The $100,000 Dodge Demon Is the Craziest Muscle Car Ever

This is the 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon, better known simply as the Dodge Demon and it's the

craziest

car on sale today, if for nothing else, the Dodge Challenger lineup now spans from a base model that you can rent at Enterprise for about forty. nine ninety five a day until we get to this one that has eight hundred and forty horsepower, yes that's right eight hundred and forty horsepower and the madness doesn't end there, this car was built specifically for drag racing and I'll go into

ever

ything the interesting. it drags things in a minute, but for now just listen to these numbers the Bugatti Veyron runs the quarter mile in 10.1 seconds the McLaren 720 does the quarter mile in nine point nine seconds the Ferrari and the Porsche 918 Spyder do the quarter mile mile in nine point eight seconds, this thing will do a quarter mile in nine point six five seconds, it's faster than a Ferrari and then we have the zero to 60 time, the

demon

s official zero to 60 time is 2.3 seconds, but in the right mode with the settings the little display the

demon

can do from 0 to 60 and just 2.1 seconds, making it the fastest production car in history.

The Porsche 918 Spyder has all-wheel drive and a dual-motor hybrid system with plug-in capabilities. a technologically advanced v8 placed inside a sculpted body that flows for aerodynamics and this giant Dodge Holt is faster the devil weighs 650 pounds more than a 918 spyder is even faster the devil costs a million dollars less than a 918 spyder It's still faster anyway I could go on for a while talking about these things, but it's better to just show them to you, so today I'm going to show you the demon and show you all of its cool quirks and features and then I'm going to interview the owner of the car to find out what is what would possess someone to buy the demon, then I'll take it out on the road, which already makes me a little nervous, and then I'll give it a dig score and for more of my thoughts on the demon, click the link below to visit autotrader.com slash oversteer, where I've also compiled a list of the strangest Dodge models currently for sale on Auto Trader.

You may also want to check out the link below for kelley blue book rest assured as this car is going to be part of kelley blue book's long term test fleet and car costs and ownership experiences will be documented during the first year of his life. I'm going to start from the beginning with the demons hood shot and actually this. Not just any hood scoop, but the largest hood scoop on any production car. Now when you open the hood you can see that Dodge calls it an air pickup, which is kind of a retro term, it was an air intake system.

It used to be used during the

muscle

car era and is actually an air catcher. This thing during a quarter-mile run, Dodge says it ingests enough air to fill the lungs of 800 humans, and since we're under the hood, it's time to cover some. engine quirks, starting with the fact that with a maximum of 840 horsepower, this car has the most power of any production V8

ever

seen in history. There's also a lot of other cool stuff here, for example how about the fact that this little demon logo? it's cast on the engine itself, there's no plastic covering this thing, instead there's a cool demon logo which is just awesome and then there's the SRT electric cooler which is a bit of a stupid name but it's something really cool if you have the drag strip you know your car starts to get hot after racing on the drag strip after racing on the drag strip so a lot of guys come and put ice packs in the engine to cool it down nice .

The SRT electric cooler uses air conditioning coolant to cool the engine it's basically a built-in ice pack for your engine when you're in drag mode the demon it's also the first production car designed to run on racing gas yeah that's right , you can fill this with 100 octane fuel and that is its optimal configuration, in fact, I said before, the car has a maximum of eight hundred and forty horsepower, well, if you are running on a regular premium octane of 91 or 93, the kind of crap your car runs on only puts eight hundred and eight horsepower, not until you put the throttle on, it can run on the 840, but it's not that simple, you can't just put the throttle on, you you have to put the throttle on the throttle and update the ECU to make it work. the full eight hundred and forty horsepower and when you do that something interesting happens inside peacefully each demon comes with two sets of center interior buttons which are normal buttons and the ones you can use if you want to run the throttle when you upgrade your computer.

