Wednesday, 1 November 2017

Ding-a-Ding-Dang! Ringbrothers Unveil a Subtle, Serious ’69 Dodge Charger at SEMA

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November 1, 2017 at 11:08 am by Davey G. Johnson | Photography by Davey G. Johnson and NotStock Photography

Ringbrothers cars always tend to be showstoppers during SEMA week, tending toward fairly radical takes on whatever vehicle Jim and Mike Ring have set their sights on. Witness the ’66 Chevrolet Chevelle that put them on the map a few years ago, or last year’s ridiculous blown-LS-powered Winnebago. But what do you do with a 1969 Dodge Charger, a car with a body style seared into the consciousness of gearheads over decades via its appearances in Bullitt, The Dukes of Hazzard, and The Fast and the Furious? Why not make it look as if you’ve done next to nothing at all? That’s the brief behind Defector, a 4700-hour project during which most everything was touched, but very little actually looks changed.

Deciding that the Charger’s monstrous rear overhang could use a little shortening, the Rings bobbed the rear of the car by two inches, then added three inches to the Charger’s wheelbase. To do that, despite having hacked length out of the rear, they had to extend the quarters forward to meet the doors. The steelie-look rolling stock come courtesy of HRE wheels, wearing Ringbrothers-produced Mopar-style hubcaps. Tires are 285/35R-19s up front and 345/35R-19s in the ear. Both the wheels and the body are swathed in a custom-mix Glasurit hue called Greener on the Other Side.

Under the subtly massaged body, a hydroformed Detroit Speed front subframe carries rack-and-pinion steering, as well as a modern 6.4-liter Hemi built by Wegner Motorsports. Out back, another Detroit Speed subframe locates the four-link rear suspension, while six-piston Baer brakes drag the beast to a halt.

The interior continues the deceptively simple theme, featuring front seats that are more modern but still look as if they belong in the car, plus modern HVAC courtesy of Vintage Air, sound from an Alpine system, and Classic Instruments gauges. The whole thing just seems built to work. It’s not a tired riff in the key of Lee, there’s no honking blower pushed through the hood, and one wouldn’t necessarily expect to see stuntman Bill Hickman behind the wheel on the streets of San Francisco. It’s a fresh, businesslike take on one of Chrysler’s undeniably great automobiles. Forty-seven years after the second-gen Charger ended production, that’s harder to do than one might think.