Driving the New Demon – Living the Dream
As a lifelong Dodge lover, driving the new SRT Demon on the track and the street made for one of the most remarkable experiences of my automotive life.
As some of you know, I grew up a diehard Mopar lover, dreaming of driving the likes of the classic Dodge Challenger Hemi or the Dodge Viper. I spent my early driving years drag racing my own 340-powered Dodge Mirada in a variety of Mopar-specific racing events, wearing Dodge shirts, cheering on Dodge pro racers and hoping for my chance to one day drive the Dodge performance cars which we all dream about to this day.
Over the past few years, I have become an accredited member of the automotive media and with that job has come the opportunity to drive a 1970 Hemi Challenger, the Hellcat cars and a variety of different Dodge Vipers, but when the new Dodge Demon was introduced – a car built specifically to dominate the drag strip – I met my new dream car…as car that will forever be discussed as one of the most extreme muscle cars ever built for public use.
As many people know, the 2018 Challenger Demon is a street legal Mopar muscle car with a supercharged Hemi which delivers 840 horsepower and 770lb-ft of torque when running on 100-octane race gas. The Demon features the first application of a TransBrake on a factory road car, the first application of factory-equipped drag radial tires and a new body treatment with flared wheel openings all around to keep those wide drag radials safely (and legally) tucked into the body. The Demon comes without a passenger seat, rear seat or trunk trim, although you can add each of those items on for $1 and for another buck, you can add the Demon Crate, which includes Demon-branded tools, skinny frontrunner wheels and, most importantly, the high octane PCM which unlocks the full 840hp potential of the engine.
As a result, the new Dodge Demon will run from 0-60 in 2.3 seconds while running the quarter mile in just 9.65 seconds at 140+ miles per hour, making it the quickest production road car ever built by any automaker in the world.
I covered the gradual rollout of the new Demon step by step here on DodgeForum, including the grand debut of the 840 horsepower Challenger in New York City, but this earlier this week, I headed to Indianapolis for the media first drive event of the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon. This event would include testing time on the drag strip and on the street, giving me a chance to experience what will almost certainly go down as the most badass muscle car ever built for legal use on public roads.
My time with the 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon began with a drive to Indianapolis Raceway Park in a new Widebody Hellcat (we will discuss that later this week) and when we arrived at the track, my small group of journalists was greeted by a handful of cars sitting just behind the burnout boxes. Although I had been there for the debut in NYC, getting to the track and seeing the Demons that I was about to drive made the whole experience both real and surreal. After growing up dreaming of driving the most impressive Mopar machines, I was about to be one of the first people in the world to go drag racing with the new Challenger Demon.
There were a total of six 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon test cars waiting at the drag strip for me – two white, one black, one yellow, one Go ManGo and one in Octane Red. Some cars were only for track use and those were wearing the skinny front tires while the cars which would double as our road testers were fitted with the normal wide tires up front. All of the vehicles were equipped with the high performance PCM and filled with 100 octane racing fuel, so every one of these supercharged Mopar monsters was ready and willing to throw down 840 horsepower. As the track was sprayed with traction-aiding liquid and rubber was laid down by the track crew, members of the Demon engineering team gave us a quick rundown of how the Demon worked and how our day would go.
My first run down the quarter mile at IRP had me in the passenger’s seat while a member of the engineering team did the driving – explaining how the line lock and TransBrake features worked. He made an 8th mile run with a ton of traction issues, but in doing so, he was able to teach me the basics of launching the 840 horsepower Challenger. After that, we switched seats and it was my turn to pilot the Demon.
In the weeks leading up to this historic first drive of the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon, a great many people in the go-fast world seemed to think that this is the kind of car that you can just line up, mash the throttle and run mid-9s, but that is not the case at all. While this Demon has 9-second quarter mile potential, the car is still very tricky to drive.
