How to break in a Dodge Demon | The Demon Diaries, Episode 1

Being one of the lucky 3300 owners of the 2018 Dodge Demon is a very special thing. It’s a street-legal drag car with 840 hp and the capacity to pull a wheelie straight off the showroom floor. Thus, when I heard rumors a few years ago that it was going to come to fruition, I put my name down for an allocation immediately.

Editor’s Note: Mike Musto, founder of YouTube channel The House of Muscle, bought and paid for a brand-new 2018 Dodge Demon. (He also insures it with Hagerty.) Why not just get a media loaner? So he could live with it every day and provide pure, unbiased feedback. And burnouts.

My plan is to cover everything from initial break-in procedures and long-term reliability, to learning how to properly set up the Demon for the drag strip. It will also be used as a full-on open road car and grocery getter along with whatever else I decide to throw at it. It will not be babied, coddled, or put in some hermetically sealed balloon for investment purposes, but instead, driven as the engineers and designers intended.

At the same time, the car has the creature comforts of a car you’d want to drive every day. Like a car should, there is both a passenger seat and a rear seating row. And the seats are leather. There’s also an 18-speaker stereo. Does that mean we won’t put in a safety cage? Not necessarily.

Will I get it into the 9s on the drag strip? Will it be reliable? And will this 840-hp monster make for a great daily driver? Honestly, I don’t know, but I’m looking forward to finding the answers to all those questions and more.