Muscle cars are a quintessentially American creation. The cash-rich and fancy-free post-war culture led to the rise of these big-engined performance cars. Detroit could afford to be extravagant. So the muscle car was born: aimed at youths who wanted huge horsepower for light-to-light racing, before heading to the diner with Peggy Sue. The die was cast, and the rest of the world has been eddying in the turbulence of the American muscle car ever since.

Of course, in recent years there has been a resurgence for the muscle car – and the Hellcat of 2015 was a game-changer, with its manic supercharged 6.2-litre Hemi churning out a ludicrous 707bhp. And if you thought the Hellcat was nuts, the Demon was on another level. The ultimate version of the new-wave Challenger, the Demon is a basically a road-legal dragster. Its 6.2-litre Hemi has a 2.7-litre supercharger on top, giving it a peak power figure of 808bhp on pump fuel.

Designed to actually be able to pull wheelies from a standing start, the specs were insane: 315-section tyres (on the front!), only one seat – unless you paid a dollar to add the passenger seat back in, a line-lock, and a ‘Power Chiller’ that hijacked the air-con system to pre-chill the intercooler. Quite possibly the angriest car ever built.

The Demon we have here has covered a mere 2,400 miles from new; imported to the UK in 2021, its current keeper has been its only UK owner. The passenger seat was optioned from new, and it features such options as the line-lock, Drag Mode suspension, Comfort Audio Group, and wide-body fender flares. Unfortunately the fabled ‘Demon Crate’ is absent (long story short: the supplying dealer assured the owner that it would be included in the sale but, due to Covid complications, it wasn’t delivered), although the owner does have the correct cut-slick tyres in storage.

With production lasting just one model year and only 3,300 Demons having been built, this is a rare opportunity to purchase an astonishing machine. And trust it, it really is ridiculously fast.

It’s essentially a drag car, so you’d expect it to be basic… right? Well, in one sense it is, with its cloth front seats and stripped out rear.

But on the other hand, it’s actually a far more usable vehicle than you might imagine; the Comfort Audio Group option brings a decent stereo system, and the central screen features sat-nav, Bluetooth, DAB radio, phone connectivity and all the other stuff you’d expect of a modern car. It may be a road-racer, but it’s not as compromised as you might think.

Given the extremely low mileage, it’s all in very tidy condition too, with no wear, marks or damage. The Alcantara-trimmed steering wheel has no glossiness, the headlining and carpets are good, there are no warning lights illuminated on the dash, and everything’s working as it should.

Few modern cars carry as much visual presence as this, outside the realm of the supercar at least. It just looks extremely mean, doesn’t it? And purposeful too, with its Air-Grabber hood and headlight-mounted air intakes hungrily gulping oxygen, and its up-and-at-’em stance thanks to the Drag Mode suspension.

The Maximum Steel Metallic paint helps to amplify the bruiser vibe, and it’s all in great condition with no evident scuffs or dings. All of the light lenses and window glass are in good order – and if you look at the base of the windscreen on the driver’s side, you’ll see that Dodge have incorporated a little silhouette of a Demon doing a burnout.

It's part of Demon lore that they came equipped with cut slicks, although the owner has removed these (they’re in storage and will come with the car) and instead fitted a set of performance road tyres which offer rather a lot more grip, thus ensuring it’s drivable in whatever the British climate chooses to throw at it.

The original wheels are fitted, and are in decent condition aside from some kerbing to the rims of two of them, but that’d most likely be an easy refurb to sort.

The powertrain is truly astonishing. The 6.2-litre Hemi V8 is boosted by a 2.7-litre supercharger to produce 808bhp (or 840bhp on race fuel), and the sound it makes is properly hellish – a deep-lunged rumble with a shrieking banshee wail laid over the top. It’s genuinely addictive.

This mighty motor is mated to an 8-speed ZF automatic transmission with paddle-shift. It’s friendly enough for driving around town, but this car is really at home on the drag strip: using the red key unleashes all of the power, and with a line-lock and launch control to deploy, it can run a quarter-mile in 9.6 seconds, which is frankly ridiculous.

All but the silliest hypercars are left trailing in its wake, as it accelerates to 60mph in 2.3 seconds, hits 100mph in 5.1 seconds, and headbutts the limiter at 168mph. (With this limiter disabled, you’d be looking at 200mph+.) The Drag Mode suspension allows for the requisite wheel travel and squat that such behaviour entails (hence the arch gaps, it’s all about function), and interestingly its damping rates actually make the Demon really comfortable to cruise around in.

Given the extremely low mileage, as well as the newness of the car (it’s still yet to reach its fifth birthday), everything throughout the mechanicals is working just as it should. And it’s just begging to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and hurled at the horizon.

This car offers many excellent pub boasts. It’s the only production car that can pull wheelies. At the time of launch, it was the fastest-accelerating (non-electric) production car ever, with the most powerful production V8 ever. 

It really is a modern muscle car legend, and with such limited production numbers – combined with a clique of ownership that ensures these machines rarely hit the open market – this is a rare opportunity indeed. A genuine Demon with just 2,400 miles on the clock. And believe us when we say that it’s awesome fun.

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