Photo: Hellcat forum
The Demon may be yesterday’s news, but it also happens to be the most expensive and extreme Challenger to date. However, the strip-slaying muscle car is not perfect because Fiat Chrysler Automobiles isn’t a byword for quality or reliability.
Today we'll talk about the Air Grabber hood scoop’s habit of chipping away at the paint, a problem that has been reported many times already by the Demon community.
Filed with the Eastern District Court of California, a class-action lawsuit against FCA US LLC states the obvious on behalf of the plaintiffs. The leading plaintiff, Brian Garlough, also says that Dodge has “falsely advertised and promoted” 840 horsepower as standard instead of 808 horsepower on pump gas, not race fuel.
Fiat Chrysler did address the paint-chipping issue with a technical service bulletin, fitting a redesigned insert that proved to be just as bad as the original. Demon owners published photos of the damage on the Hellcat forum, and worse still, these owners claim that FCA denies warranty claims for paint repairs.
I’m not taking sides here, but who takes responsibility for a design flaw for a car under warranty? The customer or the manufacturer that designed the hood scoop in question? The culprit is “a flimsy insert that expands and contracts when the vehicle is used, resulting in a sagging, buckling, bulging, and vibrating insert.”
As a consequence of the insert’s expansion and contraction, owners have reported “insert and strips warping, cracks, chips, and rust in the original, factory paint.” Given that Dodge offered three years or 36,000 miles of limited warranty to every single Demon customer, it’s high time for the automaker to make things right.
It wouldn’t cost a lot either given that only 3,300 examples were ever produced. 300 of them went to Canada while the remaining 3,000 were sold in the United States. As a brief refresher, the final Demon left the assembly line in Brampton in May 2018.
Filed with the Eastern District Court of California, a class-action lawsuit against FCA US LLC states the obvious on behalf of the plaintiffs. The leading plaintiff, Brian Garlough, also says that Dodge has “falsely advertised and promoted” 840 horsepower as standard instead of 808 horsepower on pump gas, not race fuel.
Fiat Chrysler did address the paint-chipping issue with a technical service bulletin, fitting a redesigned insert that proved to be just as bad as the original. Demon owners published photos of the damage on the Hellcat forum, and worse still, these owners claim that FCA denies warranty claims for paint repairs.
I’m not taking sides here, but who takes responsibility for a design flaw for a car under warranty? The customer or the manufacturer that designed the hood scoop in question? The culprit is “a flimsy insert that expands and contracts when the vehicle is used, resulting in a sagging, buckling, bulging, and vibrating insert.”
As a consequence of the insert’s expansion and contraction, owners have reported “insert and strips warping, cracks, chips, and rust in the original, factory paint.” Given that Dodge offered three years or 36,000 miles of limited warranty to every single Demon customer, it’s high time for the automaker to make things right.
It wouldn’t cost a lot either given that only 3,300 examples were ever produced. 300 of them went to Canada while the remaining 3,000 were sold in the United States. As a brief refresher, the final Demon left the assembly line in Brampton in May 2018.
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