Why This Challenger Hellcat-Based Plymouth Cuda Looks So Wrong

I don’t like things that are made to resemble other things. An object should look like the object it is, not appear to be something else. For example: a telephone should look like a telephone. I don’t want one that looks like a Ferrari Testarossa. Or a cheeseburger. Or Garfield. Actually thinking about it … the landline phone industry has a lot to answer for here. Maybe the business of making telephones got too boring so instead of improving the design and aesthetics engineers just started sticking phone guts into any old plastic crap they could get away with. Likewise, those hi-fi systems that look like a gigantic can of Coke. What point does such an object have as a consumer good? Why do these novelty aberrations exist beyond pleasing the type of grown adults who eat rainbow colored breakfast cereal during the day?

I was watching a vintage electronic restoration show the other night, and the presenter was wanting to indulge in some pointless nostalgia by buying an old Scalextric set. Entering a money-for-old-rope emporium, not only was the host staggered to learn slot car racing was a 1960s invention and not the eighties, he was enthralled by a transistor radio in the form of a Robinson’s juice carton. It was like watching a seal clapping at a fresh bowl of fish heads. Where do producers find these people, and how do they end up on the screen? More importantly, why haven’t I got a cushy television gig like that?

Anyway, being autistic, what this all means is that my brain is not programmed to manage life and all its messy unpredictability at anything other than face value. If someone says they are going to do something and that doesn’t happen, or something doesn’t work the way it is meant to, the bad wiring in my head has a short circuit. Which instantly externalizes as me being oversensitive or an intolerant asshole. But this is an involuntary reaction to the anguish and confusion roiling inside my frontal lobes. When I was at Land Rover, a couple of times my manager had to kick me under the table for being a bit too blunt to the other people around the table whom I thought were not keeping up or not doing their bloody jobs. Like I say – an intolerant asshole.

Reverse Cosmetic Surgery

Therefore, as a designer, I value honesty and integrity in the creation and appearance of products. To get to the point, it’s one of the reasons I harbor a visceral dislike of hidden rear door handles – on a small level they are subterfuge, but also because pillar position, proportions, and category define whether a car should have two or four doors. Not some cheap tromp l’oeil trick and what, four- and five-door cars can’t be cool or look great? It’s dishonest bullshit. So when I see a car trying to look like a completely different car I immediately find myself needing to lie down in a dark room with a large bottle of something to ease the pain. Like Laudanum.

I’m not talking about playing mix and match with parts and trim to build your ideal version of a car that was never available from the factory. Dropping a different engine and transmission combo from elsewhere in the range is fine by me because if I had the money and time, I’d be building a Mk3 Ford Capri 2.8 injection with the later Scorpio 2.9 24-valve Cosworth engine in it. No, what’s putting the sand in my clams this week is another American Frankenstein: a poor 2022 Dodge Challenger that’s undergone reverse cosmetic surgery in an attempt to make it look like a 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda.

Now look, I get it. I really do. When the Camaro and the Challenger both reappeared in 2009, suddenly it was like 1969 all over again for fans of traditional American muscle. There wasn’t quite the same variety as there was back then because so many manufacturers had revved their last in the intervening years, but enthusiasts clamoring for V8 performance in a modern daily driver never had it so good. The fans of this type of car can be tribal in their brand loyalty so if you weren’t a Ford, Chevy or a Dodge person you were shit out of luck. There are lots of these modern versions of an old model about with varying degrees of success, so clearly the demand for this sort of fake is out there: you can get a Firebird, a GTO and even a misguided attempt at a Chevelle. A modern Plymouth ‘Cuda based on the then-current Challenger has been rumored for years, but one enterprising shop got fed up of waiting and took matters into their own hands.