To race at full power, you also have the second set of buttons which includes a button to switch to gas race mode for when you want to do crazy races on the drag strip and unlock the demons. Total performance potential. Install in the front. This car also has another trick here. He talks lies about the headlights, true and not quite, the two interiors are actually stupid, they are fake, they look like headlights, but in reality their air intakes are designed to suck even more air into the engine of this thing. Now the little circle around them is actually an LED light that comes on but stick your hand in there, the real hole is a hole, it's an air intake that would be less powerful, the commoner Challenger Hellcat with only 707 horsepower, It has a dummy air intake in the headlights, but this car I guess was considered to simply need more air, so instead it has two other interesting things about those air intakes.

Look inside them and you'll notice there's a little demon logo there, no one will see it, no one will notice it, but they put it in. there for the few that do it and that's great. Also interesting on the front of this car is the front spoiler which is absolutely gigantic. Take a look at this thing. It's huge. You could store things in this thing. It is huge and exclusive. hell, so it's a way to differentiate this car outside of the normal Challenger models. Next, we have to talk about tires. This car is designed for drag racing and therefore comes with slick tires that are barely street legal.

They are basically drag slick tires, so they have small grooves for the slightest amount of rain. These tires are designed specifically for this car, so if you look at them, they actually have the demon logo printed on the outside of the tire, which is Also cool on the tires is the tread wear rating, which shows how long they will last. The industry standard is 100 and many new cars are 200 or 250. This thing is zero, you will never see a tread wear rating of zero again and a couple more interesting things. stuff about devil tires because they are basically street legal slick tires.

When you buy the demon, you have to sign a waiver acknowledging that you know you shouldn't actually use the tires or the car in wet weather. use it when it is below 15 degrees and they do not recommend that you use it on the road because these tires have a lot of grip on that road, we will start to wear them out faster than a traditional tire and since we are talking about resistance things, we could also talk about one of the coolest things and is the fact that when you have it in drag mode in 840 horsepower mode with everything set up correctly and you pull up to the drag strip, this car will actually lift the front end off the ground.

The end will rise a couple of inches and for a few feet down the drag strip, the front end will lift off the ground. All that weight is transferred to the rear so the car can get off the line faster. In fact, this car is very fast. or that 9.65-second quarter-mile time that's technically illegal for NHRA drag racing. If you run under ten seconds, you're supposed to have a roll cage, so this car built for crazy drag racing is too fast to really do drag racing. Unless you mount a roll cage on it, what you're going to have to do if you want to do this drag race is just let it go at the end to make sure you get a ten point one or a ten point two and you don't break the NHRA rules, what's so cool or the demons widened the fenders look at these things to accommodate the drag racing tires, they widened the fenders like two inches and it gives the demon a mean menacing look that you can't get on any other challenger except the Wide body Hellcat, another interesting quirk on the outside of the demon that would be the windshield, there isn't much health itself, it's pretty normal, but take a look at the bottom corner of the windshield, on the driver's side, you'll see a little demon doing a burnout like it's in the burnout box on a race track and even when the fender flares so you can be sure it's a demon and not a lesser challenger, that's something that looks cool but is also functional .

Chrysler has been putting these little graphics on the windshields of many of their models, especially the Jeep Wrangler and other Jeeps, and I'm told that owners are much more likely to replace their windshields with a factory one and then stop by the auto department. parts from the automaker instead of going to a cheaper aftermarket windshield just because it has this graphic, so putting that graphic on actually gives Chrysler a little extra money if your windshield breaks. Another interesting exterior feature of this car is the black treatment on the hood, roof and trunk. That's an option: you can get the car in one color or you can just get the black treatment on the hood or you can get it in all three places.

However, I like the fact that it is in all three places because no other model of ours offers that except the TA and the TA has a different hood, so if you have it in all three places and you see the hood, you can distinguish easily this car as a demon which is important because as an interesting fact this car doesn't say demon anywhere it doesn't even say on the back it just says SRT of course you would have to be an idiot to look at this car and not notice Realize that you were looking at a demon because there are many ways to distinguish it from any other challenger, of course, there are the demonic insignia. on the front fenders, there are the giant fenders, there's the black treatment on the top of the car, if the owner got it, there are the drag tires, there's the hood scoop, but if you're still a little confused, well , maybe you can hear it, speed up.