The Demon’s line lock feature is simple enough, as you push a button on the infotainment screen to turn it on and once you depress the brake pedal to the floor and hold the “ok” button on the steering wheel, the system is active and the front brakes are locked. From there, the Demon is ready (and willing) to do big, nasty burnouts.
Next came the tough part – launching the 2018 Challenger SRT Demon.
Aside from the massive amounts of power, the key factor in the Demon being so damn quick on the drag strip is the new Drag Mode. Drag Mode includes the TransBrake feature while also engaging the Torque Reserve system, both of which allow the car to launch with far more power than the Hellcat Challenger, but contrary to popular belief, it is not easy to put all of the variables together for a 9-second quarter mile.
The real trick to the new Demon is launching with the TransBrake, which is always active when the car is in Drag Mode. After the burnout, I rolled the Demon up to the starting line and activated the TransBrake by pulling back on both of the steering wheel mounted shift paddles as the same time. Once the system is active, I fully engaged the system by pushing the brake pedal to the floor and carefully raising the engine RPM up to 1,500 – at which point the system was live with the gas pedal, brake pedal and both steering wheel shift paddles held down.
Next, to prepare to launch, I had to let off of the brake peddle and one of the shift paddles (either one works) while keeping the other shift paddle pressed and while holding the engine at 1,500rpm. The problem is that current track conditions were too slick to launch the Demon at 1,500rpm, so after releasing the brake pedal and one of the shift paddles, I had to lower my RPM down to around 1,200, which was where the engineering folks expected that we would get the best launch. As I lowered the engine RPM to the desired range, releasing the second shift paddle releases the TransBrake and the car launches, but there is more to it.
If I allowed the engine speed to dip too low, the TransBrake system deactivates and the car will gently roll away from the line. If I had the engine speed too high when I released the second shift paddle, the Demon would either smoke the tires or shake them hard on launch, neither of which leads to a good drag strip run, so it is a matter of hitting that perfect sweet spot in the RPM range when you release that second shift paddle. Like many others in attendance at the event, I had a few failed TransBrake launches before making one good, hard 8th mile run of 6.7 seconds, which equates to roughly 10.3-10.4 in the quarter mile and on those runs – the feeling of the Demon rocketing down the track was like nothing I’ve ever experienced from a factory-stock road car. You can watch that run below.
8th mile, you ask? Yes, all of our “Schooling runs” were made with an engineer in the passenger seat while running on the 8th mile, as the most tracks don’t allow cars with a passenger to run the speeds that the Demon can reach, even on slower runs. However, after getting a feel for the function of the 840hp Demon, I moved to a car with only one seat and it was my time to run the quarter mile in the quickest production road car ever. Fittingly, that car was a Dodge, just like the cars that I had grown up dreaming of someday driving, except this time, I was the one in the driver’s seat.
I strapped myself into a white Challenger SRT Demon with skinny front tires and no extra seats, setting the car to Drag Mode and heading for the burnout box. As I rolled through the water, a handful of photographers along the side of the track were all gesturing for a big burnout while one guy kept yelling “lots of smoke”…and I didn’t disappoint them. With the help of the line lock system, I roasted the tires until they bit hard, lurching the car towards the starting line. My heart was pounding as I prestaged, quickly pulling back on both shift paddles, raising the engine RPM and bumping the brake pedal to light the staging bulbs. Once they were all lit, I released one shift paddle and then the brake pedal, lowering the RPM from 1,500 to around 1,100 as I prepared for what would surely be the greatest quarter mile run of my life…
And I dropped the engine speed too low. The Demon’s TransBrake disengaged and since I wasn’t holding the brake pedal, the car casually rolled out of the beams. Damnit.
We were using the car’s on-board timing system rather than the track’s system, so when I hit the brake pedal and stopped the Demon from rolling any further, the quarter mile timer reset. At that point, I brought the engine RPM up a bit just using my feet and I made a solid footbrake run of 10.8 at 128 miles per hour. That was my first ever 10-second run and I had done it in the new Dodge Demon, but I wanted to do better.
