Slideshow: Speedkore's Charger Tantrum Build Makes 1,650HP!

Titanic Tantrum

For sale: one 1,650 hp 1970 Dodge Charger. Used, as is. You may know the car from such hits as the SEMA show in Las Vegas, where it took the Gran Turismo award for Best Domestic Car, and the popular Fast and the Furious series, where it was driven by Vin Diesel in the installment entitled The Fate of the Furious. No tire kickers, cash in hand before test drives. Ran when parked.

Unless you've been living under a rock since it emerged from the mist—okay from Grafton, Wisconsin—in 2015, you've no doubt heard of the SpeedKore Charger Tantrum. Check that, even rock-dwellers have probably heard of it. The curmudgeon-y members of our team wanted to dislike it at first—it's another restomod, it doesn't even use the right grille, it doesn't have a big-block—but even they were won over. The dang car is just so well done and not pretending to be anything it isn't. And now it can be yours. Fusion Luxury Motors, in Chatsworth, California is offering the one-of-a-kind behemoth for sale, and though the price is officially listed as Price On Request, The Drive has it pegged at a reasonable $699,000.

Voice of Reason

When is $700K reasonable for a car? When there's nothing else like it. When it's famous. When it's 699 times cooler than any Porsche, McLaren, or Lamborghini costing the same amount or more. Sure, unless we're talking wing car or Hemi 'Cuda convertible, you can get a lot of classic Mopar for a lot less than what the Tantrum is asking, but the value of the former depends a lot on condition. Are you willing to risk putting a rod through the side of your numbers-matching elephant motor engine block? Do you really want to spray hot rubber and tire smoke all over your perfectly painted and dressed undercarriage? With a one-off, the car is still the car even when it's not pretty. If you roll your Ferrari 250 GTO up into a ball vintage racing it, as long as you still have the serial number and a small percentage of the original parts that ball is still worth ten million bucks.

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Boat Motor

The Tantrum uses a racing engine, so when if you blow it, you can just buy another. In fact, if you have 700K sitting around, look under the cushions and scrape up the extra cash to buy a spare engine just in case. And Oh that engine. There's almost never a good excuse not to use a Chrysler or Chrysler-based engine in a Mopar. Of course, we said almost, and although 1,650 hp is more than doable in a racing Hemi application, SpeedKore's choice of a Mercury Marine racing engine is one of the off-brand exceptions we'll allow. First off, it's not a GM or Ford; second, it's thinking differently—though with the Mercury Marine providing crate motors for hot rod builds, it’s increasingly less uncommon.

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550 Cubes

But SpeedKore did it the hard way, the engine they used wasn't a turn-key crate motor, it was a marine racing engine they adapted specifically for this build. The engine in question is Mercury's 9-liter (552 ci) QC4v double overhead cam twin-turbo V8, coupled to a TREMEC T-56 6-speed manual transmission and a 9-inch rear end. This is a muscle car so don't look for any paddles, to shift it you have to grab onto the carbon fiber pistol grip shifter and use more than just the muscles in your fingertips.

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Coke Bottle

An engine alone does not make a classic. Just as certain parts of the human anatomy do not need tattoos to call attention to themselves, neither does the Tantrum need Kandy Kolors to make it pop. The black-over-black Charger instead does its work in the details, while thankfully staying within in the spirit of the original's shape. The aforementioned grille, machined from a solid chunk of aluminum—better buy an extra one of those too—is, of course, a tribute of sorts to the Charger 500. Much of the rest of the car has been tastefully recreated in carbon fiber—a SpeedKore trademark—including the hood, fenders, inner and outer door panels, bumpers, and assorted trim pieces.

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Back to Black

The black finish is actually a fade though, starting from cleared-over carbon weave in the front and transitioning to black moving rearward. The Charger sits low, but not too low, on large, but not too large HRE S104 wheels and Michelin Pilot Super Sport 345-series tires. 'Goes without saying that you'll need a source for those soft goods too.

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Inside Again

The Tantrum features a custom-built chassis—it took more than adding torque boxes to stiffen this beast up enough to not shred all that carbon. Tied into the chassis is a roll cage that's been cleanly integrated into the Charger's interior. Also well-integrated is the vintage-looking custom dash, utilizing Classic Instruments gauges. Elsewhere inside, it's loads of leather with just enough Alcantara to make sure occupants don't slide around too easily.

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What's it Like?

If you haven't seen the video, head over to Jay Leno's Garage and take a look, and take in the sound of 9 liters of under-hood thunder. Even with more than ten times the horsepower of a slant-6, the Tantrum is reportedly street-able. Some dude from The Drive with two first names said, "I only drove it for a couple minutes on public roads, but it was shockingly docile for a car with 1,600 horsepower and no traction control, even when it started to rain," he said. "But I did floor it from a stop in first gear leaving the parking area. It was like setting off an atom bomb over the rear axle," continued the dude.

As of this writing, the Tantrum was still for sale. If it's sold by the time you read this you either dodged a bullet or you missed the chance of a lifetime. Only time will tell, but something tells us if you've got $700K burning a hole in your pocket, and you have taste, we'll be writing something about your next purchase right here in Dodge Forum. 

>>Join the conversation about this crazy 1650HP Charger right here in the Dodge Forum.

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