Dodge Demon VS 860HP Honda Civic (1320 Action)

Many people, myself included, have referred to Dodge’s record setting Demon as a purpose built drag car, but that doesn’t mean it’s unbeatable, especially on the track. While it is the quickest production car ever in the quarter mile, most cars you run into at the track are going to be modified, some of them pretty heavily, which means the Demon may very well find itself crossing the stripe in second place from time to time. We are starting to see some footage of these cars on the track as owners take delivery and head out to see what they’ll do, and it’s becoming a bit of a point of pride to get footage outrunning the 840 HP factory hotrod.

Looking at the horsepower numbers for these two cars, 840 vs 860 seems like it would be a nice, close race, but there are a couple of other factors at play than just brute strength. The most obvious difference between these two cars is going to be the weight. Even if it was completely factory, the Civic would come in several hundred pounds lighter than the Demon. The engineers at Dodge certainly did as much weight reduction as they could, but they had to play within the rules of government regulations and safety standards to keep the car legal by 2018 rules. The Civic looks to have been stripped of anything extra, meaning it will be even lighter, which is basically free horsepower when you’re just trying to extract the most from your ride on the drag strip.

Another factor is power delivery, which the Civic certainly has down pat. Here again, we have to look at the purposes of these cars and the approach taken to reach their goals. The Demon has to meet all the requirements of a car to be daily driven, though we doubt any of the 3,300 produced will actually serve as daily drivers. The Civic just has to get down the track, so even as down as to the tires, the Civic is rocking slicks up front while the Demon looks to be riding on the factory-issue Drag Radials.

The point I’m making here is that both of these cars deserve respect because they accomplished their goals, and the Civic certainly kicked the Demon’s butt on the track. Just keep in mind though, there will be some Demon owner(s) who decides to go full-tilt boogie and strip out all of the unnecessary weight and throw some slick on the back and then we might see a much closer race between cars like these.