Hennessey to go from 170 hp Dodge Demon to 1,700 hp for $200,000.
The 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 is designed to celebrate the demise of the current Challenger and its V-8 engine. The car produces a whopping 1,025 hp when running on E85 fuel, but Hennessey Performance is already working on an upgrade that would raise the output to 1,700 hp.
Hennessey CEO and founder John Hennessey was one of the first to deliver the Demon 170 in the country. His car is the 25th of approximately 3,000 cars expected to be built for the U.S. and another 300 for Canada.
He and his team in Sealy, Texas, are planning an upgrade package called the Demon 1700 Twin Turbo, which, as the name suggests, will replace the stock supercharged 6.2-liter V-8 with a twin-turbocharged setup. But rather than simply swapping out the supercharger for two turbochargers, Hennessey plans to pair the new Blueprint's twin-turbocharged engine with a new transmission and upgraded rear differential to handle the extra power.
Original components will be shrink-wrapped and stored in crates.
Full specifications will be released at a later date as development is ongoing. However, Hennessey's goal is hypercar performance: in addition to 1,700 hp output, the company promises a quarter-mile time of 7.9 seconds at speeds over 175 mph.
Hennessey plans to make just 12 of these modifications. Pricing has not yet been determined, but is expected to be close to $200,000, and this price does not include the price of the donor Demon 170.
The Demon 1700 twin-turbo upgrade is the first project for the newly created Hennessey Special Operations (HSO), which also handles low-volume production and one-off requests. HSO plans to do 15 to 20 vehicles per year, and to become an HSO customer HSO plans to do 15 to 20 vehicles per year, and to become an HSO customer, one must go through an application process and be willing to spend a minimum of $100,000 on upgrades alone.