The Dodge Challenger SRT Demon has now officially dropped. I must say it’s mighty impressive, and I feel similar to how I felt about the Bugatti Veyron when it came out. The Bugatti marked the real jump from supercar to hypercar in our modern era, and I think the Demon could do the same relative thing in the muscle car sector.

Yes, Chevy made the COPO Camaro a few years ago, but you can’t put a license plate on that one so it doesn’t count. The Dodge Demon is set to be the new King of the Streets, in the most-classic muscle car sense.

The Challenger SRT Demon is a street legal drag-prepped hyper muscle car, and it runs an NHRA-verified 9.65 sec 1/4 Mile @ 140 mph, bone freaking stock. That’s at least 2/10ths of a second faster than any of the hypercar hybrids from Porsche, Ferrari, or McLaren. Sure, the Demon isn’t made to conquer such cars on a road course, or even top end, but at the drag strip, it will rule.

Having said all that, the NHRA has also banned the SRT Demon from any official street car competition. Dodge says “because it’s too fast,” but that can be fixed with the proper license and some extra safety bits.

Also, the Demon will only come with a drag-optimized automatic, but I’m okay with that so long as we can still have a Hellcat with three pedals.

Other impressive features for the Demon include a max output of 840hp and 770ft/lbs, 0-60 in 2.3 sec (or 2.1sec on prepped tarmac), 0-100 in 5.1 sec, a charge cooler that runs off the air conditioning, and a supercharger with more displacement than the engines in all three of my own cars, and a factory switchable tune for race gas. The price will also, supposedly, be reasonable, like south of six-figures (until you actually go to buy one at a dealer). That said, with only 3,300 being built values may go up long term, or at least not fall too much.

Lastly, can we just take a sec to appreciate how badass those wide fenders look?

So with the Demon dropped on the world, we can now anxiously await the response from Ford and GM. This should be a horsepower war that is too good to pass up.

-Nick Walker