Listen now when you go up inside the diamond. One of the first things you'll see that you'll be excited about are the gauges, which are cool, they're these old school retro gauges and they look awesome, but they're not. They are exclusive to the devil, they are on other Challenger models, but I love the way they look. A couple of other interesting quirks within the demon. The passenger side climate control vent says demon and it doesn't just show what demon number you have. It's a cool little touch, plus the SRT logo in the middle of the steering wheel lights up at night, something I've never seen on any other car before, but it makes it feel cool and special.

I'm happy to report that the interior of the demons has really been dressed up over the standard Challenger, the seats are really nice, although these nice heavily bolstered sports seats, but they also feel like they have nice soft leather, the materials are just better, the stitching is better, the door panels. looks better but all that better be true considering the price of this car but that being said there's not a lot going on in this car, no adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, forward collision warning, all those modern safety features are in fact, you don't even get a power passenger seat, everything is controlled manually which is crazy in such an expensive car and it gets even crazier, you could order it with just a manual driver's seat and no passenger sees the theory.

If you're a drag strip nut and just want to save weight you just order the driver's seat and who cares about the passenger, it's not like you're going to race one anyway and then I'll improve your drag time just those few milliseconds Now, if you choose to get this car without a passenger seat, that little waiver I told you about earlier with the tires comes into play again, you also have to sign on that waiver that if you get this car without a passenger seat, you will never attempt to install a passenger seat and you will never put anyone in the passenger seat because they will not be adequately protected in an accident.

Basically, if you buy this carWithout a passenger seat, you won't have a passenger seat forever. It doesn't even come with a seat belt and you're making that commitment; Needless to say, virtually no one who orders these things gets them without a passenger seat, but then again, those waivers you sign say a lot of things, one of them being that you promise to never use the race track or drag strip features on the road lol so what exactly are those drag strip and drag strip features? Well, let's take a look at the infotainment system. There's some crazy stuff here.

Now I'm going to start on the infotainment system with the SRT app. Now I covered many of the SRT's features in my Jeep Grand Cherokee track Hawk review, which I'll link in the description below. In this one I'm just going to focus on most of the things that are unique to the demon that starts with drag mode, look at this, you click on drag mode and it goes through this whole checklist of things it does to prepare this car for a drag race, which is great and the

craziest

part is if you have the air conditioning on full blast and put it in drag mode, you can feel that the air conditioning has been optimized for drag use;

In other words, it has been significantly reduced inside the cabin and the air conditioning coolant is being used to cool the engine for another time. Cool feature on the demon exclusive SRT app that would be the race cooling mode now that you are in drag mode. when you are doing drag racing and your engine starts to heat up it will circulate that AC coolant to cool the engine but that That's not all, put it in race cooling mode, leave it running and it will do a much better job of cooling your engine than if you just turned the car off now, of course many cars will cool their engines if you leave them idling after a race on a racetrack or racetrack, but I've never seen a car with a specific mode designed for cooling before. it turns off the engine even faster than a normal car after using it on the track and this might be a good time to talk about the keys now when you buy this car it comes with three keys that are red and one is black now the two red.

The keys give you access to the full complement of 808 or 840 horsepower if you get the ECU to turn on the black key which restricts the car to just 500 horsepower. What a crazy vehicle this must be for the restricted version to only have 500 horsepower. go to launch control now, it's not that unusual for this car to have launch control, but what's unusual is that this car has launch control disabled until it reaches the first 500 miles after crossing the 500 mile threshold, then you can use it. Some electronic function that tells the car you've gotten to 500 and then you can start using launch control, maybe even crazier than that launch control has variable rpm so you can start this car from up to 3,000 rpm if you want . or you can reduce it to lower rpm depending on what you think the optimal launch is also great with that launch control the little icon that shows what RPM you are setting is actually the little red bars on the Dodge logo which is an idea intelligent.

