There's No Such Thing As A Car That's Too Fast, And Here's Why

Can a car ever be too fast? We’ve been asking ourselves this question since someone at Automotive News called for the Dodge Demon to be banned earlier this week.

You can look at this from a number of angles. Let’s take the Bugatti Chiron, which is limited to 261mph but could do 288mph if you’re willing to risk your life by pushing the tyres beyond what they’re capable of. Even limited, that’s a lot faster than the Dodge Demon.

The Tesla Model S P100D will sprint to 60 in 2.38 seconds, just eight hundredths behind the Demon and not all that much slower down the drag strip. But the Tesla is held up as a shining example of wonderful, progressive, advanced and safe technology. This isn’t stacking up.

Let’s bring in comparisons to motorbikes, the fastest of which will easily match or beat a hypercar in a rolling drag race up to 150mph or so. The fastest I’ve ever ridden is a Kawasaki ZZR1400, which took me from 60mph to 130mph in third gear alone, and in not very long at all. I remember the giddy sense of power I had, the risks I took and the sense of having dodged a bullet when I got off it. I remember thinking that if anything was too fast, that was. I realised that I’d maybe been a bit dangerous, and I also realised that the danger had come from me, not the bike.

And yet the big Zed is a slowcoach next to the latest and greatest litre sportsbikes and track-biased two-wheeled tech weapons. The argument for the pointlessness of these machines for road use is one for another day, maybe, but the point stands that they’re not banned, and only idiots would like them to be.

Why? Because a piece of machinery is only as dangerous as the person you put on or in it. A motorbike isn’t dangerous at all if you know what you’re doing and don’t take risks. Likewise, a car isn’t dangerous if you don’t take risks. We all take some risks, because life is boring if you don’t, but the point here is that no vehicle is dangerous; people sometimes choose to be dangerous, or just don’t realise that they’re being that way.

The Dodge Demon is not a cheap car and will have a restricted group of buyers to start with. Its reputation is already legend and it’s easy to imagine that some buyers will just add one to their collections or only ever use it on a private drag strip. The rest will be using it on the road, yes, but for Automotive News to imply that owners will be full-bore launching away from every set of traffic lights, ploughing into crowds and racking up a Total Recall-style body count is short-sighted and counter-productive. What need would Demon drivers have to do that? The badge alone will do all the hard work. The guy behind the wheel has nothing to prove.

Perhaps what really troubles the magazine’s bowels is the ferocity of the car’s launch; the trans brake that allows a 30 per cent faster reaction time and the semi-slick tyres that add traction. But is that really likely to be a public danger? No.

To get the fastest launch involves a specific process that just isn’t practical – or cool – to use on city streets. In the real world it’s going to be slower than a lot of Teslas. Its top speed is nowhere near that of the average supercar and you’re not going to be seeing it in any 200mph YouTube races down the freeway.

Driving a Demon will be like riding around on a grizzly bear. Why would people bother to pick a fight, and why would you need to go picking fights? Sorry, Automotive News, there’s not a car in the world that’s too fast and the Demon won’t inspire misbehaviour any more than any European supercar that you don’t want banned. What you’re really saying is that you think the American people who want to buy a Demon are dangerous, and I think it’s time you came out, stopped blaming Dodge and admitted it.