2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 Review: The Ultimate Drag Queen

The 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 is here - $97k price tag and all. It's the final edition of the Last Call Challengers and the most bonkers yet. See that amount as a starting point, which will balloon as you pile on the extras to customize this future classic. What you get for that princely sum is an exclusive drag-strip special that develops up to 1,025 horsepower on an E85 ethanol mix. It can bolt to 60 mph in 1.66 seconds to the thundering roar of a 6.2-liter V8 laced with a high-pitched supercharger whine. It's the most powerful muscle car ever and was built with the sole purpose of delivering shattering performance on the drag strip. It thumbs its nose at the downsized turbocharged four-cylinder brigade and chugs gallons of gas to feed the nuclear plant under the vented hood, but we wouldn't have it any other way. It's the last of a breed and the end of an era.

Only a limited number of these will be built, and rivals are vanishingly few; a Chevy Camaro ZL1 has great handling but not nearly the power or straight-line pace, and the most potent Mustang Coupe on sale is the Dark Horse variant. That 'Stang comes with 'only' 500 horses from its Coyote V8, but it costs a lot less. The upcoming Ford Mustang GTD will target 800 hp - but it has a starting price of over $300k, and like the Dark Horse, isn't about drag strip domination, either. Other sub-2-second cars in the same price range are big EV sedans like the Tesla Model S Plaid and the Lucid Air Sapphire. There aren't any rivals with the specialist skills of the Demon 170 - and none that are designed to break barriers. The Challenger SRT Demon 170 is a gloriously excessive last hurrah for the gas-powered V8 Challenger, and even though it may not make sense to some, its existence must be celebrated.

New for 2023

The 2023 Challenger SRT Demon 170 is a one-year-only trim and the most powerful Challenger ever. It reboots the 2018 Demon's name but one-ups that car's 840 hp by 185 hp to produce 1,025 hp on a 170-proof E85 ethanol blend of fuel - which is also where it gets its name. Its supercharged 6.2-liter V8 has been extensively re-engineered to produce the immense outputs, gaining a 3.0-liter supercharger, reinforced engine components, a stronger drivetrain, and a fuelling system that can supply a staggering 164 gallons of fuel per hour - more than the typical US shower head. The mind-boggling stats extend to the car's accelerative prowess, but actually achieving the neck-straining 1.66-second 0-60 sprint requires a specially prepped drag surface.

Dodge will build a maximum of 3,300 units, with 3,000 earmarked for the USA and 300 for Canada, but the final number will be determined by production capacity. All models are one-seaters as standard with seating for additional passengers costing extra. At least a modern infotainment system is standard, as is air-conditioning - which helps chill the V8's intake charge. Each Demon 170 is sold with serialized and customized, limited-edition content, including a decanter set.

2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 Price: Which One to Buy

The price of the new Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 is $96,666, and, considering the car's name, all those 6s are not incidental. All 40 Jailbreak packages have already been allocated by Dodge to handpicked Dodge customers - at a price of $30k over and above the list price. The MSRP doesn't include the $2,100 gas-guzzler tax or $1,595 destination fee, so in reality, a base-spec Demon 170 will cost you in excess of $100k.

There's just one Demon 170, and it already goes for nearly a hundred grand; speccing it up will cost you even more. We'd have loved to customize it to the nth degree with the $30k Jailbreak package, but that's no longer available and was offered to select Demon 170 buyers only. Whatever else you want to add is up to you, but, unfortunately, your Demon 170 won't ever be everything you want it to be. Lots of Direct Connection after-sales products are available, such as a seat-harness mounting kit, a parachute kit, a trunk organizer, and a carbon-fiber close-out panel for the rear bulkhead. Speccing it with a roll cage and parachute for NHRA events means you can't drive it on the road. Driving it on the road means you'll never see that 1.66-second 0-60 time. Decisions, decisions.

Interior and Features

The cabin is now old and familiar, but it’s of secondary consideration in a car such as this. True to its mission, passenger seats aren’t included as standard, and that - and any other attempt at luxury - costs extra.

The Challenger SRT Demon 170's cabin architecture is nothing to write home about, with the same familiar dashboard we've become used to, made from workmanlike materials, and showing its age after so many years on the market. But that's hardly what this car is about, and you'll be in no doubt which Challenger you're getting inside when you swing open the long door. To save weight, there's only one seat by default, trimmed in cloth. You can add more seats for up to five passengers, but they're optional. Specced like that, the surprising interior space available for all trumps almost all coupes out there, especially in the second row. Lots of scope is provided to customize the interior with Nappa or Laguna leather upholstery, heated and ventilated seats, a sunroof, and more. The performance steering wheel bears an illuminated SRT logo and can optionally be heated. An ominous "Demon 6666" interior badge below the air vent reminds you that you're piloting the most devilish of Challengers.

