This 1968 Dodge Charger Has A 1000bhp 'Hellephant' Engine | Top Gear American Tuned ft. Rob Dahm

Stranger,

this

is a

1968

Dodge Charger, at least that's what it says on the registration, but its name and iconic shape are just the beginning of the story, although it looks like a Charger, almost everything has been changed, updated, the body is all carbon fiber, right? to the floor it has a custom frame, a wider track and a limited production Mopar elephant cage

engine

it is a classic American car that is also from the future it is what you could call a mind-blowing opportunity to drive a variety of more cars old, but they're the hallucination The Dodge Charger was built around speed, but it comes from the mind of Ralph Geal, design director of global automaker stalantis.

Ralph is the design leader behind cars like the Chrysler 300 and the fifth-generation Dodge Viper and was the CEO of Chrysler's street racing technology division. known as SRT Ralph invited me to his house outside of Detroit to see the trip

charger

up close and talk about what inspired him to build

this

car. Ralph it's an absolute honor to meet you, a pleasure to meet you too Rob, I'm a little overwhelmed and in a good way the ACR or the Viper, that's something that being from Detroit I know you for, but I wanted to learn a little more about all these other unique cars, this is where I keep my favorite things, you know, I grew up.

I loved cars as a kid and one of the ones that started for me was the GTV and the designer of this one is Jajaro so he's probably one of the most famous designers of our time and there are a lot of lines and proportions that I still use to this day, you know, the long hood and the short deck, how wonderful for Jaro's shoulder. I just call it on the Challenger today, then there's the Evo Lancia Delta, this has more racing influence, so these were all-wheel drive with a 225 horsepower turbo. One of five rally championships, this was also a rally car, so one of my bosses when I came into France had one and I fell in love with the way it drove, then there's the Vipers.

So this is the Viper Gen 5 and this is a 2016 ACR I. Think about the first one that rolled off the line and I took right to the race track. You started getting into real project cars. Yeah, basically I've always been a foodie guy and then I saw what the alpha junkies were doing with these Alpha Generations as my favorites. The year of Alphas is the GT. This was my first real break in the mud where I took a car. I loved. You know Jaro's design style, but again I try to make it as modern as possible while still staying true to the historic forms. and I love this car, this is one of those things that I will never sell it, you know, no one will ever be able to buy it for me, it's iconic and I built this in my living room.

I was building the wiring harnesses and just putting things together all over the place. It took me a long time, but I learned a lot more about this car. I had to bring reinforcements for this one. This required going to the professionals, so this is a hallucination. It's a

1968

Charger, which is one of my original love affairs. I always loved Mopar. I grew up watching TV shows where this car was a hero. It's a mix of things I like about modern cars. Older cars. Racing cars all my life. Basically, the things that really check the boxes for me are all in this build. literally a rusty barn find, we kept the top and speed cable, the rest and really started from scratch, custom chassis and of course the all carbon fiber body built around one of the hundred elephant motors and you You said it even has air conditioning and everything. yes, a sound system, it has a crazy sound system and air conditioning.

As a designer, I wanted the car to look like a sketch, in fact, follow the road as if it were a sketch come to life and that was the idea of ​​The Stance, they managed to achieve that. The posture to get as low as possible was drawn after the famous turbines that were turned on. Overall, you're saying this is a carbon chassis, yeah, so this is the first one where they experimented with a tub, so the whole floor underneath is kind. It's made like a supercar, you know, all the tubs are creating the transmission tunnel to allow the entire drivetrain to live inside the car, which has the side effect of making the car very rigid, it's a mental phenomenon when You drive the car because it's nothing like what it looks like, it really drives like a racer, Ralph, in addition to being an iconic designer, also builds a variety of aspects of the car, so he doesn't just want it to look good, he knows. how a car should handle and that influences your decisions when you create vehicles, you can tell, you can tell, boy, one of the things I never do on any of my cars is make the interior look good and that's the complete opposite, here is a work of art.

On its own, you're looking at a slightly '68-inspired interior, so the dash remains pretty much the same layout as the '68 with all six styling. I think they are iconic, the big markers that we worked with to escape California Customs. all the upholstery, those pieces were built in Milwaukee and then shipped to California several times to get it right and these are sporty Recaros that are again part of a little Mind Freak of the car, yeah, you sit there and you sit. like you are in a racing car and the steering wheel is machined from solid Billet, the diameter of the steering wheel is the same as the original steering wheel, so it feels very sporty but also gives you that vintage hallucination which is the goal of Ya You're hallucinating because it's like you're vibrating back and forth between the past and the future.

