CARLOS LAGO: Over my shoulder are four Dodge Challenger SRT
Demons.
Dodge has flown us out here to experience
what they're like at a dragstrip, which
is conveniently located in front of them.
We're going to go over a little bit of the tech, talk
about what makes this car so special,
and then we're going to show you what it's like to drive it
down a dragstrip.
This is going to be a fun day.
Though it's street legal, the Demon
is built specifically for drag racing.
The passenger and back seats are optional.
A crate of performance parts, a $1 option,
allows the use of 100 octane fuel that
increases the output of the supercharged 6.2 liter V8
to 840 horsepower and 770 pound feet of torque.
We're driving it today in full drag race trim,
with high octane gas and on the smaller front runner
wheels and tires.
I've been excited to drive this car ever since its debut
at the New York Auto Show.
[ENGINE REVVING]
I'm most eager to explore its drag racing hardware, including
the trans brake, which uses the transmission
to hold the car in place while you're
building RPMs at the light.
There's a lot of systems here that take a bit of time
to learn, from line lock to the trans brake.
I think I got a pretty good grip on it,
and we're just going to do a demo run.
While I wait for the car in the right,
line lock is going to hold the front brakes
and let the rears spin freely, and that's
going to let the tires get the temperature
and give them more grip as we get on the surface.
Drag radials are very sensitive to tire temp.
When there's some heat on the surface and the tires are hot,
they grip the ground really hard.
That's what helps this thing get away so quickly.
Activate line lock.
Apply brake pressure.
Press and hold OK to hold.
Release the brake.
All right.
[TIRES SPINNING]
Watching the staging lights.
Pre-stage.
All right.
Inch forward to stage Now activate.
[REVVING ENGINE]
That felt good.
That felt real good.
So I'll keep the windows up so I talk,
even though I'm going to sweat, sweating for you, the viewer.
So the trans brake has an operating window
of between 1500 and 2350 RPMs, so the operating window
is about 750 RPM.
That's super narrow.
So what you have to do is you have
to pedal in somewhere between that RPM amount.
While holding both paddles and the brake,
you release the left paddle to tell the system,
OK, I want the trans brake feature at this engines speed.
Release the brake pedal, and then
when you're ready to go, release the paddle
and then dig into the gas.
What that does is it allows you to rev up
the engine while in drive, and what
that does is it builds boost in the engine
while keeping the car stationary,
while you're staged.
This is important, because you want
to launch with the most amount of torque
you can possibly give the rear tires.
And so this trans brake function,
which is really popular in drag cars,
enables you to do that electronically.
It's a nice feature, and I bet with some practice--
that's what it comes down to--
you can be pretty good at that.
The timing lights weren't running,
so we only had the Demon's onboard acceleration timer
to see the results.
If it's to be believed, the demon ran in high 10s
and near 130 miles an hour all afternoon.
That's far off Dodge's best 9.65 second pass,
but considering the high heat and humidity, the number
of people making back to back to back to back burnouts and runs,
and my own inexperience with the car,
it's an impressive feat of durability and consistency.
The Demon has all the hardware you need for the dragstrip,
but it doesn't do the important work for you.
You're in charge of managing the gas
pedal, which makes improving your times more rewarding.
Unlike the sophisticated launch control
systems of similarly fast cars, you still have to drive it.
And I love the Demon for that.
If you want to see more videos, especially ones where I'm not
wearing a goofy racing suit, check them out here
or subscribe to the Edmund's YouTube channel.
[MUSIC PLAYING]