I DON'T know how, but Ringbrothers just keeps building amazing cars that seamlessly blend modern aesthetics and classic US muscle-car styling. The '69 Charger has been done so many times that it's hard to imagine you could do a fresh take on it, yet here we have it. It's almost what hasn't been done that makes this car stand out - it's still got the Charger badge on the C-pillar, the door handles and the stock fuel cap. There are a couple of subtle changes you may not even pick up at first, but we'll get to those a bit later.
Drawn up by Gary Ragle Designs, the Charger was brought to the Ringbrothers shop by a developer from New York City. He'd recently had the car completely rebuilt but really wasn't happy with how it turned out or how it drove. "He brought the car to us fully restored, with the Hellephant in it, and he had spent a sizable amount of money, but he hated it so badly he wouldn't even get in it or start it up," Mike Ring's wife Nancy explains. "He said to us, 'Start over; do it again. I still want it black, and I want the Hellephant, but I want you guys to do this.""
You might be thinking that sounds like a crazy idea, and you'd be right, but the owner was adamant. "We encouraged him to try and sell the car and find a donor car, but we ended up doing a full build,” Nancy says. "There wasn't much we were able to save, so it ended up being a very expensive donor car."
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