The console has 3D printed controls and dials that power the windows and air conditioning. We didn't want a radio, so it's all Bluetooth audio and of course you can recognize that shifter in the red eye. That's probably the only thing I'm not crazy about, but that literally just came out of one of our production cars. The pedals are also 3D printed centered aluminum until I got them. in building more advanced cars, I don't think people can even appreciate that pedal was hours of work, yes it was, it was just one thing, okay, I finally finished the pedal, even something as simple and subtle as the funny story of the attack.

My daughter designed the text, yes, she designed the gauges and the elephant, which is very similar to the real elephant that we put on our production car, but she stretched it out to give it more speed, so the ears are actually back, like this that we had a lot of skill from a family project, yeah, you know, she also helped me choose the colors and of course I wanted to highlight a color so that the anodized orange would highlight the seats and all the stitching and then the roll cage, which is an extremely critical element. part of the build so it's totally fun, the functional cages go back to the suspension load points, it's also basically the integrity of the vehicle that makes it much safer than a stock car would be and they have it hidden , but.

I can't really see it's there, yeah I didn't, I didn't even realize they had a roll cage, yeah they did a good job integrating it, but it's literally part of the body of the car and it gives it the firmness that I I expected. I love seeing what powers this car, yes let's take a look, thank you my goodness it's a work of art. The same reaction from many people and I always have it, every time I open the hood, I remember how much. uh, Blood Sweat and Tears came into this project, they made a hundred Elephant Motors, the seven liter 426 aluminum

engine

, so it's a liter bigger than a redeye engine and it's a number that a lot of Moparians respect, you know , 426.

There are so many. different things that your eyes can focus on and to me it's as simple as the headlight wires, I can't see them, yes they're there, it's just that you know car culture better than anyone. What happens when the car comes together is that people want to see the engine properly, so you open the hood and accelerate. Court took that into account as we thought at that event about how to introduce the engine. One of my favorite cars is the Viper too, so I made the hood open the same way the Gen 5 and Gen 1 and 2 Vipers open, so that's cool, it's a nice foreign nod, it doesn't feel How the car looks, yes, yes, it is silent, as if it wanted the exhaust.

I want to say it's loud when you crank it up, but it's not, it's not the right combination because you don't want to neuter it when it's under power, but you want it to be good while riding, just cruising when I do it for the first time. I drove it around the track, it was one thing, but we took it to the Power Tour and went through the Smoky Mountains in it and it just got smaller and tighter, as the more I drove it, the more confidence I got and all of a sudden I thought we should take This until the Dragon no, I wanted to accept, was that it is very fun to drive, like yes, it has no body lean and it does exactly what you expect it to do, you know, yeah, I'm waiting for the whole like you don't know, it's like the steering wheel is tight you just think about it and it just works, you know, apart from the design of a car, what other aspects of the car really feed your soul, now, what feeds my soul. it's when guys start car clubs and stuff about a car that you designed when I go when I go to Carlisle I go to meet up and I see a group of people together with all the colored Challengers mm and they're all friends because of the car, that's it what inspires me, you know, it's like it's not just a commodity, it's not just a B device, it's something that defines who they are, it's something that they express themselves with, you're seeing that the car was built around the engine. and that makes me wonder what's going on with the chassis, how did you adapt and yeah, it's got some great Detroit Speed ​​uh equipment that I'd love to show off if you want to check it out.

I would love it not to be. what I would have expected under a

charger

, we will be met with the hallucination of the bottom, unfortunately very few people get to see this, to me it is impressive underneath as it is at the top, just the amount of craftsmanship and consideration I put into it In the design. I really give those guys a lot of credit. This is a Detroit Speed ​​setup. It is a double Wishbone front suspension with Penske shocks. It's almost the downside for me of something being so well designed like this that when you look at it, you forget about it. there's all these other things going on, yeah, because you're like, oh well that's easy, that's not easy, it's like I didn't even notice, yeah, when I first got it I got on the horse right away just to enjoy that. here for a long time just appreciating every detail they put into it overseas it's not just about handling it's a car actually it has so many different systems all working together in harmony you know when you start you have to choose something you have You have to choose the management you have. choosing power and starting with one and then ending your dream is ending with something like this disgusting, what a disgusting car, oh my god what do you think man, what's fooling, that thing looks like one thing and drives? like a completely different animal but it still has your roots and its DNA, yeah, it's kind of a mix of my favorite things, you know, track car, muscle car, you know, retro build, you get it, obviously, you get it right.

I'll tell you one thing. I've learned that cars often, when they're built in this crazy way, take on the personality of their owner and I know when I felt that, I felt a lot of personality in the car and I feel like you know this car a lot more than I do, obviously. The car is designed to do many different things and of course the circuit is one of the most technically complex, but I realized where we are now. I will move away from the vehicle. I mean, oh my gosh.