With A War In His Country This Enthusiast Did What Any Of Us Would Do And Built His Dream Car

Daydreaming is common among car enthusiasts. For all that we do with our vehicles, we’re always thinking far ahead. When we get the time, when we get the money, we’ll go ahead and get that dream car and turn it into the ride we’ve always wanted to build. The problem is that if you dream too long, you’ll watch years go by before you ever turn a wrench. Sometimes, it takes extraordinary circumstances to snap you out of it and remind you that life is for living today.

Enter Yevhen. He’s a gearhead through and through, and he’s spent the better part of this year putting together a Dodge Challenger with a slick retro vibe. It’s been more challenging for him than you might expect. He’s been building the car as his country struggles against foreign invaders inside its own borders.

“War time is not a good time to buy cars,” Yevhen tells me from his home in Ukraine. “On the other hand, you have to do something not to lose the sense of life.”

A mechanic by trade, Yevhen runs his own shop. “Besides my family, cars are the sense of my life,” he says. ” I service, maintain, repair and wrap cars. I paint them, I write about them, I build them, I raced them and hold the events, I talk about them with my friends and… I love them.” It was that passion that led him to the Challenger. “When I saw this barge with a manual transmission and a Hemi, I couldn’t resist,” he tells me. “War makes our decisions faster, cause you clearly understand that you may not have another chance to make your dream come true.” It’s a dramatic statement, but not an untrue one. “Daily rocket attacks make you realize that every day can be your last day,” he explains.

Drive around the US, and you’ll see tacky modern muscle cars everywhere you go. Anyone can go to Autozone and buy a bunch of fake chrome trim and badges and ruin a modern Challenger, Camaro, or Mustang. But somehow, Yevhen managed to make his retro tribute work, and work well. You might expect that he’d spent years working on American muscle, growing familiar with the aesthetic and values. And yet!

“I’ve never seen any American classic in person,” he says. “But being a journalist also with a couple of my own historical blogs and groups, I know something about cars.” He paid fine attention to detail on his build, which helped him achieve a factory-like appearance. “I try to represent as many features of a 1971 R/T on my modern boat, while avoiding breaking the borders of common sense,” he explains. If a badge or a detail wasn’t on the real thing, he won’t slap it on his car. “My car should become a tribute to the OG Challenger, and [become] kind of a blast from the past for me personally,” he says.

Perhaps the classiest mod is in the interior. Yevhen had a gorgeous woodgrain finish applied to all the dash pieces. It’s a beautiful throwback to the 1970s, the era of veneer. He achieved this by having the parts hydrodipped. It’s a process where the plastic pieces are lowered into a liquid bath with woodgrain-patterned pigment floating on top. In this case, the dark woodgrain effect pairs perfectly with the rest of the black interior. It’s custom, and it looks good, which is more than we can say of most modified interiors we see.

Externally, he’s given the Challenger a set of American Racing VN501 wheels, wrapped in Petlas Explero rubber. For the proper vintage look, he shaved the sidewalls and threw on ’71-style tire lettering which looks the business. A set of Eibach Pro-Kit lowering springs helps set the stance. Exhaust-wise, he switched the factory X-pipe for an H-pipe setup, threw on Flowmaster mufflers, and deleted the resonators for a throatier tone. There’s also a lovely Hellcat-style air catcher up front for a properly mean look.

The rest of it comes down to decals, badging, and detail pieces. It might sound trivial, but getting all this right is why the car looks so well put together. He’s got the ’71 style emblems in the appropriate spots on the body, a chrome fuel door, and Pentastar badges on the fenders. He’s also got amber fog light covers that he modified from Harley Davidson turn signals, headlight bezels, and a high-quality R/T vinyl on the side of the body. Other nice touches include the hood pins, the imitation vinyl top, and the Go-Wing on the rear trunk lid.

Throw a couple of these pieces on wrong, and it’d look like a mess. It doesn’t take much chrome trim or vinyl to turn a stock car into a laughing stock. But Yevhen did the job right, and the results speak for themselves.

His story is perhaps a lesson for any car fan that is feeling disconnected from their passion. Obviously, feeding and clothing yourself comes first in life, as does shelter and all the rest. Nevertheless, sometimes you have go after something if it’s important to you. None of us know how much time we have left, and we most often regret the things we didn’t do.

Yevhen saw his opportunity and went for it. He’s built himself an American beast on his own terms. The car is a credit to him and his craft, and it stands as a shining example for us all.

Bottom line? Don’t wait to start living. Get after it now.

Image credits: Yevhen Kovalchuk