I drove the 840hp Challenger back around to the staging lanes and quickly pulled back to the burnout box for another try. After a shorter burnout with a hard bite at the end, I staged and began the dance to use the TransBrake. Paddles back, brake pedal down, engine RPM to 1,500, brake pedal up, release first paddle, lower engine RPM to around 1,100-1,200, release second paddle and hammer the gas after the car moves, carefully applying throttle as quickly as possible without smoking the tires. This time, the launch was much better, and while I still didn’t come tearing out of the hole like the engineers who turned in the record 9-second runs, I laid down a great quarter mile pass with just a touch of wheel spin at the top of 1st gear.
My time? 10.5 at 132 miles per hour. You can watch that run in the video below and you can see that I came out a little slower than I would have liked, but even with that gentle launch, I was able to lay down a 10.50 with the new Challenger Demon and what an incredible feeling it was to pilot this machine at those speeds.
At mid track, the power of the Demon is not just pinning you back to the seat, it is kind of crushing you against the seat to the point that you can feel it in your chest and best of all, that feeling continues all of the way down the quarter mile. In fact, crossing the line in 5th gear, the Demon is still pulling hard enough that when you let off, you can feel the nose of the car settle back down. It is truly a breathtaking experience to drive a production road car that gets down the track like the new Demon and it is unlike nothing I have experienced in the past.
It was a great run, but I wasn’t done, as I had one more shot with the 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon, so I circled back around to the starting line for my last run of this session. Once again, the burnout was good and my use of the TransBrake went smoothly, but I got too greedy with the throttle on launch and I spun coming out, and then spun harder at the top of first gear, forcing me to lift just a bit. As a result, my time was a bit slower, with the Demon running an 11.00 at 127mph.
So, while I wasn’t able to get into the 9s like the test engineers who helped set the 9.65 record, I ran the quickest quarter mile time of my life and the quickest of anyone in my group. In fact, I’ve not read any reports of any writers running quicker than a 10.5, so while it was no record run, it was a great time for only having gotten a handful of runs. With more seat time, I am confident that I could have run in the lower 10s, but I believe that running in the 9s will take lots of skill with launching the car, as well as better conditions than we had in Indiana this week. It was hot and humid with a DA over 2,400, so it was the furthest thing from good air, and I still turned out a 10.50 with the new Demon.
Also, in talking with a few people, I believe that I am the only person in the world right now who has made quarter mile passes in both an original Demon (my 1972 340 car) and the new Demon, with the new Mopar machine running about 3 seconds quicker than my classic Mopar muscle car.
Finally, after I had made my drag strip runs in the 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon, it was time for the road driving portion of the event. I headed out onto the streets of Indiana in a black Demon with the drag radial tires up front to see how well this drag car handled street use. Thanks to the active suspension system, switching from Drag to Sport mode adjusts the suspension so that the Demon handles a great deal like the Hellcat Challenger. The Demon does have smaller sway bars and slightly softer springs, but the car still handles remarkably well, even on curvier roads and the odds are good that most people who drive it on a twisty road will have plenty of fun. The sticky drag radial tires allow the car to grip the road very well and at the same time, the thicker sidewalls of the Demon tires (compared to the low profile Hellcat tires) actually do a better job of cushioning the impact of rough roads.
In short, the Demon doesn’t handle as well as the Hellcat, but it is still perfectly comfortable for daily driving. Really, unless you are mashing the throttle, this Challenger is just as comfortable on the road as any other modern Dodge muscle car and when you mash the throttle, it is still comfortable – it is just a whole lot faster.
In the end, there is no question that the 2018 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon is the greatest muscle car of all time. It might not be a road racing champ, but when it comes to doing what muscle cars do best – blasting down the quarter mile and dominating the streets – there has never been a car that does it as well as the Demon. Honestly, I don’t think that there will ever be a car that does muscle car things better than the Demon while still maintaining great street manners for daily driving.
