Hemis-Fear

“Hey, that thing got a Hemi?” Yeah, both of them, and neither are hanging around long...

- Dave Smith

There were some pretty significant birthdays last year. It was Jeep's 75th birthday. It was the 50th anniversary of Dodge and Plymouth offering the mighty Chrysler 'Street Hemi' 426 motor in their showroom street cars. And it was 10 years since the concept Dodge Challenger appeared at the Detroit Auto Show as a serious competitor to Ford's S197 Mustang in the new retro muscle car wars. So, last year, we got a couple of late-model Hemi-powered Mopars together, theoretically at opposite ends of the spectrum - one a hardcore muscle-bound strip-monster and dyno killer, the other a tarmac-terrorising, high-tech, modded-up street-bruiser. Can you guess which is which?

2010 Dodge Challenger SRT8 6.1

If you guessed that the Challenger is, in fact, the mighty street car, you guessed correctly. After all, with 425bhp as standard, it's not exactly wanting in that department, but now it excels in the stance and sounds department, too. And wouldn't you love this as your company car?

The lucky fellow in that department is (or was) Purav Patel, from Car Audio Security, a high-tech in-car electronics specialist in Hayes. “We have many demonstrator cars here to show off our audio, technology and air suspension installations,” says Purav, “but they're often German cars – BMWs, Volkswagens etc. We do a lot of shows, and we wanted something different. The boss, Raj Sangha, loves Challengers, like the one on NCIS Los Angeles, and I suggested that we needed something that would pull a crowd as standard and then work our magic on it. All the demonstrators belong to someone within the company, so Raj said that if I was happy to look after a Challenger, we could build one. So, in June 2014, we went up the road to the American Car Centre in Fulham and bought this 2010 Challenger SRT8.