1972 Duster is the world’s quickest street-driven Gen3 Hemi car by Patrick Rall on

Today, we introduce you to a 1972 Plymouth Duster the we believe holds the record for being the quickest street-driven quarter mile machine powered by a Gen3 Hemi engine. This car is owned by Josh King and in addition to being the quickest street-driven, Gen3 Hemi-powered car on the track, it is one of the cleanest and coolest Mopar A-Bodies I have had the pleasure of watching tear down the track.

We feature a great many record-setting cars here on Allpar, but none are quite like Josh King’s 1972 Plymouth Duster. I “met” Josh on Facebook about a year ago, at which point he was in the process of building what looked to be a pretty wicked modern Hemi. I am fortunate to have lots of Facebook friends who are seemingly always in the process of building a big race engine, but this grabbed my attention. As the owner of a 1972 Demon, I was particularly interested in King’s Duster and I spent months following along on the progress via his updates on Facebook.

As time went on, the engine went into the car and he began testing it on the street and the track. In August, I was excited to see the car in person at the Milan stop on the Modern Street Hemi Shootout schedule and while this Duster looks awesome online – it is that much cooler in person. This is the kind of car that would stand out at any car show. This is the kind of car that many car show attendees would look at and immediately say “I bet that it has never been down the track”, because inside, outside and under the hood, this 1972 Duster is that clean.

However, those folks who suggest that this Plymouth is merely a show vehicle would be wrong, as it is one of the quickest Mopar machines powered by a Gen3 Hemi and best of all, Josh King drives the car on the street.

When I saw the car in Michigan, King was still dialing it in and working out the bugs, so while it looked and sounded great tearing down the track, it didn’t turn in record numbers. It turned in solid numbers and performed some impressive wheels-up launches, at which point I fell a little more in love with this 1972 Duster, but the best was yet to come. By the way, after running at Milan with the MSHS, King spent the whole next day cruising Woodward Ave with his wheel-lifting, 8-second Duster.

While running at the most recent MSHS event, Josh King’s 1972 Duster ran an 8.17 at 167 miles per hour. He actually made that pass on the same run that Gary Rhudy set the world record for the quickest Dodge Magnum wagon and you can check out that dual record-setting run in the video below.

Upon being notified that King’s time of 8.17 is the quickest Gen3 Hemi quarter mile time for a street-driven car, I reached out to him for more information on this wicked A-Body.

Josh King’s 1972 Duster

Josh King bought this 1972 Plymouth Duster in 1997 as his first car when he was in high school. As you can imagine, the car has undergone a complete transformation since then as it has become the monstrous street-and-strip car shown here.

Under the hood is a 417-cubic inch Hemi from BES fitted with custom exhaust manifolds that King made himself, along with the following items.

-Gen3 block

-ThiTek cylinder heads

-Visner intake manifold and throttle body

-Winberg crankshaft

-Callies billet connecting rods

-Ross pistons (10.3:1)

-Hydraulic roller camshaft with T&D rocker arms

-ID1700 Injectors

-Holley Dominator EFI

-Twin 76/75 Billet Precision turbochargers

On 23 pounds of boost with an E85 tune by Rick Trunkett at Big 3 Racing in Cleveland, Ohio, this 1972 Duster made 1,200 horsepower at the rear wheels. That power got from the engine to the wheels by means of a Proformance Turbo 400 transmission, a Neal Chance torque converter, a Driveshaft Shop carbon fiber driveshaft, a FitzFab fabricated 9” rearend with 3.60:1 gear and 40 spline gun drilled axles.

The cold side turbo plumbing was done by Jeremy Howell at Fathouse Fabrication Runs and all of the finish welding, as well as much of the custom fabrication, was done by Joe Fitzpatrick of FitzFab. King’s Duster runs Santhuff Shocks at all four corners with leaf springs and Caltracs out back along with an Alterkation front suspension setup.

The entire car is steel (no lightweight body panels) and it was built to drive on the street as much as race, but it happens to be very good at covering the quarter mile. The gorgeous Hemisfear Lime Pearl paint was done by Jeff King (no relation to the owner) at King’s Classics and to make for a better street car, the interior is lined with Dynomat.

Josh King wanted to send a special thanks to his bust bud Joe Fitzpatrick of FitzFab, Ron Galbreath at Santhuff, Mike Roth at JR1 Racing Oil, Rick Trunkett at Big 3, Brett Vonder Meulen from Bischoff Racing Engines and Jon Ballenger my crew/copilot on the road trips.

Patrick Rall was raised a Mopar boy, spending years racing a Dodge Mirada while working his way through college. After spending a few years post-college in the tax accounting field, Patrick made the jump to the world of journalism and his work has been published in magazines and websites around the world.