Dodge Demon Goes Head-To-Head With A Hayabusa & Kawasaki Ninja – Here's Who Came Out On Top

When you places a pair of the fastest-accelerating vehicles available for prices that are somewhat affordable, there's one all-important question: Which one is faster? More specifically, which one is faster down a quarter-mile drag strip? It may appear as simple as seeing which has the better performance, but as any car or bike nerd will tell you, numbers will only take you so far — sometimes you just have to get out there and test it yourself.

Three legends faced each other on the drag strip — the Dodge Demon, Suzuki Hayabusa, and Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14. Granted, the 'Busa features a turbocharger, evident by it sounding like a jet engine on the line. We don't have the specific details on any of these vehicles, but they all are certainly impressive machines, especially the Suzuki, which ran an impressive 8.84 seconds at 164.86 mph on its first pass, blowing the Demon's doors off by more than a second.

Sadly, it's not exactly the finest driving from the driver behind the Demon's wheel; the first pass sees the car bogging down on the sticky tarmac, and the second pass was red lighted. Even so, the Demon still lost out on both accounts, with its first pass in 9.96 seconds at 146.86 mph, and the second 9.41 seconds at 147.97 mph. The Ninja handily beat it with time to spare, securing a 9.18 at 150.65 mph. Do these numbers reflect the true statistic of these machines in a vacuum, with human error removed from the equation? Let's have a look.

Anyone looking at these machines will immediately note that they are built for serious purposes, with specialized drag tires, tuned engines, and in the case of the motorcycles, extended swingarms – the mount for the rear tire. The purpose of extending a swingarm in drag bikes is to counteract the bike's tendency to pick up the front wheel under heavy acceleration. 

It will try and rotate the body upwards if the wheel is placed too far forwards, hence why drag bikes are often stretched. The Demon in this video boasts no such modifications, appearing to be a relatively stock frame with no wheelie bar and stock powertrain.

Similarly, the Ninja ZX-14 is also a nine-second contender in stock trim, thanks to its 190-horsepower engine. It's not a dedicated factory dragster like a Demon, nor is it as fast as the later ZX-14R without its limiter, but it's sufficiently light and powerful enough to put up a solid challenge regardless. Add to that what looks to be a fairly modified bike and skilled rider, and you have an intensely capable machine. The same rule applies to the Hayabusa, which trounced both times; another video featuring the same bike claimed it produced 250 horsepower, though no other information is readily available.

This is more of a question of physics and speculation than anything else, because it's genuinely difficult to surmise. The Demon, if better handled, may have gone faster than the ZX-14, but certainly not as fast as the Hayabusa. 

To put it into context, the 8.91-second time was claimed by Dodge itself, and factory Demon 170 owners can achieve times deep into the low-9s without too much trouble. Given that the Kawasaki's time was a 9.18 at 150.65 mph, it's actually a fairly even race down the quarter-mile between these two.

The Demon 170, on paper, boasts a 1,025-horsepower supercharged V8 capable of launching it down the strip in just 8.91 seconds with E85 ethanol as its drag racing fuel, as opposed to the standard Demon that runs in the high-9s to low-10s. Given that it bogged down so significantly on its first pass, it seems likely that it's a stock-ish example.

The Hayabusa, however, still dominates both of these machines, at least in terms of this video. Even if we assumed that the Demon achieved its factory-rated best time, the Hayabusa still wins by almost a tenth of a second. However, this comparison also takes into account the massive turbocharger the 'Busa had equipped. The debate between turbo and superchargers in drag racing is its own thing, but in terms of this battle, the turbo likely helped the bike achieve that victory.