There’s no getting around the fact that the Dodge Challenge Demon 170 and the Lucid Air Sapphire are wildly different types of cars. The Demon 170 is about as close as you can get to buying a dedicated drag racer that’s still street-legal, while the Air Sapphire is an electric luxury sedan aimed more at the kind of person who might buy a Porsche Taycan or Panamera than the fans of Yelling Goatee Man Garage. If you look at their performance specs, though, they match up a lot better for a drag race than you might initially expect.
The Dodge Demon 170 makes 1,025 horsepower on E85 and can run the quarter-mile in a claimed 8.91 seconds. The Lucid Air Sapphire, on the other hand, makes 1,234 hp and runs the quarter-mile in a claimed 8.95 seconds. So if you were to line them up on a drag strip, the Air Sapphire would have a bit of a power advantage, but with the right launch, the Demon 170 would still win. If only we could see these two cars actually race each other in real life.
The bad news is, you’re probably not going to be able to go down to your local drag strip and find a Demon 170 racing an Air Sapphire. The good news is, though, that two owners actually did race each other recently, and DragTimes has the video. So how did it go? Not well for the Dodge, that’s for sure. Neither car hit their official quarter-mile times, but the Lucid Air absolutely trounced the Dodge Challenger.
Over the course of three runs, the Air Sapphire never ran slower than a 9.030, a time the Demon 170 never even came close to touching. It may be a much lighter car, but, as it turns out, when you’re putting that kind of power down, you probably want all-wheel drive to ensure consistent runs. That said, seeing the Challenger lift its front tires from a launch is still pretty badass regardless of what kind of numbers it put up.