Understanding What Is Wrong

Since I’m a Plymouth fangirl, this is something I completely understand, but I want a proper OEM ‘Cuda, not a half-assed, badly designed hodge-podge of old and new. When you look at this recreation, your initial reaction might well be, huh yeah, that looks quite cool and well executed, although let me tell you that was a long way away from my initial reaction. This isn’t as bad as the white FrankenChallenger I ranted about a while back, but that was a homebuilt effort and this one was made by a professional custom shop, which should mean a better result. But for what this thing cost, not being as shit as something one guy could have drunkenly knocked up in his garage during his evenings is not fucking cricket my friends.

The first problem is this looks like a ’71 ‘Cuda that’s swallowed a modern Challenger whole without chewing. It is so bulky and fat that Thanos would have to snap twice. In the front view, you can see the bodysides now stick out a long way from the glasshouse. The reason for this is because they’ve extended the bodywork from the bottom of the side window outwards in the Y-axis. The fender line now must rise vertically to meet this so the hood has to come up as well, and it’s completely flat with no variation in Z height across the surface. On the Challenger, the hood and the fenders are much lower – you can tell by the way the hood curves upwards to meet the cowl. This trick is partly hidden in the middle of the hood by extending the power bulge backwards towards the windshield.

Part of the reason for them doing this is to give them enough real estate – i.e. enough sheet metal, to play around with the surfaces to create the classic ‘Cuda Coke bottle hips. I get why they did this but the implementation is too rigid and brutal. The lines are too stiff and the curves need more ‘lead in’ – the radii should be softer and blend in and out more progressively. A sweeping corner rather than a sudden kink. Because the fender line at the front has risen, the whole of the back end has to come up to match. The problem with this is it’s led to entirely too much sheet metal (actually carbon) above the feature line running down the length of the car – so it looks under wheeled and flabby. Sorting out the front wheel arch so its not on the piss and then expanding the openings out a bit to keep it all in proportion would help, but because this car uses the existing Challenger body-in-white structure with new carbon fiber panels bonded on top, it wasn’t possible.

Before we send this thing off to fat camp, there’s a couple more chubby rolls of flab we need to poke at. The area below the rear bumper should have a much better defined shape rather than just lazily rolling away from under the bumper – it’s way too soft and soggy, making ‘Cuda look like it hasn’t had its diaper changed for a week. Finally, the rear side glass has had its shape altered and surface area reduced to better resemble the original ‘Cuda. Now the C pillar is much wider making the rear compartment more claustrophobic. There’s just not enough side glass to balance out the body color, adding to the visual weight problem.

Details Are Not Details

So the proportions are off, making the whole car look too heavy and underwheeled, but that’s not the end of my problems. Not by a long shot. I’ve got the knife in this far; I might as well push it up to the hilt. One of the problems I often find with custom-made cars is that not enough attention has been paid to the details – the little things that you might miss first time around but you are likely to spot over time. This happens because the little stuff is insanely hard to get right. As Charles Eames said – “the details are not the details. They make the design.” Is that the nit-picking train I hear pulling into the station? Yes, it is, so come onboard.

Let’s start off where we left off with the new side glass. Leaving aside for a moment the new glazing has a different color tint to the OEM glass, it looks like they’ve installed it by simply bonding it on top of the existing opening, which means the glazing is not flush across the two windows, giving an inconsistent highlight. On the Challenger proper, you can see both side windows flush with each other, and the rear glass is sealed into the underlying structure as opposed to on top of it. The upper radius of the new rear glass is far too sharp, breaking visual consistency with the window line at the top of the A-pillar. And the Hemi side graphic doesn’t have a consistent gap from the top and rear edges of the fender, making it look like it’s been slapped on in the wrong position.

Let us refresh our espressos and wander around to the front. The first thing I noticed, because it jumped out a mile off the screen, was that the front bumper and grille panel are badly lopsided. I know how this happened, which I’ll talk about in a bit, but first let’s look at the headlights. The grill opening is far too big because extending the bodywork in width (Y-axis) and raising the hood/fender line upwards (Z-axis) opened up the whole front of the car. The standard lights with their cut off top now exposed look lost in all that black carbon, making the down-the-road graphic appear cross-eyed like the unfortunate Leyland P76. For fucks sake put some bigger, completely round light units in there. There must be something suitable available off the shelf.

