1 week Ago By Nicholas Maronese
Article content A rare 2023 Dodge Challenger Demon 170 sold for US$450,000 (about CDN$630,000) on auction site Bring A Trailer early April, making for a record sale price for the modern incarnation of the muscle car—and that sky-high sum can be pinned wholly on the car’s bright pink paint. The Challenger Demon 170 represented the pinnacle of the most recent gen of the model, boasting over 1,000 horsepower and a six-figure price tag. Dodge churned out a total of 3,301 examples of this “Last Call” model before the Challenger assembly line was shut down, but if a three-thousand-car run wasn’t exclusive enough for you, the automaker invited 40 customers to bump up their orders to “Jailbreak” models, which let them spec a one-off paint colour from off the menu.
The original owner of the Challenger Demon 170 you see on these pages paid US$30,000 to turn his car into one of these Jailbreak-ers, exercising his any-colour-you’d-like abilities by opting for a bright pink finish. That funky fuschia wasn’t selected by fluke—it’s an homage to the Panther Pink (FM3) paint that Dodge offered on its cars in 1970, when the Challenger first came out. The “Hi Impact” hue wasn’t massively popular in its day, but has captured the eye of collectors in the decades since, and typically commands a hefty premium.
Apparently that rings true for modern Challengers, too. When the online auction of this car on Bring A Trailer ended April 2, the top bidder, 70-6pack , came away paying US$450,000 for the privilege of purchasing a pink pony car. If that sounds absolutely outrageous, consider that the selling dealer, in Florida, said in the comments on the auction that it’d turned down even bigger offers shortly after acquiring the Demon 170 earlier this year.
We’ll note, too, that when this car was sold new (also in Florida) two years ago, the sticker was a hair over US$150,000 (CDN$209,000) . The Panther Pink Challenger Demon 170 has seen just 36 miles (58 km) of pavement pass under its massive tires in its life so far, and if we had to guess, its status as a collector’s item mean it’s not going to see many more than that for a long, long time. Its value, though, likely still has plenty of runway left—we can only see it going up from here.
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