The Dodge Demon 170 is a fever dream of a modern-day muscle car. It has a 1,025 horsepower supercharged Hemi V8, it costs almost $100,000, and its manufacturer claims a jaw-dropping 1.66-second zero to 60 mph time. For anyone who ever owned or enjoyed the long run of the soon-to-be discontinued Dodge Challenger, this is the car's final form, made to send the model out with a bang.
And it doesn't stand a chance in a drag race against the electric Lucid Air Sapphire.
"I know, I know, we were all hoping for a much closer result," Hagerty's Jason Cammisa said in a new video where America's ultimate gas-powered muscle car takes on America's ultimate electric vehicle. "Even the Lucid folks, who were here rooting for the Demon. But we tried and we tried and we tried and we tried."
Gallery: 2024 Lucid Air Sapphire First Drive
Now, let's be fair here and note way up high that this series of quarter-mile runs pitted the Demon against a vastly more expensive car. As pricey as the Dodge is, the Sapphire too is the ultimate expression of the Air lineup and it costs around $250,500. Give the Dodge some serious points for being able to compete at all in what's essentially a supercar's price class. And, yes, they're also very different cars that will appeal to very different people.
But it's still a remarkable showing for the Sapphire, which boasts 1,234 horsepower, 427 miles of range and enough plush comforts to make the Mercedes EQS feel almost irrelevant. I guess that being able to smoke Dodge's best muscle car is just one added benefit, if you can afford it.
In this Hagerty test, Cammisa and crew throw the last Challenger against the Air Sapphire in a series of quarter-mile runs in two places. They start at the usual Willow Springs Raceway, where the Dodge immediately—and I mean immediately—gets walked by the Lucid.
The EV crosses the finish line almost 400 feet ahead of the muscle car, running the quarter in just 9.2 seconds at 158 mph. It hit 60 mph in just 2.1 seconds along the way, thanks in large part to its all-wheel-drive dual-motor traction advantage. So even though the Dodge is on Mickey Thompson drag radials, it's still outclassed here.
Cammisa notes the Air's traction control systems are vastly more advanced, being able to adjust power output up to 1,000 times per second on each rear wheel individually as well as on the front ones. That's faster, Cammisa says, "than the Dodge's computer can pull engine power and add it back in."
"The cars may have nearly identical power-to-weight ratios, but this is more than just a battle of RWD vs. AWD," he says. "On the one hand, we have decades-old computer technology trying to control piston-engine tech that's a century old. On the other, well, we just have the speed of electrons."
So they decide to move the contest to a proper drag strip with non-street asphalt, which the Dodge's tires were actually designed for. That requires a detour to the VHT-added Famoso Drag Strip, where... well, the result is basically the same thing. Over and over again, the Lucid nukes the Dodge from orbit. It doesn't even feel like a fair fight. I had to look away toward the end of the video; I just felt bad for the muscle car.
So how did they stack up? Not even close:
In the end, this test is further proof that if American performance has a future, it's not going to be powered by gasoline, no matter how much people love the go-fast noises.
And hey, Dodge is working on a solution to that too.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
