary pump gas, a Demon-specific transbrake built into the transmission, and a set of factory-delivered drag radials, details that together made the Demon the first mass production car engineered specifically as a dedicated drag strip weapon rather than a street and track all-rounder like its Hellcat sibling.

A Car Engineered for One Job Only

The comment section splits sharply over the central question the video poses. Some viewers call the Demon the best sounding muscle car outright, full stop, while others insist nothing built after 2000 can touch a pre 1980 big block for genuine character, turning what started as a simple sound test into an ongoing generational argument about what muscle car sound is even supposed to mean in the first place.

How the Demon Split Its Own Fanbase

The counter argument shows up again and again in the replies: for decades, muscle car sound has meant a lopey solid lifter camshaft and open headers bolted to a naturally aspirated big block, and a forced induction modern Hemi represents a fundamentally different engineering approach entirely, which is exactly why long time enthusiasts push back hard on ranking a supercharged car above anything from Detroit’s original muscle car heyday.

The Case for Cars Built Before 1980

Saabkyle04, named after Kyle’s very first car back in 2004, built a large following on unusually in depth walkarounds spanning everything from ordinary classics to modern supercars, and this video is representative of that format, prioritizing a raw first person impression captured on camera over a scripted spec sheet recitation of numbers anyone could find written up elsewhere online.

A Channel That Has Reviewed Nearly Everything

Years after its original upload, the debate the video sparked is still nowhere close to resolved in the comments, split roughly down the middle between viewers who rank the Demon’s forced induction whine above literally anything to come out of Detroit’s original muscle car era, and those who will not budge an inch from a carbureted big block no matter what the newer car’s spec sheet claims to offer instead.

Why the Debate Still Is Not Settled

What keeps this particular video circulating years later, more than the Demon’s headline numbers ever could on their own, is that it turned a single car’s exhaust and supercharger note into a genuinely open question rather than a settled fact, and gave two very different generations of muscle car fans a specific, concrete example to argue about instead of a vague, abstract debate over old versus new that never actually goes anywhere.

The Demon’s engineering brief was unusually narrow compared to nearly every other Hellcat-based model Dodge has built. Where the standard Challenger Hellcat was tuned to work as a daily-driven street car that could also survive a track day, the Demon shipped from the factory with a narrower, drag-radial-specific tire, a suspension tune biased toward launch behavior over cornering grip, and a trunk that could be optioned without a back seat at all, choices that only make sense if a quarter-mile pass is the only job the car is actually being asked to do.

Saabkyle04’s back catalog gives this particular video extra context: Kyle has recorded sound and walkaround videos on everything from budget economy cars to seven-figure exotics over the life of the channel, which means his audience has a genuine baseline for comparison when he calls a car’s exhaust note exceptional rather than simply hyping up whatever manufacturer happened to loan him a press car that week.

The supercharger whine itself is not unique to the Demon among modern Mopars, since the same basic IHI unit appears across the wider Hellcat family, but the Demon’s specific tune, tighter belt, and higher boost level push that mechanical note louder and higher in pitch than in any other Hellcat-based model Dodge has sold, which is precisely why this particular car, rather than a standard Hellcat, became the one people point to when the best-sounding argument comes up.

That distinction, a car tuned narrowly for one purpose rather than broadly for everything, is ultimately what the comment section keeps circling back to whenever the best-sounding debate flares up again: whether a purpose-built drag weapon even belongs in the same conversation as a naturally aspirated street car built decades earlier for an entirely different kind of driving. There is no sign that argument will end anytime soon, which is exactly why this video keeps finding new viewers years after the Demon itself went out of production.

Watch the full video and tell us what you think, comments are open below.

Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Related posts:

Why is the LS so GOOD?? 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat Widebody First Drive Review Launch! 9 sec Dodge Demon vs 8 sec Big Block Camaro – Carrying the Wheels – Road Test TV 2015 Mustang GT vs 2016 Jaguar F-Type R Performance Mashup Review & Drag Race 0-60 MPH in 2.3 Sec! How the Dodge Demon is The World’s Fastest Accelerating Production Car MY NEW $83,000 WIDEBODY HELLCAT CHALLENGER HAS MORE DAMAGE AGAIN New OWNER Takes 18′ Dodge Demon to Drag Strip!!! Dodge Demon Melts its Tires vs Tesla Model S P100D Ludicrous Drag Racing 1/4 Mile Dodge Demon vs McLaren 720S Roll Racing – 2 Races Old vs New Muscle Cars Drag Racing,Dodge Demon,Hellcat,Charger 69′ and more