We had somehow cornered the man with all the answers the world wanted. What was the new coupe from Dodge? Another Hellcat? An all-wheel-drive Lamborghini slayer? A VIN-less stripper designed for COPO and Cobra Jet shootouts? As we sat across from Tim Kuniskis, president of Dodge, in a conference room atop the Chrysler Headquarters and Technology Center in Detroit, he spooled it out. Dodge's new production monster is intended to create American-muscle believers. It's a supercharged Challenger variant that will launch with the wheels in the air, will knock down a 1.36 sixty-foot time, holds a Guinness World Record for wheelies, was banned by the NHRA, and will be the quickest production car from any factory—ever. And you can buy it in America as a 2018 only and, in fact, is called the Demon. He then threatened that it's one and done, making these statements while slapping an open palm on the desk Nikita Khrushchevstyle.

What It Ain't

You've heard of the COPO Camaro, Cobra Jet Mustang, and even the Drag Pak Challenger. Those cars lack VINs and are really just an awesome collection of parts ready for your paint and specific aftermarket parts to race in the Factory Stock Showdown or Stock Eliminator classes in the NHRA. With a talented driver and professional prep, these race cars will run 8 seconds in the quarter-mile after you swipe your credit card, but they are comprised of only 60- to 75-percent factory parts and aren't going to do it on radials. If you think Stock cars are stock, you need to rent Days of Thunder.

The Demon is not an FS/AA car, although it easily could be. It's in a class of its own. It was intended to be a factory door-slammer built to drive from the dealership to the racetrack, run all day after a tire-pressure adjustment and some button pushing, and drive home using a parts list from Mother. It has A/C, wipers, a touchscreen and electronics, and was designed to look and act like a showroom Dodge.

To prove these claims, Dodge invited the NHRA and Guinness World Records to witness the car in action at Gainesville Raceway in Florida. As a factory, turnkey, dealership showroom car, it earned a certificate for the longest wheelie from a standing start in a production car and a letter from the NHRA both verifying the 9.65 e.t. at 140.9 mph quarter-mile run and stating it violated Section 4 of the NHRA Rulebook because it is too fast.

The promise, handed to us by Dodge, was no slicks and no tricks. Using the OE-equipped Nitto P315/40R18 drag radials that are on the car, the Demon will go 9.90s. With a front wheel and tire swap, and 100 octane, it will go 9.60s. The goal was to eliminate any question that this car can handle its power.

What It Is

To the average consumer or mainstream minivan tester, this is a Dodge Challenger with a caricature of Satan on the fender. So how do you build a car with parts for the drag geek and still push 3,300 versions into the marketplace? Visionary marketing, that's how.

The story begins with the Challenger: a 425hp, 6.1L, Hemi-powered, new-era muscle car. The car sold well and looked great with its SRT accoutrements, throwback paint schemes, and familiar long-hood and short-deck layout. They moved off the showroom floor and moved pretty fast on the street as well. Everything about the car was a success, except for the automotive journalist part. And Tim Kuniskis was listening. "Journalists would always write, 'It's big, it's heavy, it doesn't brake as well as the Camaro and the Mustang,'" Kuniskis says. "We put the 6.2 in it, put 700 horsepower it in, and guess what? Everyone stopped talking about being heavy, it doesn't handleit all went away." The original muscle-car formula still works to this day: put the most horsepower under the hood that you can, make it fun, and people will love it. The 707hp Hellcat Challenger and Charger concepts worked.

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At the same time, Dodge was working on the newest Viper ACR (American Club Racer). "Take the pure DNA of the Viper—it's a track car—and make it the purest, rawest, most out-of-control track car ever, and break as many track records as you could against any competitor, at any price," Kuniskis says. After the ACR was launched, it broke records at 13 racetracks and now holds more records than any other production car in the world.

With two successful product launches behind them, Dodge began work on what was called the ADR, or American Drag Racer, to have the fastest road-course car and the fastest drag car together in one brand as a marketing message. Using the same ethos behind the Viper ACR, the ADR was to be the boulevard street/strip car the Challenger always wanted to be. That decision was reinforced when both Mustang and Camaro went toward being road-course cars, leaving a nice sandbox all alone for Dodge to play in.

