The long-awaited Final Edition of the Hemi-powered Dodge Challenger has arrived. With 1,025 horsepower on E85 fuel and a quarter-mile time fast enough to ban it from the drag strips, the Challenger SRT Demon 170 probably doesn’t disappoint muscle car fans. But what about all the weird Last Call teasers with the creepy monster sprite? If you were expecting it to be called Challenger SRT Leprechaun, maybe you are a little disappointed.
At this point it would be a good time to read our full launch of the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 article if you haven’t already. And if you have no idea what this pixie thing is, revisit the most recent Last Call teaser in which we mention the six bizarre places. Now that we’re all on the same page… what is Dodge? With this crazy Challenger finally revealed, there’s no more sprite in sight. So what’s the deal with the monster pixie that appears in the teasers?
Turns out it was literally a figment of the imagination of none other than To dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis, talked about as the company was trying to figure out what to do for the car’s showcase campaign.
“I dreamed about strange evil sprites one night,” he explained at a media event for the Demon 170. “I may have had a few beers before I fell asleep, but I dreamed of these weird evil sprites and woke up – we were struggling with what we were going to do for the teaser campaign for this car I woke up and said that’s it.”
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That’s not the end of the story, however. Kuniskis then adds the marketing side of the story, explaining that leprechaun lore says they are very fast, hard to catch, drink a lot, and if you catch them you get their gold. He equates gold (and prolific consumption) with E85 fuel; as for being fast and hard to catch, there’s really nothing outside of a legit race car that can compete on a drag strip. So maybe he should have been called the leprechaun after all?
“Liquid gold. E85. It almost looks like we planned it. Maybe I planned it in my sleep,” Kuniskis commented.
Anyway, that’s where the crazy teaser videos came from. As for the future, who knows what dream warriors might be hiding in the minds of Dodge executives for next-generation performance vehicles.
