Dodge Charger Possibly ‘World’s First Vintage Hellcat’
Antique Dodge Charger owned by NBA player Solomon Hill is the most complete Hellcat swap we’ve ever seen.
If you saw the Dark Bronze Iridium 1969 Dodge Charger shown here at your local car show while the engine was down, you might be taken by how clean this car is as it nears its 50th birthday. However, the super-clean exterior might be the least impressive aspect of the classic Mopar muscle car owned by Solomon Hill, forward for the New Orleans Pelicans. This pristine machine has the engine, transmission and interior bits from a supercharged Hellcat Challenger, making it the most elaborate Hellcat swap we have seen to date.
Dream Car
Solomon Hill’s dream car was a 1969 Dodge Charger with the high performance heart of a modern muscle car. Once he acquired the car itself, he contacted Kenny Bumbera of Bumbera’s Performance in Katy, Texas to see if the shop could make his dream come true. The ultimate goal was not only to put the supercharged Hellcat Hemi under the hood of Hill’s classic car, but he also wanted the automatic transmission and the modern interior features of the Hellcat cars in his 1969 Dodge.
While there have been a handful of other classic Mopar muscle cars that have received Hellcat power, none of them have incorporated the eight-speed automatic transmission and the interior electronics – making this the most complete and elaborate Hellcat swap project we have seen thus far.
A few weeks back, when the build was in its middle stages, the shop made a short video to show us some of the prep work being done while providing some information on the car. You can check that video out below.
More Than Just an Engine Swap
Had Bumbera’s Performance simply swapped a Hellcat Hemi, like this 1969 Charger, this would still be a very nice, very powerful classic muscle car, but this isn’t just an engine swap. The team wanted to incorporate as many features as possible and that meant that they needed to include the majority of the electronics from a Hellcat car in this build.
To do this, they acquired the dashboard from a 2015 Challenger along with all of the electronics, the center console and the shifter. Once they were able to make the new dash and center console fit in the 1969 Charger, all of the controls were there for the modern technology. This means that the Hellcat-powered ’69 Dodge has remote start, traction control and the majority of the Drive Mode system, allowing Hill to sharpen the transmission shifts or the throttle response by switching over to Track Mode on the 8.4-inch infotainment screen.
Along the same lines, the 2015 Challenger dash and infotainment screen controls the sound system, the heater and the air conditioning systems, while also including all of the unique gauges and performance meters that come with the Hellcat package.
Best of all, Bumbera’s did such a great job of fitting the dash and center console into the 1969 Charger with the original seats that it almost looks like a stock layout – ignoring the 50-year advance in technology, of course.
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