The respected Automotive News suggested this and all heck broke loose.

Here on TreeHugger we do have a tendency to complain about big gas guzzlers and talk a lot about the safety of people who walk and bike. I have even called for a slow car movement so that we could all drive little fuel efficient Isetta-style cars. I worry about drivers behind the wheel of Fast and Furious cars; they often don’t know how to handle them. Years ago, these kinds of cars were known as Doctor Killers; Peter Cheney describes the Porsches of the time:

Once upon a time, the Porsche 911 was a hard car to drive well. The earliest 911s were known for front ends that got light at speed, and a tendency to spin if you mishandled the throttle on corners. This was a car that called for a master’s touch. Unfortunately, many of those drawn to it had more money than skill – a conundrum that led to the car acquiring the nickname “The Doctor Killer.”

Today they may not be doctors behind the wheel, but they still often have more money than skill. And today, they have the Dodge Demon, a car so overpowered that the editors at Automotive News, who never saw a car they didn’t love, say that the 840 horsepower car is “so inherently dangerous to the common safety of motorists that its registration as a road-worthy automobile should be banned.”

Demon site/Screen capture

Not to mention the pedestrians and cyclists.

The comments on the editorial, to a man (and they are all men) are scathing, comparing it to taking away guns.

I did agree with this comment though.

Slow cars can mix it up with bikes and pedestrians/via

At some point, we have to realize that there is such a mismatch between the big cars and the little cars, the walkers and the cyclers. Cars don’t have constitutional protections and are tightly regulated; there is no reason not to have limits on power and acceleration. Years ago I wrote that “We don’t need hydrogen cars and new technology, we just need better, smaller designs, lower speed limits and no big SUVs on the road to squish them.” I didn’t even dream of the Dodge Demon.

Should the Dodge Demon (and cars like it) be banned?