When Kuniskis organized the funding, he needed to make the business case to FCA. "Everyone builds a factory drag car," Kuniskis says. "It's a non-VIN package car, you buy it from the parts department." The Challenger Drag Pak was available to people in the know, but it was a purpose-built race car with a $100,000 price tag, low production volume, and it needed a trailer to get to the track. "What if we did that, but put a VIN plate on it, a factory warranty, and it was purpose-built as a drag car?" Kuniskis won approval.

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The Demon

With a big list of functional objectives to deliver, members of the SRT engineering team and Kuniskis had another meeting to talk about the program's execution. The first thing they discovered is that even if they delivered all of the objectives, there was no guarantee anyone was ever going to remember this car. The list contained phenomenal gearhead accomplishments that did not bridge the gap between the enthusiast and the general market like the Hellcat did. "Even if you were driving a regular Challenger, people would ask if it was a Hellcat," Kuniskis says. Dodge needed to make your neighbor ask if that thing in the driveway was the new car they had heard about. It has to be the car that leaves the starting line at 1.8 g's, pulls a wheelie, and does 060 in 2.3 seconds (2.0, if you factor in rollout) and runs mid-9s at 140 mph, making it the quickest production car ever at any price. And it needed a memorable name. That is when the ADR became the Demon. It's new and it's different, and now it has personality and identity. The subsequent ad campaign released information to the public in 14 individual video segments that were loaded with Easter eggs containing clues and riddles about the performance and features of the upcoming car. Dodge PR claims 1-billion social impressions.

Special Parts

Now for the car-guy stuff. To make this car a legit street/strip car you can drive to the track, run a 9.60, and go home on the freeway, you need specialized drag-race parts. The Demon provides them all.

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First, you need traction. The Hellcat was equipped with a set of P275/40R20 Pirelli P Zero Nero all-season tires, making for quite a smoke show with proper throttle jockeying. The Demon will be the first factory car to arrive with a set of P315/40R18 Nitto NT05R drag radials on all four corners to be street legal. Dodge added the fender flairs to balance the look front-to-rear. At the track, a set of 18x4.5 skinnies will be waiting in the trunk to be swapped on the front if needed. We're big bias-ply baloney fans when it comes to drag rubber, but have slowly come to appreciate the drag radial for its stability and ease of use. When we compared them on a small-tire car, the radials were just as good as the slicks.

To warm the tires for traction, the Demon uses a factory line-lock that's built into Drag Mode. When the coolant temp is less than 250 degrees, the vehicle speed is less than 10 mph, and the line-lock button is selected through the touchscreen, the OK button on the steering wheel will lock the front brakes and release the rear for a burnout. The line-lock will automatically release when the gas pedal is lifted, the brake pedal is pushed, or the wheels reach 400 revolutions.

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If you've been staring at the hood and grille, you are going to see a nod to the early Hemi Dart days with a big inlet to drive cold air to the driver side of the engine compartment and into the cold-air box. Called the Air Grabber, it is the largest hood vent currently in production. The grille area is just a really large opening with a small bumper strip and a front splitter designed to cram as much cooling air into the engine compartment as possible. What appear to be inside headlights are actually clear, hollow cones with the Demon insignia called Air Catchers. They act as running lights, blinkers, and feed supplemental air into the cold-air box.

On the subject of cooling, heat-soaking the blower is a great way to kill power, and sitting in traffic on the way to the dragstrip for hot laps is a great way to heat-soak the blower. The Demon is equipped with the Super Chiller, a system that reroutes refrigerant from the cabin to the charge air cooler while in Drag Mode. Dodge engineering told us the system can take 45 degrees Fahrenheit out of the intake air charge between rounds by running both the radiator fan and the intercooler pump for up to 10 minutes with the engine off or until the target temperature is reached.

