The Dodge Demon That Drove Him Home From the Hospital Never Left the Family
Stuart Lutz has owned his parents' 1971 Dodge Demon since he was 17, but his connection to the car goes back to his infancy — and 55 years later, it's still parked in his driveway in Orange, New Jersey.
Stuart Lutz didn't officially own his 1971 Dodge Demon until he turned 17, but according to a story published by Hagerty Media, his history with the car stretches back to his birth on August 31, 1970. "I was a sickly baby, and I didn't come home from the hospital until I was six weeks old," Lutz told writer Jim Koscs. "My parents, living in Baltimore, needed a second car to visit me in the hospital, so they bought a '71 Demon with a 225 Slant Six. It is likely I came home from the hospital in this car."
His parents bought the Demon from Towson Dodge in Towson, Maryland, on October 5, 1970, paying just under $2,900 with tax. It came painted Light Gunmetal gray, with the optional 225-cubic-inch Slant Six, power steering, deluxe wheel covers, and an AM radio — a modest compact coupe rather than one of the small-block V-8 "340" performance versions the nameplate is best remembered for today. The gunmetal paint didn't last long; it was a Mopar color notorious for peeling, so Lutz's parents had the car repainted Bright Blue not long after they bought it.
The Demon served as Lutz's mother's daily driver until 1984, when it was handed off to an uncle for what turned into a three-year loan — the uncle reportedly drove it to his executive job at Merrill Lynch in Princeton, parking the aging Dodge next to Mercedes and BMWs in the company lot. The car came back to the family just before Lutz got his license, and according to Hagerty, his mother pulled into the driveway one day while he was shooting baskets and told him it was now his. He drove it through Ocean Township High School in Monmouth County and later at Johns Hopkins University, where he met his future wife, Sara McHugh — their first date, in 1991, was a trip to Baltimore's Senator Theater in the Demon. When they married in 2002, they left the reception in it.
By 1995 a Toyota Tercel had taken over daily-driving duty, but Lutz never let go of the Demon. It sat, increasingly rough, until 2020, when it was showing 205,000 miles and decades of New Jersey winters. He committed to a full restoration, dropping the car off in October 2021 with Joe Garaffa at ASG Body Art in Plainfield, New Jersey. The frame rails, Lutz said, were in surprisingly good shape despite extensive surface rust. The work took seven months — the longest stretch he'd gone without the car since getting it — and Garaffa deliberately stopped sending progress photos late in the process so Lutz could see it finished in person; his wife filmed the reveal.
The restored Demon emerged in Petty Blue, a color named for Richard Petty's NASCAR Mopars, with the side stripes from the Demon 340 and its optional "Sizzler" appearance package — bolder than the plain Bright Blue Lutz grew up with, but true to the car's factory-era design language. The original slant-six engine was pulled, cleaned, and reinstalled without a rebuild; the automatic transmission was rebuilt for the first time in the car's life. Lutz, who runs a business authenticating and selling historic documents and has appeared as an expert on "Pawn Stars," says he's kept the car deliberately stock rather than chasing a crate V-8, and that it still draws plenty of attention with its original slant six alone.
Now garaged and driven sparingly — mostly Sunday drives around a few towns near his home and the occasional local car show — the Demon has become a fixture the Lutz family jokes about outliving him. He and his wife have a running bit about who will drive it to his funeral someday; he says he'll never sell it. His son, Aidan, was 15 at the time of the Hagerty interview and, in the way of teenagers, rolled his eyes at being told the car will one day be his. "Driving the old Dodge and still being able to play basketball in my mid-50s," Lutz told Hagerty. "That's pretty good."
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