 |
The 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon made 840 horsepower from its supercharged 6.2-liter HEMI V8, ran the quarter mile in 9.65 seconds, and became so extreme that NHRA banned it from record-legal drag competition. Dodge built only 3,000 for the US market, charged extra for a passenger seat, and gave it a widebody kit just to put the power down. Read on to find out what it took to build a street-legal car too fast for its own sport’s rulebook.
The 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon did not simply add horsepower to the Hellcat formula. It brought a factory transbrake, a system that built boost while the car stood still, an air conditioning circuit repurposed to chill the intake charge, and drag radials on all four corners. Read on for how each of those pieces worked, what the car actually recorded at the strip, and why no manufacturer has attempted anything like it since.
For a brief window the 707-horsepower Challenger SRT Hellcat was the most powerful muscle car ever sold, and then Dodge announced something that made it the second most powerful car in its own showroom. Living with that demotion turned out to reveal more about the Hellcat than its spec sheet ever did. Read on for what the car actually was, what it ran, and why it may be the better long-term buy of the two.
SRT had a naming convention for its most powerful V8s, and it involved fighter planes. Then the small team developing the Challenger SRT Demon needed something quieter, and the 840-horsepower engine ended up named after a round blue cat from a 1961 Hanna-Barbera cartoon. The name stuck through years of secret development and it is still what insiders call the engine. Read on for the story and what Benny actually became.
Dodge built an entire verification system just to keep its own dealers from overcharging customers on the hyped Challenger SRT Demon, requiring a notarized sales document before any order could move forward. Where a car landed in the build queue depended on numbers most buyers never think about. Read on to find out how the Demon concierge desk actually worked.
The Dodge Challenger SRT Demon arrived at the 2017 New York Auto Show with 840 horsepower, a certified 9.65-second quarter mile at 140 mph, and a Guinness record for lifting its front wheels off the line, and a portion of the internet still called it a letdown because rumors had promised four digits. Hennessey promised to fix it. What the shop actually built first was a Camaro. Here is how that detour played out, and the asterisk attached to that 840 figure.
Dodge unveiled the Challenger SRT Demon just ahead of the New York auto show with numbers so extreme the company had the NHRA certify them rather than let anyone assume marketing had been involved. An 840-horsepower supercharged Hemi, a 9.65-second quarter mile, and a front end that lifts off the pavement under power. Only 3,300 were ever built, and the NHRA responded by banning it. Here is the full story.
For the first time in at least seven years, the Dodge Challenger outsold both the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro in a single month, arriving right as the 840-horsepower SRT Demon dominated headlines. This piece looks at the June 2017 sales numbers behind that milestone, the year-to-date totals that told a very different story, and what became of Challenger’s long production run afterward.
Manufacturers do not normally sell cars on drag radials, but the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon arrived with 315/40R18 units developed specifically for it, each measuring 12.6 inches wide. The result was a 15 percent larger contact patch and more than double the grip of a standard Hellcat. Read on for why the tires, not the 840 horsepower, were the component that made every one of the Demon’s numbers possible.
Ford spent months teasing the next Shelby GT500 in camouflage and speculation before confirming it for the 2020 model year. Spy shots revealed a wider front track, massive Brembo brakes, and a supercharged version of the GT350’s 5.2-liter V8, while rumors pointed toward horsepower figures that dwarfed the outgoing GT500’s 662. Read on to find out how close the leaked details actually came to the car Ford eventually built.
A camouflaged Mustang mule caught testing on public roads turned out to be hiding a supercharged version of Ford’s 5.2 litre Voodoo V8. Three years later the production Shelby GT500 landed with 760 horsepower, no manual gearbox, no convertible and no sunroof. Here is what the spy shots were actually pointing at, and why Ford made every one of those decisions on purpose.
Halfway through 2017, Detroit’s three pony cars were close enough that the sales race looked genuinely undecided from month to month. By the time December invoices were counted, the gap between first and third had stretched past seventeen thousand cars. One of the three actually grew that year while the other two slid backward. Read on to find out which nameplate took the crown and which one quietly gained ground.
One leaked photograph ended months of teasing and set up the strangest product launch in modern muscle car history. The Dodge Challenger SRT Demon arrived with 840 horsepower, drag radials on all four corners, a single seat as standard and a rulebook problem at the NHRA. Here is what Dodge actually built, why it was banned before deliveries started, and why only around 3,300 exist.
An orange A-body sitting on a consignment lot in Dearborn looks period correct until it starts. What is under the hood was designed thirty-five years after the body was stamped, makes about 150 more horsepower than the engine that belongs there, and has become one of the most popular swaps in the Mopar world. Read on for why builders keep reaching for this particular engine instead of something newer.
Lebanon Ford Performance is selling a purpose-built Mustang capable of mid-10-second quarter miles for $59,995, straight off the dealer lot. The comments split between buyers doing supercharger math and one self-described Mopar loyalist grudgingly admitting the car earns its reputation — sleeper looks, no fender flares, and a question about the warranty that nobody quite answers.