At first glance, the 840-hp Dodge Challenger SRT Demon doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It makes way more power than anyone could ever need their road car to have, most American’s can’t afford it, and only a few thousand will ever be built. But Dodge says it didn’t build the Demon to sell Demons. It built the Demon to sell regular Challengers. And apparently, that plan is working, even though Dodge still hasn’t actually delivered a Demon to a single customer.
Speaking to the Detroit News, Tim Kuniskis, FCA’s head of passenger cars, said Challenger sales are up, and he credits the Demon. “We haven’t built the first one yet, but people have been talking about this car since January,” he said. “So the hype has been building and selling other Challengers. Our Challenger sales are through the roof. We’re having an all-time record year to date.”
Granted, it’s only been the best year ever by about 100 units, but it’s still a record. Through August of this year, the Challenger has also outsold the Chevrolet Camaro, something it hadn’t done at this time last year. In the month of August, the Challenger also beat both the Mustang and the Camaro, selling 6,253 units to the Mustang’s 5,535 and the Camaro’s 5,017. From the looks of it, what Kuniskis called a “trickle-down effect” is working.
“It’s selling SRTs and Scat Packs and regular Hellcats,” he said. “We built the Demon to cement the image of what the brand is in peoples’ minds. And this is what we want our attitude to be seen as.”
What’s even more impressive is the fact that the Challenger isn’t anywhere near as fresh and new as either of its competitors: the Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang. Ford last redesigned the Mustang in 2015 and gave it a refresh for 2018. Chevrolet, meanwhile, began selling the new Camaro in 2016. But the Dodge Challenger? It hasn’t seen a redesign since it was first introduced in 2008. And the LC platform it’s built on still uses parts from the 1999 Mercedes-Benz S-Class and the 2002 Mercedes E-Class. To call it dated would be an understatement. But we found out when we recently drove the Challenger’s cousin, the 2018 Chrysler 300, the LX/LC platform still feels surprisingly fresh despite being nearly old enough to start puberty.
So while a limited-edition, street-legal drag racer that costs at least $85,000 might not make sense on paper, it looks like selling the Demon was actually a brilliant move on Dodge’s part.
Source: The Detroit News
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