Space

The Demon 170 is a one-seater out of the box, with seating for the driver only. A passenger seat can be opted in by itself or accompanied by a rear bench; getting both will set you back $2,500. While there's quite a bit less space to stretch out in in the second row, it's vastly better than almost any coupe out there and can actually accommodate adults. A sedan-like 116-inch wheelbase ensures that this ballistic missile is impressively accomplished at transporting people. Perhaps a couple of rear-seat passengers is just what you need to weigh down those rear tires for a proper launch.

Cargo

The room on offer isn't only available to passengers; the Demon 170 has impressive trunk space as well. With 16.2 cubic feet on offer, it outguns many a full-size sedan and will be able to cart everything along that you'd care to take to the drag strip. In standard format, there is, of course, a ton of space for extra stuff where the passengers' seats normally are, though Dodge doesn't provide a number for the total combined trunk volume.

In-cabin storage falls a bit short and includes only a glove compartment, door pockets with bottle holders, two front cupholders, and a lidded bin in the center console. Though it's a bit difficult to retrieve stuff from, there is a useful net to hold items down in the hollow in the rear cabin where the bench's seat cushion used to be.

Materials and Colors

The Demon 170 comes with a single front seat covered in lightweight houndstooth cloth with a Demon 170 logo and white contrast stitching on the seat, center console, and steering wheel. The standard setup comes without sound insulation, a trunk carpet, or bright pedals to save weight. Another option is a full-cloth interior. More interior colors become available if you upgrade to leather upholstery. The premium leather interior comes with black seats trimmed in Alcantara and Nappa leather, but Demonic Red Laguna leather is also available. A serialized dashboard badge displays the car's four-digit VIN, carbon-fiber trim is scattered around the cabin, and the steering wheel is trimmed in Alcantara and sports an LED-illuminated SRT logo.

Features and Infotainment

The Demon 170 is all about extracting the quickest possible acceleration from the package, so it's thin on features to save weight. Right out of the box, you get a single cloth-trimmed seat with manual adjustment, with extra seats and features such as climate-controlled front seats and Alcantara/leather upholstery costing extra. Keyless entry with push-button start, dual-zone climate control, cruise control, and power accessories are fitted, but precious little else. You can opt for a laundry list of after-sales customization options, though, such as replacing the rear-seat-delete close-out panel with a carbon-fiber item or ordering a trunk organizer or seat-harness mounting kit.

The standard infotainment system is Stellantis' familiar Uconnect 5 system with an 8.4-inch touchscreen, Bluetooth, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, Wi-Fi capability, and a lightweight two-speaker audio system. The SRT Performance Pages can show you lots of stats on your drag runs and whatnot on the infotainment screen. Navigation and an 18-speaker Harman Kardon audio system with an amplifier and trunk-mounted sub cost extra.

Performance

If the conditions are ideal and the planets align, no production car gets to 60 mph and dispatches the quarter mile as quickly as a Demon 170 - and, remarkably, it does all of this with rear-wheel drive.

The supercharged 6.2-liter eight-cylinder engine in the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 is the most powerful ever fitted to a Dodge. Almost every major part of the engine had to be strengthened or re-engineered to dispense huge amounts of power reliably. The "170" in its name refers to the 170-proof E85 ethanol fuel mix required for the engine to produce its full 1,025 hp at 6,500 rpm and 945 lb-ft of torque at 4,200 rpm. The ethanol content in the fuel is automatically detected, and the power available is adjusted accordingly. On E10, the outputs are 900 hp and 810 lb-ft, and on regular 91-octane pump gas, you get "only" 880 hp. A 3.0-liter supercharger running on a 3.012-inch pulley and breathing through a 105-mm throttle body provides 21.3 psi of boost to the engine, and plenty of aerospace-grade metal parts - including the cylinder-head studs - ensure that everything stays in one piece while dispensing towering performance. The entire drivetrain is strengthened, with a thicker propshaft and halfshafts and a stronger differential housing. Rear-wheel drive is default, and an eight-speed automatic transmission engages warp drive. A revised suspension setup with softer settings allows more weight transfer, letting the Demon 170 squat and grip on launch.

All of this is good enough to, theoretically, give the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 a 0-60 sprint of 1.66 seconds, a peak acceleration force of 2.004 g, and an NHRA-certified quarter mile of 8.91 seconds at 151.2 mph. Top speed is a hilarious 215 mph. We say theoretically because it's only possible on a specially prepared drag-strip surface, although sub-two-second sprints should still be possible on an unprepared drag surface. The best figures are obtained with Launch Control activated, which also comes with a Launch Assist feature to reduce wheel hop. Line Lock enables stationary burnouts if you don't mind those expensive tires going up in smoke. Such shenanigans are illegal on the street, and to try your luck at an NHRA-sanctioned event, you'll have to have a roll cage and parachute fitted - the latter available from the Direct Connection parts catalog. The bespoke rear 315/50R17 Mickey Thompson ET Street R drag radials specially developed for this car make these figures possible, but even they won't get you to 60 mph in under two seconds on a normal street with only RWD.

