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European Can't Launch Dodge Demon Properly, Still Gets What It's All About

Having a Dodge Demon on your hands and not being able to experience its full power must be one of the most frustrating scenarios in the life of a car enthusiast. Yet, we can only imagine it's still better than never driving one at all.
Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 8 photos
Photo: carwow / YouTube screenshot
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The thing with the Demon is that it's built with one thing and one thing only in mind: to drag race. As is usually the case with overly specialized cars, they tend to be pretty bad at anything other than the thing they're meant to do, and the Demon makes no exception.

It's not that it can only go straight or that it's totally unusable on the road—put the right tires on, and it'll happily help you run your errands even through the sluggish urban traffic—but the way it chugs gasoline is enough to put a lot of people off that idea. After all, you could buy another car with the money you spend on fuel in a year if you were to use it as a daily.

That holds even more water outside the U.S., which is the case for this reviewer. You might know Mat Watson from the numerous (one could even say "countless") drag racing videos he makes for the carwow channel, but here you'll see him in slightly less familiar circumstances.

Mat was given the chance to spend a little time with what has to be one of the very few Dodge Demons that have made their way to the United Kingdom—if indeed there are even more than one. That's because the cost of having one imported and registered there is highly prohibitive, making it a pure vanity decision as you can have quicker cars for less money.

What quicker cars, you might rightfully ask? After all, the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon was the quickest accelerating production car right until two weeks ago when the Model S Plaid came along. Yeah, well, that's the thing: like the Plaid, you can only get the best out of the Demon on a prepped surface.

However, unlike the Demon, the Tesla will perform only slightly under its maximum potential on regular asphalt, whereas the Dodge will crumble completely. That car's reliance on good grip can't possibly be overstated, and without it, it's just a big, heavy, tire-spinning machine that takes a disappointingly long time to complete the standing quarter mile. If the driver has problems launching it properly, a 12-second run is apparently the best you can hope for.

Well, at least no amount of poor traction can take away the enjoyment brought by the sound of the supercharged 6.2-liter V8. The exhaust gurgle is beautiful, but the Demon truly comes to life once the supercharger starts its wailing, whooshing louder than the motor of an electric race car. It may be an American car speaking to a British guy, but that kind of language is pretty universal.

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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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