Small detail, another nice feature is a factory line lock system that allows you to activate the front brakes without the rear brakes. Runners like to use this for exhaustion and better starts, like I said you can see most of the rest of the items on the SRT and performance pages. In my review of the Jeep Track Hawk, which is linked in the description below with what was said, when reviewing these features, I found a little surprise in the best section that shows your best 0-60 time in a quarter mile, regardless than you bought the car or since you last restored it, the owner of this car has not yet been to the race track, although it has done some spirited runs on freeway on-ramps and this car shows better quarter mile time of 12x7, that wasn't intentional, just kind of sped down a freeway on-ramp, then let off the gas pedal and pulled into traffic and still ran 12-7?

You can see the trap speed is 75s, probably the traffic speed I was going at the end of the quarter mile, in fact I didn't even know I had set a best time until I was sitting in the car with him going over all the different features and functions and we saw his best quarter mile time there and he was. I'm quite surprised to see that it's a bit funny now that beyond the infotainment screen there is a screen in the middle of the gauge cluster that also has a couple of interesting features, for example if you go to the tire pressure section , you can see everything. the tire pressures individually and the car shown is a challenger which is kind of a cool little trick, plus if you go to the gauges that show you all sorts of performance stuff, they're these old gauges that look to me a little fun here.

We're revisiting old gauges, except there's an electronic LCD screen in the middle of the actual gauges. It's funny that those gauges show a lot more things than practically any other car, for example, you can look at the intercooler coolant temperature, which is something that almost no one really cares about. I also like that on this central screen between the performance and tire pressure tab one of the tabs is fuel economy which will be the least seen tab in the entire history of automotive display design another interesting feature controlled through the infotainment system which would be the mirror.

Remember we all had little levers on our mirrors. You push it and then it's in dimming mode. Well not yet. Now you press the dimmer on the infotainment system and it turns the auto dimming on and off. Interior rearview mirror Another thing I like about the radio: you see that little favorite button on the top right. You press it when one of your favorite songs is playing on the radio and that lets the radio know that it is indeed one of your favorite songs. Then one day you're driving listening to music and then that favorite song is on a different radio station.

A small graphic appears informing you that a song you previously selected as one of your favorites is playing on a different radio station. so you can switch to that station and listen to one of your favorite songs and that's a great idea, another thing I like about the demon is that it doesn't just have a shitty plastic steering wheel like a lot of cars and it doesn't even have a wrapped steering wheel in leather, this one is wrapped in Alcantara and stitched, looks great now most Alcantara wheels are not heated but this is the one you can heat up, press a little heating button and eventually it comes on and warms your hands but With all the cool quirks and the cool features and all the cool mods and the low power, we also have to talk about another major demon trade and that would be the price of the demon starting at $86k with shipping and comparing it to a Bass Challenger The Bass Challenger starts at $28,000, meaning this is more than three times more expensive than a Bass Challenger.

It has to be the biggest differential in the entire automotive industry. It also has tremendous horsepower. The Bass Challengers are at 305 and this is at 840 now the sticker price on this particular demon is just over 92 grand it has pretty much every option except the expensive sunroof but with dealer markups and the collectability, it's unlikely that any of these things will actually change hands for less than $100,000 and in terms of price, that's also another interesting quirk and feature because well, I haven't talked about the accessories yet. I'm going to start with the demon box, that's right, the demon box, which is a box that comes with your demon, it's shown here and it's loaded with stuff.

There's a demon-branded hydraulic floor jack, a demon-branded impact wrench, a demon-branded tire pressure gauge, a tool bag and a crazy fender and it's all huge and comes with a pilot that is sent to you after receiving your daemon, hopefully you will have room. in your garage and now that you've seen the quirks and features, we move on to perhaps the craziest quark and that would be the owner. What type of person buys? He is a demon. I'm going to find out that this is Carl Brauer. Carl is me. works with me supervises my colleagues at Auto Trader and Kelly Blue Book and this is the hell of him and Carl and I have to ask if you are crazy.

