In true demonic fashion, Dodge is teasing us with tidbits of information about the Challenger SRT Demon spread over the next 10 weeks. For motorheads, this is the worst form of torture?knowing a wickedly powerful and purpose-built street machine will exist, but not knowing many details. It’s like being an eight-year-old stuck in a never-ending Christmas Eve. But a little news has trickled out regarding exactly how the beefy Challenger lost some weight.
Dodge Challengers are heavy machines. In base V-6 form they flirt with two tons. Add a few hundred pounds for the iron-block 5.7-liter Hemi and a few more pounds when the car makes the jump to the 6.4-liter Scat Pack or the base Challenger SRT 392. The Hellcat from which the Demon is spawned weighs nearly 4500 pounds?707 horsepower is a heavy number to carry around, after all. To shed some unholy mass from a Demon, Dodge ditches everything it can, starting with all the seats except one for the driver. Dumping the rear and passenger seats sheds 113 pounds, 58 of that for the passenger throne alone. (A betting man could safely wager that the seats, and their respective belts, could be available as dealer-installed options.) Ditching the trunk trim saves another 20 pounds, and 18 pounds of sound-deadening material go away, too. As we speculated, the speakers are all gone except for two small ones in the doors for the warning chimes; that and a simplified wiring harness pares another 24 pounds.
Further mass reduction...