According to the timeslip, the Demon can cover 60 feet (the first timer at a dragstrip) in 1.36 seconds. To get there, it uses a rev limiter called Torque Reserve (you know it as a two-step) that retards spark and cuts fuel, and a factory transbrake that engages clutches A, B, and C when generating engine power, then D and E when the transbrake is released and the car operates in First gear. The transbrake operates using the steering-wheel paddles. Pull both paddles and stage, then release one to engage and rev to the preselected target launch rpm. When the second paddle is released, the car is launched. For you newbies, it's like dumping the clutch.

If you are still a skeptic of this car's potential, the Demon has a version of the Hellcat's 6.2L Hemi with a 2.7L supercharger that makes 808 hp and 717 lb-ft on pump gas and 840 hp and 770 lb-ft at 6,300 and 4,500 on 100 octane, respectively. To get to the big power number, you'll need the red key fob and be switched into high-octane mode. The car weighs 4,250 pounds, so if you do the math, that number conservatively puts the car in the 9s.

As drag racers, we know that simply adding a bunch of power doesn't make you go fast. In addition to the drag radials, line-lock, and transbrake, the Demon has plenty of suspension mods designed for drag racing. In Drag Mode, the front suspension utilizes soft rebound dampening to help lift the front end and keep it there for weight transfer and firm compression to slow the rate at which the front end returns to ride height. The rear firms up compression and rebound for high-speed stability. Think of the suspension acting like an electronically controlled version of 90/10 shocks. In Drag Mode, the system shuts off traction control and Launch Mode, but still utilizes yaw control that splits torque distribution between the drive wheels—like a computerized limited slip.

The Demon uses the factory IRS instead of having a live axle swapped for drag racing. To support the power, the torque capacity has been increased by using larger halfshafts and a larger cross-glide joint (think U-joint with radial ball bearings). The final drive ratio is 3.09:1. It's not a lot of gear because the ZF eight-speed transmission has a 4.71:1 First gear ratio! The tried-and-true, drag-race ideal is 10.0:1 overall, and the Demon digs even deeper with an overall ratio of 14.55:1.

See all 177 photos

See all 177 photos

See all 177 photos

Inside the car, there is no NHRA-certified cage. There is also no back seat. Instead, there is a formed carpet area with netting and a package tray with removable inserts that allow access to brace points for installation of bracing required for NHRA certification. The rest of the interior has a "sinister" gloss-black theme and the dash has white-face gauges. The front seats are bolstered with inserts to keep you from sliding out the door. They're in cloth, but you can upgrade them to leather from the SRT and Viper lineup. All around the interior are model-specific references to production numbers, ownership, and special backgrounds that appear in the instrument cluster and, of course, the red key fob.

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The Pre Stage Kit

It might be a secret, but Tim Kuniskis is a drag racer with real experience in Buick Grand Nationals and other beloved street/strip cars from the 1980s and 1990s. This becomes apparent when you study the Pre Stage Kit, the coolest part of the Demon package. Using the concept of a golden ticket, owners of the Demon can order this kit by phone and have it delivered at home in a crate. Inside is a personalized name plate with the owner's name and VIN number, 18x4.5 front wheels and tires, a floor jack, electric impact gun, torque wrench, air pump, and other sundry Snap-on branded items. All of these parts fit into a molded foam container form-fitted to the trunk to prep the car without a trailer or crew. The crate is also how owners get access to the high-performance powertrain module and air filter, and center-console switches to take the car from street to strip. When these parts are dealer-installed, the car will continue to be under warranty.

How Do I Get One?

At the time of this writing, Dodge didn't have an MSRP or a dealership list. But we were told there will be a total of 3,300 Demons for sale to the public just like a standard Dodge would be at the dealership. No parts-department codes or special handshake needed. Kuniskis predicts that buyers will be a split of collectors, Hellcat owners, and racers who will use the car for its intended purpose: glorious drag racing. Dodge has also primed Hagerty as the preferred insurance company so you won't need to waste time explaining wheelies, Satan, and 800 hp to your insurance rep. Call your credit union now and set up the loan.