Find of the Week: 1969 Dodge Charger Hellephant Is Exquisite Excess

Do you like subtlety in your sportscars? How about factory originality? Affordability?

Are you in the market for something with a few light modifications that’s just imperfect enough to not worry about the occasional rockchip or door ding?

Do you want something you won’t mind getting dirty or that you can regularly drive at the limit with ease?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above, you might as well move on. Because our latest Find of The Week makes the average Ferrari look cheap and cheerful. Compared to this thing, a Porsche 911 GT3 might as well be a Mazda MX-5.

This custom (to put it mildly) 1969 Dodge Charger might be the most radical and extreme vehicle we’ve ever featured in the column.

The headlines: The build took 11,000 man-hours and five years to complete. Under the hood is one of 100 supercharged 426 Hemi “Hellephant” crate engines (unit number 4 to be exact), which produces a terrifyingly ludicrous 1,000 horsepower and 950 lb-ft of torque.

But this Charger is far from just a restomod engine swap.

“Resomodification” doesn’t really cover it. It’s really, more of a redesign or “reimagining,” completed by Don Gasiunas of the Toronto-based Cars Reimagined.

Its chassis and body have been completely reengineered to support the wicked power of the Hellephant engine. Baer 6S brake calipers and drilled and slotted rotors seem not just appropriate, but necessarily for this level of vicious power.

The body sports a number of carbon fibre upgrades, including a custom-built “Real Ram Air Hood,” of which Don and his team plan to produce 100 units.

Inside, the interior has been completely reimagined with modern racing bucket seats complete with multi-point harnesses and half-cage. Custom stitched leather, a new sound system, driver interface, and custom interior lighting all serve to make the Charger feel more like an exotic supercar than a bareknuckle muscle car.

The time commitment and almost manic level of attention to detail have not gone unacknowledged. This car practically swept the awards at the 2024 Motorama show in Toronto.

It won; Hagerty’s “Pro Touring Class” award, “Best Interior” and “Best Engineered” in the Street Machine category as well as the “Best Plymouth / Dodge” award, among myriad others.

The asking price? US$900,000.

You could have three Dodge Challenger Demon 170s for that. Or two brand new McLaren Arturas. Really, you’ve got to start looking at hypercars like the Lamborghini Revuelto before you’re really cross-shopping on price.

But this isn’t so much a car as it is an art piece. A “car” is a utility, a tool for transportation at its worst and a piece of quality sports equipment at its best.

I don’t think this Dodge Charger fits into that spectrum at all.

Despite its over-engineering, despite its attention to detail, despite its accolades, it’s far too senseless and self-serving to be something you could ever compare in an impartial, logical, analytical manner to …  literally anything else on the road.

This Charger isn’t meant to race, or take you on an epic road trip, or get groceries in. Sure, it could do all that stuff. But it isn't really meant for “car stuff”.

It is simply meant to exist — to be appreciated and enjoyed in whatever capacity you can do that in. And in that way, it shares more in common with a painting you would hang on your wall than it does with, say, a modern Dodge Charger Hellcat.

It’s as much an idea as it is a machine. And that makes it art.

1000 horsepower worth of art.