The creepy leprechaun zips over the SRT Demon’s 140 mph quarter-mile as it descends for its Las Vegas debut.
March 17, 2023 at 2:45 p.m. ET
After a month of videos and various months of speculation, we’re at the end of Dodge’s teaser campaign. That makes this the last Last Call teaser for the latest Last Call Dodge Challenger, which is a lot space balls basic way of saying the end is here. So let’s go.
For those keeping score, this is the sixth teaser of the current campaign (counting the original announcement) and the seventh hint of this final model. It features the creepy goblin monster from the second teaser jumping out of a plane, skydiving to Las Vegas, where the big reveal will finally take place. Along the way, we see it pause momentarily at 140 mph before hurtling forward in a great rush, breaking the sound barrier in the process. For the record, that’s about 755 mph in Las Vegas, which has an elevation of 2,000 feet above sea level.
Obviously, this Challenger to end all Challengers doesn’t hit 700 mph, but 140 mph is clearly a clue. Or rather, going faster than 140 mph is the track, but with 215 mph referenced in an earlier teaser, of couse the new challenger goes faster than the 140. could that be how fast does the new challenger go in the quarter mile? Possibly, but again, the takeaway isn’t speed. It goes faster than that speed. And we think we have the answer.
Go back a few years to the debut of the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon, then billed as the fastest-accelerating production car in the world. Dodge officially listed the Demon’s quarter-mile time at 9.65 seconds. And his speed at the end of that carpet? 140 mph on the spot, and no, we don’t think for a second that’s a coincidence. Our take on this teaser is that the new Challenger is faster than the Demon, period.
Based on the other teasers, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Long story short, the first teaser showed a ghostly demon-like face with red eyes, leading us to speculate that the new car would be a Challenger Demon Redeye. The second teaser saw that spooky demon transform into a goblin monster after being dosed with golden liquid, which could indicate that it runs on E85 fuel. Teasers three and four threw numbers into the mix, suggesting that its engine has significantly more boost than a standard Hellcat and that it can run a sub-nine-second quarter mile. As such, the new teaser lines up with the others in a neat way.
The fifth teaser showed a V8 jackhammer hitting gold pellets with 2,538 psi of… something. Some have said it’s another reference to boost pressure or cylinder pressure, but it’s certainly still the weirdest of the bunch. And then there’s the original teaser dating back to August 2022, when Dodge announced its Last Call lineup. That’s where we saw a Challenger-shaped car under a hood, adorned with a license plate that read 1FAST29.
Luckily, the wait is almost over. Dodge will reveal its final Last Call model on March 20 at a big event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It will mark the end of Dodge’s V8 muscle car for both the Charger and Challenger, but as the teasers clearly suggest, it won’t go away quietly.
You can watch the debut live on March 20 right here on Motor1.com. In the meantime, check out the latest Rambling about the cars podcast where we further dissect the Last Call teasers, and much more besides.