I'm crazy. I think that's the best way to describe it. You already know. I knew it when I saw this car in the New. York Auto Show that was going to be this very special, unique car and kind of a moment in time and it's okay to find cars like this, whether it's a Ford GT or a Dodge Demon, okay, is this a moment in time? the one that people are on I'll never forget it and I think it is so you thought this is what you knew and instantly this was kind of special even with the Hellcat you said this is the one I had.

I've owned two Dodge Challengers, original Dodges. Challenger era cars in my life and I grew up a Mopar guy and I've been fighting the Dodge Challenger group since 2008 so we're ten years in now and then I went to the press event in July and drove it. What I realized is that this 800 horsepower monster isn't really a monster at all, the car was very easy to drive, it's like the widebody Hellcats. Anyone who has driven one knows that the real magic of those cars is how pretty they are. Driving when you're not stepping on them Do you plan on doing drag racing?

I do endurance racing. It was my first love for cars. What led me to end up being a car guy was owning a '69 Plymouth GTX with a 440 before I had my driver's license. and I spent a lot of time very legally throughout before racing that car and enjoying the thrill of drag racing. This car is basically 15-year-old Karl's dream come true. Do people notice it? Do you know what it is? I mean, obviously it's Seems Crazy, but there are a lot of crazy-looking challengers out there, do they know what a D is? I mean, you're only two weeks old, but even this time you know I've had several people, I mean, the day we pulled in and parked. it's on a burger and we're inside eating or watching various people taking pictures of it or taking pictures in front of it, and you know, I take it to a car wash here and the owner of the car wash is out there.

This is the first one I've seen, right? Oh my gosh, you know, so you have to know. I think the average person might think he's just another type of crazy-looking challenger. There are a lot of those running around California. Know? true, sublime TAS, true, true, so I think a lot of people just assume it's another crazy Challenger, but anyone who knows if there's no hood or the drag radials, yeah, they know what you're doing. You look down, another people challenge now, do you like it, yeah, yeah? I have the boss. I'm much cooler. I almost bought a TA in August.

I had a TA, a test car and I fell in love with that thing. When this one arrived, I still wasn't going to buy it because I have another bill on the way. soon in terms of cars, yeah, that's kind of what I'm talking about, cars that will go into the new Ford GT, which is one of the craziest ones because it's like opposite ends of the American car spectrum, which, by the way , again I love it. I love the idea. I already have 1,500 horsepower in my garage between the five GTs and this car, just over 1,500, and I love the disparity in that one of them is a performance-handling race car on the drag strip and the other is a straight one. -line drag right right right Do you think this is so Hellcat?

We all thought when the Hellcat came out that it was the craziest thing and then this comes out. Do you think this is over? Do you think there's 950 horsepower for the next one? The generation challenge was going to have a thousand horsepower, well no manufacturer has this habit of outdoing each other, we will see what the American car companies do, what is their next type of launch in this world of performance and who wants to up the ante next. I think we both realize that cars aren't getting more and more hungry for gas, they're getting less and less hungry for gas, you're supposed to follow all these rules now about how many horsepower you're burning and how much gas you're burning and It's hard to believe they can go ahead with that dress, yeah, okay, you're ready to drive it.

I'm absolutely ready to scare you. I'm afraid. Alright, time to drive to the devil. I have two goals here today. I want to Drive the demon and explore the performance of it and I also want not to die if you can drive it SXT six cylinder can you drive Dodge Demon Yes,you know I had an incident with a Hellcat Yeah I heard well so the first thing I noticed is that you can Hear the moan of the supercharger sounds great even at low speeds you can hear it but also just the noise of it is crazy but that was like a fairy, not aggressive, what I liked was rolling on him, which is not even close. putting it on the ground, okay, let's try it again.

