Top Gear

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello, and welcome to Top Gear. Let's play

who forgot to sign the producer's birthday card?

Here's a clue. On tonight's show I drive one of the fastest cars of all

time, Chris drives one of the most iconic cars of all time,

and Rory drives a Kia.

LAUGHTER

- All you had to do was sign your name, Rory. - Yeah. I know.

- Thanks. - That was literally all you had to do.

- I know! - Now, we all know the car world is full of outrageous claims.

For example, Chris Harris still insists he's five foot eight.

- He isn't. - Well, you're not five foot ten, are you?

All right. Now, here's another outrageous claim from Dodge.

Dodge says it's built a car that will outrun anything on

the planet. Like these.

HE SNIGGERS

And, apparently, you can buy this fastest car

in the world for 84,995,

that's about £60,000.

I'm five foot ten, Chris!

It's called the Demon...

..and, as you can see, it doesn't look like a supercar.

It looks like a muscle car.

A muscle car with a muscle car motor.

ENGINE ROARS AND RASPS

A big, noisy, 6.2 litre V8 with a big, noisy,

supercharger strapped to the top.

In fact, the biggest supercharger ever found on a production car.

SUPERCHARGER WHIRS

Oh, yeah! Listen to it scream!

It sounds like Satan passing a kidney stone.

That might be the most addictive throttle pedal

I have ever experienced.

And, as you'd expect from a car that's limited to 168mph...

..out on the road, the Demon does feel pretty fast.

But supercar fast? Hyper car fast?

I don't know.

You know, this isn't some stripped down sports car,

this is a big, comfy cruiser.

Two metric tons of big, comfy cruiser, to be precise.

There's no hybrid, energy recovery gizmo, there's just a big motor.

And there's no supercar spec, double-clutch gearbox.

It's just a big automatic.

To be honest, it's kind of just a Dodge.

But I've got to say, I've driven quite a few Dodges over the years,

and they're not my favourite.

The interiors are very plastic and cheap feeling.

And, while it's no supercar on the inside,

it doesn't corner like one either.

Oh!

If you try to go around this corner in the Demon as fast as you go

around this corner in the LaFerrari, you wouldn't go around that corner.

On a road like this,

the Demon just would not see which way a supercar went.

It pains me to say it, but it's true.

So, there you go, question answered.

For 84,995,

you can't buy a car that will outrun anything else on the planet.

However, for 84,996, you might just be able to.

Because, when you buy a Demon,

Dodge will also give you the option to spend 1 more

on a crate of stuff.

OK!

You get tools, skinny front tyres, a high-flow air filter, a new ECU.

Loads of cool stuff.

Because Dodge didn't build the Demon to go quick on a winding,

alpine pass or a tight street circuit. No, no.

The Demon was made to do one thing.

To tear up the drag strip, a quarter-mile at a time.

Bolt all those crate parts on, feed it some decent fuel,

and it will give you 840 horsepower.

This is the most powerful V8 production car in history.

Dodge says this car will run the standing quarter mile

in 9.65 seconds,

which, if you know your drag racing, you'll know is really, really fast.

But if you don't know your drag racing, here's how it works.

First, you need to warm the tyres.

The Demon has a function called line lock, which brakes the front wheels,

so you can spin up the rears.

ALARM DINGS Oh, they're done.

And, once you've warmed the tyres, you're ready to go.

Well, almost.

OK, so, to launch this thing is pretty easy.

Left foot on the break, hold in both these paddles, add some revs,

release one paddle, foot off the brake,

release the other paddle as you bury the throttle.

See, easy.

Jesus Christ!

That is incredible!

That won't get old, ever.

You literally could not fall off a cliff faster than that.

Oh, hell, I'm doing that again.

And you can.

Because, unlike most cars with launch control,

where you do a couple of full-bore starts,

and then it has to go and lie down for a bit...

..in making the Demon,

Dodge had one do over 5,000 launches without a single glitch.

That is addictive.

