Dodge played the ultimate practical joke on all members of the ‘Go Fast’ piston-credence club when the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 came out to engage in quarter-mile live-action role-play. The most powerful muscle car ever to come out of any factory in stock form, the Demon 170 has one job: cover the 1,320 feet of dragstrip faster than anyone else in its class.
Officially, the Mr. Olympia of muscle cars packs a strong enough punch to melt sounds and shatter gravitational waves. 1,025 maximum horsepower at 6,500 RPM and 945 Ib-ft of torque at 4,200 rpm is the peak performance when the 6.2-liter supercharged HEMI eats E85-soaked embers pulled out from the forges of Hell. That’s 1,039 PS and 1,281 Nm; in kindergarten terms, it could stop Earth's rotation and put Japan into eternal night. Because that’s where Godzillian JDMs dwell and sharpen their unholy after-market tuning skills to abnormal dyno reads.
Since we brought the output measurement into this discussion, here’s one Demon 170 getting its medicals done at a speed shop just to find out if Dodge is telling the truth or just low-balling the no more than 3,300 customers who ordered one. It turns out Mopar is lying – at least, according to the video below, where the vlogger shows precisely how much power and torque his Demon 170 makes,
To keep things fair, the Challenger with the sign of the beast was filled with E85, and the results are not 1,025 and 945 (hp and pound-feet, respectively). According to Baily’s Hyperformance dyno, the blue Demon 170 puts down 898.02 hp and 878.91 lb-ft where it matters most – at the rear fat rubbers. Translated into metric, it equates to 911 PS and 1,190 Nm.
Photo: YouTube/Demonology
The Texas speed shop and Herman Young, the YouTuber from Demonology, agreed upon a 15% drivetrain loss, which means the above net figures correspond to a crankshaft output of 1,057 hp (1,071 PS) and 1,034 lb-ft (1,402 Nm). Does this mean Dodge wasn’t being the honest-to-God manufacturer when it released the specs? No, because Mopar was honest to Lucifer – at least in this particular case – and understated the car’s potential by 32 horsepower.
What’s curious is that another dynamometer test performed by another car enthusiast from Texas going by the name of Hennessey Performance about two months ago, in December 2023, revealed different specs. Using the same E85 mandated by Mopar for peak results, Hennessey’s reading stood at 925 RWHP and 903 lb-ft of RWTQ. Play the second video and see for yourself.
Either the two tuners use different dyno algorithms, or the drivetrain loss percentage differs. Alternatively, John Hennessey’s Demon 170 might simply be a tad more potent from the factory. Using the same 15% correction factor between net and flywheel figures would result in 1,088 hp (1,103 PS) and 1,062 lb-ft (1,440 Nm). That’s a lot over the Dodge metric, no matter how we look.
One important note about the Demon 170 dyno sessions: The manufacturer advises that "Tires may exceed the speed rating of 149 mph (240 km/h) only in drag race applications and never in highway use." Other videos have shown that dyno tests of the Demon 170 were performed in fifth gear, not sixth (which has a 1:1 ratio).The speed governor would cut off power prematurely, yielding inaccurate results. We don’t know how Herman Young got his example tested, but let’s wait and see him put the hellish Challenger to the actual test at the dragstrip.
After nearly two decades in news television, Răzvan turned to a different medium. He’s been a field journalist, a TV producer, and a seafarer but found that he feels right at home among petrolheads. Full profile
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