Unless you know an owner, few of us will ever be lucky enough to get a ride in a Demon 170, let alone slide behind the wheel. If you're looking for the staggering lateral grip and 100-foot stopping distances that a Hellcat Redeye Widebody with its all-around 315-series tires can provide, the Demon 170 won't be your cup of tea. This is a drag-strip car with comparatively narrow 245-series front tires, and while it has sufficient ground clearance to drive it on normal roads, it's not built as a handling champ. The narrow front rubber will likely make for, well, interesting handling characteristics and far less cornering grip than the handling-biased Challengers. We've enthused about hot SRTs' excellent ride quality before, so it seems fair that the Demon 170 will be even better, considering the springs have been softened by 35% in front and 28% at the rear, along with way softer sway bars. This is going to be a street-legal car that can be driven to the nearest private road or track to do burnouts and attempt sub-two-second 0-60s, not a track car. And keep in mind that you'll have to find a fabricator to build you a compliant roll cage - and install it - before you can race at NHRA-sanctioned events. This, of course, means your Demon 170 will no longer be street-legal…

Fuel Efficiency

The EPA has no estimates for the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170's mpg figures, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the car's gas mileage will be dreadfully bad. Even the regular SRT Redeye Widebody with over 200 hp less on tap returns figures of 13/21/15 mpg for the city/highway/combined cycles; the Demon 170 should fare significantly worse.

With a fuel capacity of just 18.5 gallons and a fuel system capable of outperforming the average US showerhead with the fuel it can provide, we'd be surprised if you achieved a range of much more than 200 miles, should you daily it.

Safety

Safety is not a strong suit, with mediocre crash results and no advanced driver assists fitted. Only the federally mandated safety features are present.

Being structurally the same car, the NHTSA's 2023 safety review of the Dodge Challenger could broadly apply to the SRT Demon 170 as well, which is to say a full five-star overall rating. However, this is a stripped-down car in many ways. It didn't fare quite as well at the IIHS, with the Marginal score for the driver-side small front overlap crash and various Acceptable scores demonstrating the age of the platform.

In fact, safety is not a particular priority, and one gets the impression that ABS, stability control, a backup camera, tire-pressure monitoring, and six airbags are only fitted because federal regulations require them, and that the Dodge engineers would rather have left them out to save more weight. To this end, virtually no driver assists are present except cruise control, hill-hold assist, and automatic HID headlights, as the Demon 170 is hardly expected to be used as a daily driver. Even the regular SRTs' rear parking sensors have been deleted. Dodge has not said whether driver assists such as front-collision alert and blind-spot monitoring - available on other Challengers - will be offered on the Demon 170.

US NHTSA Crash Test Result

Reliability

JD Power has not evaluated the reliability of the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 in particular, but the Challenger range as a whole gets high scores. Owners are extremely happy with their cars in terms of the driving experience, scoring it 96 out of 100, and even the quality and reliability of the Challenger get an excellent score of 85. Things are looking good on the recall front too, with no recalls so far for the 2023 Challenger. The 2022 model was only recalled for inoperative tire-pressure monitoring sensors, while the 2021 model was recalled for an instrument-cluster malfunction and inadequate windshield bonding.

This is just as well, because the 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170's warranty is nothing special. The limited warranty is valid for three years/36,000 miles and the powertrain warranty for five years/60,000 miles. No complimentary servicing is included.

Warranty

Design

Considering how awesomely intimidating the SRT Hellcat Widebody looks with its enormous tires and fender flares, the Demon 170's far narrower 245-series front tires on black 18-inch alloys and lack of front fender flares initially come as a bit of a disappointment. The rear wheel arches get fender flares housing hugely wide 315-series drag radials on black 17-inch alloys, making this the only Challenger with a staggered Widebody setup and different diameters for the front and rear wheels. Removing those front fender flares saved 16 pounds. Two-piece Lacks Enterprises carbon-fiber wheels with a large weave pattern and forged aluminum centers are optionally available, shedding more than 22 pounds in total. Air Catcher HID headlights and a vented Air Grabber hood with a huge black hood scoop are standard features, along with a lightweight rear spoiler and thinly meshed upper and lower grilles to admit the maximum possible amount of air to the engine. The hood has an "Alcohol Injected" logo, and the roof and trunk lid are painted black. Special Demon badges are affixed to the front fenders, with the demon sporting a "170" neck tattoo.

Verdict: Is The 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 A Good Car?

How do you put a relative value on a car such as the Challenger SRT Demon 170? It's a niche product with a very narrow resume of abilities, mainly limited to going extremely quickly in a straight line and getting to 60 mph before any other production car - and in that case, it should be restricted to use on a properly prepared drag surface. So it's not a track car, and too rare and thirsty to daily. Yet, it's being snapped up quickly, likely for its collectability, rarity, and exclusivity factor. The Demon 170 will forever be remembered as the glorious send-off of one of the most iconic American muscle cars in history - the one with the four-figure horsepower figure, the 1.66-second 0-60 time, and bespoke powertrain that will never be available in any car again. These are more than enough reasons to covet it.