Hold on to your hats, folks, because Dodge is about to send its Hemi V8 muscle cars out with a bang! After building a series of “last call” versions of the Charger and Challenger, Dodge is now set to end the era of these iconic cars with the 2023 Challenger SRT Demon 170. And boy is this car fast! It can even outpace the Tesla Model S Plaid with a mind-blowing 1.66 second 0-60 mph time.
So, what makes the Demon 170 so unique? Well, Dodge’s engineers have gone to town under that bulging “Air-Grabber” hood, fitting a new supercharger with a larger throttle body and a pulley that increases boost pressure by 40 percent compared to the Challenger Hellcat Redeye Widebody. And if you want to get the best out of this beast, you’ll need to feed it E85, a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, which enables the Demon 170 to generate an insane 1,025 hp and 945 lb-ft of torque. On E10 fuel, the engine will still pump out a respectable 900 hp and 810 lb-ft of torque.
Dodge has beefed up the driveline to cope with all that power, fitting a much stronger rear differential, prop shaft, half shafts, and special street-legal drag tires. The car even has a clever system that diverts cold air from the air conditioning system to cool the supercharger intercooler, maximizing oxygen intake. Performance at the drag strip is helped by tuned adaptive dampers and TransBrake 2.0, which includes torque-shaping capability, a technology used in competitive drag racing to dial-in preset torque limits.
So, just how quick is the Demon 170? Well, Dodge has had the National Hot Rod Association certify the car’s quarter-mile time at 8.91 seconds elapsed time with a speed across the line of 151.17 mph. That’s faster than even the mighty Tesla Model S Plaid! However, Dodge received a National Hot Rod Association violation letter for running a sub-9 second quarter-mile time without a roll cage or parachute.
According to Tim Kuniskis, Dodge’s CEO, “To celebrate the end of the HEMI muscle-car era, we pulled off all the governors to reach a new level, a new benchmark of ‘factory-crazy’ production car performance.” And that’s precisely what they’ve done, creating the world’s first sustainable-energy, eight-second, factory-production, street-legal muscle car.
If you want to get your hands on one of these limited-edition Demon 170s, you’ll need to act fast. Dodge will build just 3,300 of these bad boys, with 3,000 for the US and 300 for Canada. Prices start at $96,666, and buyers will need to sign a waiver acknowledging that they just bought a street-legal drag-racing car. So, are you ready to feel the power of the Demon 170?
