It may seem blasphemous to increase the power of a Demon, but for every supercar with good intentions, there must be an opponent. Summoning the dark arts of boost and traction, Hennessey Performance is ready to take your car to another level. Last week they announced the Camaro Exorcist, which is based on the already potent ZL1. But how do those lessons apply to the latest from Dodge? Released this morning on a new landing page, the essentials of the upgrade are mentioned. Addressing the elephant in the room, the Demon will first be made NHRA legal by installing a roll cage.
All sanctioning bodies require a cage for top-level competition. Fabricating a cage is a rite of passage to many racers, but the notion of removing the interior from a brand new car is unsettling to most. That’s why you should leave it to the professionals at HPE. Dodge introduced a new block for the supercharged 6.2-liter engine, and it is the only production lower end that’s bored with deck plates. These hardened steel plates are bolted in place of the cylinder heads to ensure the cylinder and crank bores will be true once the heads are torqued down. It’s a costly bit of machine work that is usually left to racing engine shops.
No matter how much power a production car makes, it must still abide by clean air laws. As such, the Demon uses every trick legally available to make 840 horsepower and 770 lb-ft of torque while not polluting. It does this with a very conservative camshaft. John Hennessey is a master of cam timing and his secrets about overlap and duration are only known to a handful. Supercharged engines like to have open headers for exhaust. The cylinder heads carried over from the Hellcat so the full-length exhaust they already developed will drop right in. Other goodies included with the HPE 1000 will be a more aggressive supercharger and drag parachutes. No mention of pricing was announced, so stay with us for more updated from Hennessey Performance.
