SpeedKore is no stranger to the B-body Charger. The custom car shop has built a reputation for turning out top-notch cars and working almost exclusively with muscle-era Mopars. SpeedKore founder Dave Salvaggio has built about 20 of them, each one unique. The 1968-1970 Charger's Coke-bottle styling is an icon among muscle car fans, and borderline sacred to the Mopar faithful. Salvaggio and his crew of designers, engineers, and fabricators set out to show off their talents in car building and carbon fiber fabrication with this 1970 Charger that debuted at the 2015 SEMA show, but knew they shouldn't try to reinvent what Dodge had gotten so right.

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As its plan evolved, SpeedKore's team decided that unlike a lot of flashy SEMA builds, this car would require a close look before it gave its secrets away. They had a feeling they could build some excitement and draw enough attention with their understated build if they got the details right and then threw in one powder keg of an engine that had never been unleashed on the street.

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The car they started with was in a sorry state, as Salvaggio told us, "Pretty much the whole floor was rotted away." Salvaggio likes to improve cars with engineering and that often means off-the-shelf replacement parts aren't the best solution. To ready the Charger for the powerplant they had in store, a chassis was designed and the metal was laser cut and welded into a ladder frame. A Roadster Shop front clip was fit and the rear has a custom four-link. Penske double-adjustable shocks and Afco springs are used at all four corners. The one-off chassis ties into a rollcage, significantly strengthening the previously frameless unibody construction. Similarly, the firewall and inner rear fenders were replaced with new, hand-formed panels to fit the huge engine and tires.

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Under the custom carbon fiber hood is a 9.0L Mercury Marine QC4V engine that throws down 1,650 hp thanks to 26 pounds of boost from twin 94mm inducer turbochargers and quad cam, four-valve heads—hence the QC4V moniker. The engine goes from docile cruising to angry screaming with just a push of the throttle, earning the name Tantrum. The Mercury Racing V8 is a 21-century big-block designed for grueling boat racing and uses the same kind of technology you'd find in a contemporary high-performance production engine, like piston oil squirters, drive-by-wire throttle body (except there's two), and dry-sump oiling. The demands on an engine in offshore powerboat racing are huge, so these engines are designed to take just about any kind of abuse you could dish out. Compared to the hours of full-throttle these boats experience while crashing over waves, surviving in the engine bay of a car is a piece of cake. The only real issues were packaging the behemoth engine into a car's engine bay, and keeping it cool. In marine use a boat has access to an unlimited cooling system where lake or seawater flow through a heat exchanger to cool the engine. That sort of water-to-water cooling is very efficient, but on four wheels that's not an option. Instead, Tantrum uses a robust radiator custom-built by Saldana Racing Products backed by Spal fans to keep the 1,650hp big-block content.

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Now for the packaging. An obvious advantage of the dual-overhead-cam design is that it eliminates pushrods for reduced valvetrain mass resulting in better valve control and increased capability for engine speed. Just as important, the design allows for optimal intake port shape and position. It's not as compact as a pushrod design, but then again, a 426 Hemi isn't exactly dainty. Luckily for the crew at SpeedKore, Chargers have big engine bays so Tantrum easily swallowed the tall and wide engine with only minor shoehorning and a bit of setback toward the firewall. Thanks to its aluminum block and head construction, the Mercury Racing V8 actually weights less than a factory Hemi, tipping the scales at less than 700 pounds before the turbos and their associated plumbing were added. Moving the engine just a couple inches aft allowed for more room for the gigantic intercooler mounted in front of the radiator, without stretching the fenders. The QC4V uses a dry-sump oiling system, which required some creative packaging. Oil drains down primarily through the cam cover in the front of the engine, reducing windage on the crank. Oil is pulled from three points in the pan and routed through hard lines that pass through the custom steel chassis to a tank in the rear of the car near the custom-built Rock Valley stainless fuel cell.

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The engine packaging also prompted some styling changes. The 1970 Charger's hidden headlights had to go. The QC4V can't produce enough vacuum to operate them and space was at a premium. Smith designed a solution with consideration for what Dodge designers might have done if they found themselves in a similar predicament. When Dodge was trying to improve its NASCAR superspeedway performance, before it went full-tilt into the wing cars, it developed a car that was less ambitious but also much better looking (sorry Mopar fans). The 1969 Charger 500 used a grille that was almost flush with the leading edge of the fenders and, like the Charger's standard grille, used four round headlights. Smith created a similar grille shape translated into a CAD drawing by engineer Lyle Brummer. The grille was CNC cut from a single piece of 6-foot-long aluminum then dressed and polished by hand. The finished grille allowed for a giant air-to-air intercooler to be mounted in front of the radiator.

Surrounding the grille is a carbon fiber header panel mounted to carbon fiber fenders. Factory Charger fenders were used to create molds for the carbon-fiber panels, while the hood was modified significantly before a carbon fiber mold was made. All the carbon-fiber panels were made from fabric pre-impregnated with resin to ensure consistent quality and strength with low mass. There's more carbon fiber at the rear of the car, as a custom bumper tucks in close to the body tailored to fit tight with the rear quarters. Factory 2014 Challenger taillights form a racetrack across the rear of the car within a CNC-plasma cut aluminum bezel. Chargers had nearly full-length taillights in 1969 and 1970, so it's a fitting touch.

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While SpeedKore is in Wisconsin, its upholstery shop of choice is Gabe's Custom Interiors in San Bernardino, California. From the initial design drawing by Sean Smith, interior panels were transferred into a CAD drawing and CNC cut out of RenShape, a machinable foam available in more than a dozen densities. The RenShape bucks were used to make molds for the carbon fiber. Once out of the molds they were cut and fit with switches and gauges, the latter from Classis Instruments. The team at Gabe's finished the interior by wrapping the panels and seats in charcoal leather and Alcantara, adding accents of stainless steel mesh from Banker Wire.

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The car was a success on its debut at SEMA, earning it a Gran Turismo Award for Best Domestic. It also garnered some attention from Hollywood, where Tantrum has been tapped to appear in the next Fast and Furious movie, which has a history of doing very bad things to Chargers. Don't worry about the fate of this Mopar though, as the hero car from the movie subject to gratuitous abuse will be a clone. In the meantime, you can see Tantrum punishing its tires on Jay Leno's Garage and hear the 9.0L V8 in action.