OK. Now that I'm warmed up, how about a little race, huh?

That is a Lamborghini Aventador, four-wheel drive, V12 engine,

four times the price of the Demon.

Let's do this.

I've just roasted that Lambo!

Damn! That is big American balls, baby!

Big, fat, American ice cubes.

Is that a Lamborghini way back there?

I think it is!

When you hook everything up right,

you know how fast this car does zero to 60?

2.3 seconds.

This is the fastest accelerating road car in history.

So, there you go, if you're the kind of person who wants to live life

a quarter mile at a time,

you don't want a couple of hundred grand supercar,

you want a Demon.

And if you think driving very fast in a straight line

is a bit pointless,

you'd be wrong. Because the Demon's very specific set of skills makes it

the ultimate candidate for the coolest job in the world.

Back in the '50s, in the depths of the Cold War,

America launched the Lockheed U-2.

Designed to cruise at 70,000 feet,

twice the altitude of a commercial jet,

it was the ultimate spy plane.

But, with its vast wingspan, poor visibility,

and lack of proper landing gear, it was a pig to land.

In fact, the military found the only safe way

to bring the U-2 down was to

have a radio spotter chase it down the runway, in a car.

And because the U-2 comes in at over 100mph,

that meant using a muscle car.

Zoom, zoom.

60 years later, the U-2 has been redesigned,

and modified in the name of environmental science, by Nasa.

It's now known as the ER-2, and it is still a pig to land.

And that's where me and the Demon come in.

What better way to land the world's hardest-to-land aeroplane

than with the world's fastest-accelerating car?

Only one way to find out.

So, with the ER-2 taking off on an eight-hour mission to research

volcanoes and glaciers and stuff,

I was sent for a briefing with Nasa pilot Dean Neeley.

Call sign, Gucci,

who did nothing to settle my nerves.

When he goes up there today,

he's going to be the highest man in the world, off for hours and hours,

flying 13 miles above the earth, and coming back, exhausted, dehydrated,

in an aeroplane that's really like landing a motorcycle coming off of

a jump. So, we've got to always be ready to expect the unexpected.

All right, next slide.

OK, we're going to do our primary duty, which is being visible to him,

where we roll in behind him and get in position to feed him

useful information.

And, then, as you're accelerating straight ahead, toward him,

fade in right behind his six o'clock position,

looking right down the tailpipe.

What Dean was very thoroughly suggesting

was that I accelerate onto the runway at 140mph,

right up behind the ER-2's jet engine exhaust,

while talking the pilot down over the radio.

Piece of cake.

Eight, six, four, two...

..two, two...

..one. The only thing that we can fail at today

is hit the main gear first,

because he'll skip back into the air. And he'll stall.

And then you get the cartwheel manoeuvre, and it's ugly.

Yeah.

So, with the pilot now hard at work on the edge of space,

and still not 100% clear on what I was supposed to do,

Dean set up some practice runs, where, instead of the plane,

we'd be chasing down a car.

You never know, he may come down fine, and it would be no issue,

or he may do some manoeuvre that kind of surprises you.

He's going to count on your immediate response

to guide him back where he needs to be.

So, that's the critical part of this.

And with time running out on the ER-2's mission,

the pressure was on to get it right.

Meet, Gucci, hit it.

There you go, go get him.

OK. You're on your own, you're on your own.

It's tricky to get out there that quick.

What was becoming obvious was that to land the ER-2,

the drag strip-honed Demon would have to corner at speed.

OK.

This was going to take practice.

Let's try that again.

Nice job, Meet, how about one more, same thing?

Oh, that's a lot of power, OK.

I was just starting to wrestle the Demon into line...

..when all too soon, the call came in.

The ER-2 was making its descent.

Remember, the whole goal is for you to be in position,

where you can give him good instructions.

So, it's pretty much now or never.

OK, so this guy's life is in my hands for about 30 seconds.

- Right? - That's right.

SA-06, runway 22, wing 240, vector 1-5, cleared to land.