The situation doesn’t improve at the ass end either, which is more drunken than me after making through another week at The Autopian. The left hand side of the rear panel is lower than the right, which makes the lower line of the bumper look crooked in the opposite direction. The intersection of the rear fender and bumper is a horrible collision of mismatched surfaces and radii, the exhaust tips don’t match, and it’s all just a horrible mess.

How Much?

Now, you might think I’m being overly harsh here and that the person who commissioned this car wouldn’t notice all the things I’ve pointed out or did and isn’t bothered by them. And this is a fair comment. But this car was offered for auction back in January and didn’t sell at $275k. It’s now up for sale again. I’ve just been on the Autotrader website, and 2022 Hellcat prices are a bit all over the place, but there’s a zero miles one available for $75k. According to the listing, there are 3000 hours of labor in this car. So that works out to roughly $65 per hour, which for a skilled builder doesn’t sound like anywhere near enough. And we haven’t accounted for materials, which are all carbon fiber molded panels. So it’s a fair guess that the original purchase price of this car was above that $275k figure originally. This must be getting on for a half-million dollar build. For that much, in my opinion, you need to be getting everything spot on. Now I’ve watched the build video for one of these cars, I think I understand how the panels ended up all lopsided.

What the builders seemed to have done was cut off all the external sheet metal, leaving the inner structure untouched. They then laboriously hand-fabricated from sheet metal new bodywork, snipping out panels and tack welding them into place, before grinding the joints smooth.

Then the lot was covered in filler before being sanded back, and those new surfaces used as the basis to make the molds for the carbon bodywork. It’s a time-honored method of doing things, and on a wonky old ’71 ‘Cuda which was not even straight when it rolled out the factory you might get away with it. The thing is, if you’re building on top of a new OEM vehicle, as opposed to restoring an older one, you should be using as near to OEM methods as possible, because the build quality is so much better than it used to be.

Do It Digitally First

A better way of doing this would have been to purchase a complete CAD model of a modern Challenger. If that’s not possible, then scan a Challenger with the external sheet metal removed and build a proper A-class surface model to that. You’ve then got your own set of data for your design. All the checking for dimensional accuracy, highlights, and panel gaps can be done digitally before a single part is made. This data can then be used to create prototype parts to allow a physical sanity check, and then the molds by milling out hard foam the same way OEMs do. Get the thing off its wheels and make sure it’s level, and then use easily available tools to check, recheck, and check again to make sure it’s all correct. It’s more consistent, accurate, and, importantly if you’re producing a small run of cars, repeatable. Because as you can see:

The builders of this car didn’t pull it all out of their asses and totally design the thing by eye on a full size car. From my rigorous journalistic investigation, a sketch was commissioned, and it is surprisingly good even if the style is a bit contrasty and corny. What might have happened is that, once the builders had the sketch and were happy with it, they took it from there – because they used an illustrator not a car designer. Compare the sketch to the finished car, and the difference is stark. I’m always banging on about it, but coming up with ideas and doing the splashy sketches is only one part of the designer’s job. The designer should be involved at every stage from conception to completion, making sure nothing is fouled up or just left to be good enough. I spent hours every day for over a year supervising hard models and then prototype Defenders.

I don’t want you thinking I’m automatically against this sort of redo – the Japanese have been at it for years, but I consider that typical Japanese whimsy and theirs are fun. Who could resist a Jimny playing dress-up as a G-Wagen? And those kits all look to be exceptionally high quality. Muscle cars are closer to my heart so it’s no shock that’s why this Mopar shitbeast has raised the hackles of my mohawk so high.

It might cost you a few thousand dollars to get an accurate digital model built, but over a run of ten cars that’s a small investment considering the purchase price. Getting a proper designer with OEM experience contracted in once or twice a week to keep an eye on things wouldn’t be a bad idea either. The errors on this ‘Cuda wouldn’t be acceptable on a twenty-five grand car new car – so they are not acceptable on one on a two-hundred-and-fity grand one.

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