The Dodge Challenger SRT Demon will have more power and will save about 200 pounds over the Dodge Challenger Hellcat. How do they save all that weight, you think? Exotic materials, maybe? High technology, possibly? Nah. Dodge is ripping out the seats.
Okay, so it’s doing a little more than just ripping out the seats, according to Autoblog, but not a hell of a lot more:
The Demon also has unique 18-by-11 inch wheels, which are 16 pounds lighter than the Hellcat’s, a manual scope/telescopic steering, which loses four pounds, and an 18-pound loss thanks to removing 23 noise, vibration, and harshness parts (the Demon will not by a quiet car, to say the least). Another 20 pounds is lost thanks to removing the trunk trim and spare tire.
The majority of the weight loss, however, is made up by ripping out the front passenger and rear seats, for a savings of 113 pounds.
This sounded properly insane, even for Dodge, so I sent them an email to confirm. And they said that yes, this thing will absolutely be a single-seater, if that’s what you want:
Responding to your question – in standard trim, the Demon will come with front passenger and rear seats removed.
That is nuts! And awesome! But mostly nuts!
I’m trying to think of anything else that you can buy, here, now, in 2017, with only one seat. The BAC Mono is the only one that comes to mind, but I’m pretty sure that can only be imported to our golden shores through kit car rules.
Couple that with the humongous drag radials on all four corners, and this thing will have gone straight past window-licking crazy and onto public-telephone-eating insanity.
I gotta say, I love Dodge. They might not have the resources to do a proper mid-cycle refresh, or a whiz-bang hybrid system, or really much at all.
But they’ll shove an absurd engine in a Challenger and rip out all the seats. And there’s nothing more emblematic of automotive bacchanalia than a single-seater muscle car.
Amazing.