Vehicle Spotlight: The Exorcist Camaro and All Its High-Performance Fury

The Dodge Demon hit the ground as a follow-up to the already ridiculous Hellcat. Dodge is on a rampage, year after year, to maintain its place on top of the food chain. Naturally, in the incredibly competitive world of high performance cars, someone needed to stop them. Enter Hennessey Performance. Known for the Hennessey Venom and the Ford Velociraptor, they decided to step up to the platform and take on Dodge head-to-head and, dare we say, beat them at their own game. Meet the Exorcist Camaro.

A Longstanding Rivalry Gets a Little More Interesting

Just like the Demon is a supercharged roided-up version of the Challenger, dreamed up by the world-class SRT division, so too is the Exorcist (only wearing a Camaro badge). As you probably know, Hennessey isn’t a manufacturer of the Camaro. Instead, this is a package they offer to the lucky owners of the already impressive ZL1 Camaros offered by Chevrolet. As this is a direct attack on the Demon, it’s only natural Hennessey cleverly named this design to properly declare itself the Alpha to Dodge’s Omega.

Conquering a Demon isn’t done with simple instruction; it requires some pretty heavy duty equipment. So, what exactly has Hennessey thrown at the ZL1 Camaro to arm it against the 800+hp monster Dodge drew up from hell? Well, for starters, they decided to fight fire with fire by adding a supercharger with an intercooler, high-flow cylinder heads, and a custom ground camshaft along with an upgraded valve train. They equipped the exhaust with long tube headers and high flow cats, and finally finish things up with a custom dyno tune and road testing. Additionally, owners will have the option to add in a wheel and tire upgrade along with a transmission upgrade and Hennessey’s track tool kit.

All Hell Breaks Loose

Without the Demon, the world would have no need for the Exorcist Camaro. So, the upgrades and statistics are nothing on their own. We need to compare apples to apples, or, even better, forbidden fruit to forbidden fruit. Let’s get the lowdown—starting with Hennessey’s target, the Demon. With a supercharged 6.2-liter power plant making 880 hp and 770 lb-ft of torque under the hood, Road and Track reported a 0-60 time of 2.3 seconds and a quarter mile pass as low as 9.65 seconds at 140 mph. That’s impressive. Actually, no, it’s pretty ridiculous. Hennessey obviously had their work cut out for them when they started this crusade.

How are they doing in this holy war, you ask? Well, the Exorcist works with the ZL1 Camaro’s engine at the same displacement of 6.2 liters. What starts out looking like a fair fight ends in devastation. The Exorcist produces a whopping 1,000hp and 966 lb-ft of torque. This crushing number is enough to deliver the Exorcist with a similar 0-60 time and a quarter mile time of 9.57 seconds, proving that the highway to hell is quicker than the climb out.

Exorcist Camaro – A Devil’s Ransom

The Hennessey is not exactly the “out of the box” package that the Demon is. With a staggering retail price tag of round $84,000, the Demon can be purchased ready-to-go directly from Dodge. However, the Hennessey beast is quite a bit more. The initial price tag of the ZL1 Camaro runs around $65,000 and the Exorcist Package from Hennessey will run another $55,000 on top of it.

With a total cost of about $120,000 some may say that the performance advantages of the Exorcist aren’t worth paying $36,000 more than they would for a Demon. But, really that isn’t the point. As a whole, these vehicles are a testament to what is possible in today’s world of performance. Both beasts offer earth-shattering numbers, both move like lightning on the drag strip, and both are worthy of high praise. We must thank Hennesey for birthing the Exorcist. Because for Chevy and Dodge fans, this is the closest we will ever get to seeing Godzilla and Mothra battle it out.

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