I have some work. Oh, I'm doing it, they just changed, your circumstances change so quickly. Wow, that's crazy, crazy, crazy, but yeah, I mean drive it here if I'm not doing anything stupid. It just feels like you're constantly reminded, in small details, that you're not in a typical car. The supercharged wine in the engine notes are the greatest. It's actually quite impressive how much you can hear them even in just a quarter. throttle, but the wine comes in the engine note, but you're also looking at this huge, tall hood, you know, I mean, it's very clear that this is not just a run-of-the-mill, everyday challenge, anyway, I mean, I'm Sitting here I can ventilate my seat if I want.

I mean, I have a Wi-Fi hotspot in this car. I have an eight hundred and forty horsepower Wi-Fi access point. This is actually an interesting discrepancy here, yes next to a Toyota Mirai it's just a mission is water, yes you have the most food even in the least polluting cars. It's almost unbelievable how quickly I can break this vivillon and, more importantly, how easily I miss people. It's 50 here, I'm going to 52 now just with I mean a touch, I mean I couldn't have accelerated more than a quarter there and it was the four seconds that we're already over and now we're driving on the highway, yeah, I mean, It feels like a pretty normal car, actually. like a but quite luxurious.

I'm surprised that the seats are nice and comfortable, they don't have too much grip like a real Porsche like a sports car like a Porsche to turn in the corners, you know they could be seeds of support because they know that it's not really the intention to put 480 miles on it. a week and a half ago it didn't even offer comfort and fun, it's almost unbelievable to talk about a car that deserves to be seen in 2.3 seconds where comfort is like yes, of course, not compromised, the only difference is the rental rival and this. from where I'm sitting is the hood and this wheel, everything else would be mounted identically until yes, that's 3/4 throttle.

I'm not even in Florida there and it's like the fastest one is so much faster in my truck. It doesn't feel wobbly and it feels like the body roll is actually surprisingly limited considering how big it is and how heavy it is, true, it feels flat and it feels good and the feedback is so good from the steering that it's another really important thing: it's the whole experience and part of it is the size of the car part it's like, oh my gosh, I'm moving something that fast. I still feel like the track Hawk almost felt crazier because I was sitting up high and it feels like a physically huge car to feel that strong pain.

It's totally real, where is this? I'm looking for a Hellcat, so it's like the next step in traffic is like a new dimension, and that's the 2018 Dodge Demon 86 Grand for a challenger with options at the dealer's inevitable markup, almost certainly more $100,000 for a challenger, but of course, this is not just any challenger, it is a challenger that is faster from zero to 60 than a Bugatti Veyron, has a better quarter mile time than a Porsche 918 spyder, has more V8 power than a McLaren p1, basically this thing defies the laws of physics by surpassing them with infinite power and in a world where cars are increasingly electrified and autonomous, this may be the craziest

muscle

car that has ever existed and with that time for Doug's score starting with the weekend categories and designing the challenge is great and the demon is especially cool although the design is starting to get a little old and gives a 7 out of 10.

Next up is acceleration Obviously this thing gets a 10 out of 10. The handling is surprisingly good and the car is unusually composed for a drag racer, yet it's not a sports car and it gets an obviously high 5 out of 10 cool factors, especially right now. and this thing gets a 9 out of 10 that being said, I'll downplay it a bit. He said the Hellcat was the best muscle car of all time and then this came out and I don't really know where it will end. I give it a 7 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 38 out of 50, which places the devil. in good company, next are the daily categories, starting with features.

The Demon has a lot of interesting things, but it also lacks some modern technology and I can only give it a 6 out of 10. Next is comfort and the Demon is almost surprisingly comfortable. incredibly for a car with these numbers and I have to give it a 7 out of 10, then there is quality, the interior is an improvement over the standard rival, but still it is not exactly a luxury car and I can't give it a 6 out of 10 practicality is good, the huge trunk would normally rate a 5 but I just have to lower the score one point for its atrocious fuel and it gets a 4 out of 10, it finally has value and I had problems with this one, but $100,000 The challenger is really expensive .

I may end up being wrong if these things hold their value well, but right now I give it a 6 out of 10, which makes the total daily score 29 out of 50, if we add it up, Doug's total score is 67. Out of 100, which puts the demon above any Dodge Challenger in any business, it is an impressive car and not just on paper.