Dodge’s Muscle Car Era Ends in Blaze of Glory

Your hand grips the gearstick of your new Dodge Challenger, trembling with excited anticipation. Your foot, light but ready, hovers over the gas pedal. Your heart quickens. There are sounds all around, but they go unnoticed as you are tunnel-visioned on the stoplight hanging in the glow of the evening sky, waiting for the familiar florescent green to light up.

When it does, you slam on the gas, accelerating to truly breakneck speeds where you (literally) and the era of gas-guzzling muscle cars (figuratively) drive off together into the sunset.

What happened: Earlier this week, the CEO of Dodge, a subsidiary of automaker Stellantis, unveiled the last muscle car the company will produce as electric vehicles replace their gas fleet.

Instead of going quietly into the night, Dodge celebrated the end of an era by making a limited time production of the most powerful muscle car it’s ever made – the Challenger SRT Demon 170.

The specs of this car are wild

• The car has over 1000 horsepower, allowing it to go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in under 1.7 seconds. For those keeping track, that’s faster than Tesla or Lucid sportscars.
   
• For the car to physically handle the 945 pound-feet of torque, the rear drive shaft had to be made from aerospace-grade metals.
   
• This totally street legal car comes stock with only a driver’s seat to avoid passengers dragging down the performance (passenger and back seats can be bought for $1).

With a price tag of $96,666 (Demon, get it?) and an estimated production of only 3300 cars, this car isn’t meant for picking up groceries, it’s a collector’s item.

The takeaway: Dodge recognized the end of an era: muscle cars are special to a whole generation who grew up loving and admiring them.

• The Dodge Challenger is allegedly the secret mid-life crisis dream car of our very own Johnny Wentzel.

But change has arrived and retirement can be difficult to accept for some. Transitioning away from a nostalgic past is always challenging. Dodge’s swan song is really going out with a blaze of glory, making the best performing muscle car its ever built to drive off into the sunset.

+Watch it here: The 2023 Challenger SRT Demon 170 Ends Dodge’s Era of Excess with 1025-HP V8