Against all odds: how someone unexpectedly found himself riding shotgun in one of the most brutal muscle cars of all time.
Was he dreaming? How was this even possible? A Dodge Challenger SRT Demon – the monster itself, raw and as rare as gold in a trickle of water – at a gas station in Germany?! You could only buy those in the U.S. or in Canada, after signing a disclaimer confirming you were aware of the Demon’s (un)holy nature and would not hold the company responsible in case something went wrong (assuming you’d even be in a condition to do so after your inevitable trip to the ER).
He rolled up in his Saab 900 convertible and stopped at the pump behind the SRT Demon – SRT standing for Street and Racing Technology. The tamer of the devil, apparently, was inside paying. Or maybe he was done already and just marking his territory. Wouldn’t have been surprising. In any case, our protagonist made up his mind to ask the guy how on earth he’d gotten his hands on that car – and anything else he could find out.
He got out and walked around to take a closer look. What a beast. Does the word anti-aesthetic exist? If the Hulk didn’t just throw cars but drove them too, the Demon would be his. The not-exactly-tiny Saab looked like a Matchbox toy beside it.
As a long-time subscriber of a British car magazine, he knew this Challenger inside out. “Terminator on Wheels” had been the headline of the feature back then – and he thought that nailed it perfectly. The 2017 SRT Demon was (before the even wilder Demon 170 five years later) the penultimate fireworks display from Auburn Hills before the glorious HEMI V8 – hero of countless quarter-mile duels and a true piece of Yankee heritage – was finally laid to rest and replaced by a stream-lined electric future. An electric Dodge! Yes, friends, nothing is sacred anymore. A once-impregnable bastion of rebellion has fallen. Dodge – one of the meanest icons of the muscle-car era (just think Charger!) – will at least keep a straight-six alongside the battery version. Cute, in a way.
Hmm. What was taking the guy so long?
Time to study the massive air intake on the hood and recall the nearly obscene performance stats of that 6.2-liter supercharged engine: 852 horsepower. 1,044 newton-meters of torque. Zero to 60 miles per hour (96.5 km/h) in 2.3 seconds! The occupants are pressed into their seats with 1.8 g – almost twice the force of gravity, or in other words, double their own body weight. They record similar values at Cape Canaveral during a rocket launch. The Dodge does the quarter-mile (402 meters) in 9.65 seconds. The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) actually banned Demon owners from official drag races – unless they fitted the beast with a roll cage and parachute. As for fuel consumption, Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis summed it up in one word: “Terrible.”
Suddenly he heard a woman’s voice behind him. “Not bad, huh?” A young woman – no, a very young woman, nineteen, maybe twenty. Still looked like half a teenager. “You could say that,” the observer replied. She moved to the driver’s side and reached for the door handle. “That’s your car?” he asked, wide-eyed. “Sort of,” she said. “It’s my dad’s, technically. But mostly, I drive it.”
He struck up a conversation and learned that her father – a tech entrepreneur and car nut – had bought the Dodge a year earlier. It had only been possible because the family also had a home in the U.S., down in the Florida Keys. Her dad apparently had no problem letting her tear around with 800+ horsepower, since she’d been racing karts since she was six – “like Schumi,” she added, clicking her tongue. And this wasn’t the first hypercar she’d driven, either. There were “a few other cool rides” in her father’s garage: a Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera, a Ferrari 575M Maranello, the latest Porsche 911 Turbo S. But the Demon, she said, would blow them all away – in the sprint from zero to one hundred and over the quarter-mile. All of them.
He listened, fascinated. “Wish I had a father like that.” And,wanting to keep the conversation going, he added: “It’s also thefirst production car in the world fitted with special drag tires.” – “Hey, you know your stuff! How come?” – “Oh,” he said modestly, “just book knowledge.” – “So what do you drive?” He pointed to his Swedish classic. “That one. And another – a Corvette C3.” – “Cool. Really cool.” – “You know . . . I have a real soft spot for the American way of drive.”
Since the young lady was clearly talkative – and he knew he’d probably never see this car again in his life, however long that might be – he summoned his courage and asked if she had time for a quick spin. “Sure,” she said, easy as that. He thanked her about three thousand times, parked his Saab across the street and climbed in.
Her name, by the way, was Ella. When she woke the monster and a deep, NASCAR-like rumble drowned out every other sound nearby – and then winked at him with her right eye (no, let’s not get the wrong idea here; she could have been his daughter, she was just expressing a shared vibe – “We get each other, right?” – and he took it exactly that way and no other, just to clear up any misunderstanding) – he thought, this kind of thing only happens in the movies. Which made it all the more precious. The icing on the cake was that sharp contrast between the very young Ella and this crude, time-devouring creature from a brand whose glory days only true aficionados still remember.
He’d expected a short cruise around the block, at most. But Ella headed straight out of town, soon flying along country roads between meadows and fields. His brain initially registered the unprecedented acceleration – a physical borderline experience – as a threat, triggering the scientifically verified fight-or-flight response. Instant hormone release, involuntary breath-holding – a neurochemical meltdown, let’s say. (Hopefully she didn’t notice. How embarrassing.) The abrupt changes in direction didn’t help. Only gradually did his body and mind adapt to this new dimension of forward motion, which he would later describe, quite vividly, as “vertical roller-coaster driving – as if each organ was accelerating on its own”.
The car nut’s daughter really floored it. She said nothing gave her as much joy as driving fast, that she suffered from a “speed addiction” and believed it to be incurable. He replied that one could live a long life with that condition – citing 97-year-old former German racing driver Hans Herrmann as an example. The man had even survived a kidnapping for ransom.
It was immediately clear that the steering wheel was in expert hands – gas and brake engaged or released at just the right moment – and that everything about the way Ella handled this 1.7-ton beast, even with the eight-speed automatic (which of course made things easier), revealed both her professional kart-racing training and plenty of seat time in her dad’s supercars. An old truth was once again confirmed: speed alone is no measure of skill. No, the true artist behind the wheel shows sensitivity in how they slice speed into precisely the right – or rather, the maximum tolerable – doses. And by all indications, Ella was highly gifted in that department. Simply incredible. 852 horsepower danced to her tune, not the other way around. Impressive, too, was how casually she kept chatting: “Officially, it’s limited to 270 km/h because the semi-slicks are only rated to 240. My dad got Pirellis on different rims and lifted the limiter. I let off at 320. Not because that’s where the speedometer maxes out, but because it gets dangerously light in the rear. But you could certainly get more out of it, that’s for sure. I’m convinced it could hit 335. Though then you’d need a rear spoiler. And I wouldn’t be the one driving.”
After a little more than half an hour, Ella slowed and pulled back into the gas station. Wanting to show his gratitude, the grateful man offered to cover the gas. “Keep it,” she said. “Dad’s paying.” They shook hands, he got out, and the Dodge thundered off – with only half a tank left.
Dodge Challenger SRT Demon
- ENGINE supercharged V8
- DISPLACEMENT 6,166 cc
- POWER 852 hp (626 kW) at 6,300 rpm
- TORQUE 1,044 Nm at 4,500 rpmn
- WEIGHT 1,941 kg
- 0 – 100 KM / H 2.4 s
- TOP SPEED 335 km/h
Text Kurt Molzer| Photos Steffen Jahn
ramp #69 More Than Machines
Maybe it all starts with a misunderstanding. The mistaken belief that humans are rational beings. That we make decisions with cool heads and functional thinking, weighing and optimizing as we go. And yes, maybe sometimes we do. But only sometimes. Because in truth, we are not reason, we are resonance.
And so this issue of ramp is a cheerful plea. For beauty that needs no justification. Find out more
