Big, Bad,…Customized 194MPH 2008 Dodge Challenger Superbird ‘GRIZZ’ With Over 1000rwhp!

GRIZZ isn’t a real 1970 Superbird – it’s Joel Highsmith’s modern custom tribute build, and it’s chasing numbers no factory aero car ever touched: over 1,000 rear-wheel horsepower and a 194mph top speed. Gearhead Flicks’ feature has drawn nearly 725,000 views, plus a sharp-eyed comment correcting the car’s own naming and a wild detour involving a theft and recovery. Find out where GRIZZ is racing next.

A car built to hit 194 miles per hour doesn’t usually need a nickname to get attention – but GRIZZ has one anyway, and the story behind both the name and the number is stranger than the wing on its trunk suggests. Built by owner Joel Highsmith and captured on camera by Gearhead Flicks, this heavily customized machine wears the unmistakable silhouette of one of Mopar’s most legendary aero warriors, but almost nothing else about it is stock. Over 1,000 horsepower at the wheels. A top speed north of 194 mph. A name people are still arguing about in the comments. Before you decide what this car actually is, you need to know what it isn’t.

The Name on Everyone’s Mind

Gearhead Flicks titled its feature Big, Bad, Customized 194MPH 2008 Dodge Challenger Superbird GRIZZ With Over 1000rwhp, a title that packs in a lot of information and, depending on how you read it, at least one contradiction. GRIZZ isn’t a restored 1970 factory Superbird, and it isn’t technically a Dodge either-it’s a modern, heavily customized build wearing Superbird-inspired styling cues, built by owner Joel Highsmith as a tribute to one of the most iconic aero-era muscle cars ever produced. Treating it as a genuine vintage Superbird would be a mistake; treating it as a serious, purpose-built performance machine in its own right is exactly the right way to watch this video. The confusion in the title is understandable given how recognizable that wing-and-nose silhouette is, but the car underneath is a modern build chasing modern numbers, not a numbers-matching survivor from Chrysler’s aero-war heyday.

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Meet Joel Highsmith’s 194MPH Creation

Behind GRIZZ is owner Joel Highsmith, whose custom build has become a fixture in high-speed enthusiast circles thanks to a top speed of 194 miles per hour-a figure that puts this car solidly in supercar territory regardless of what body style it’s wearing. Gearhead Flicks, the channel behind the feature, has built a reputation for documenting exactly this kind of build: cars that blend classic muscle car aesthetics with genuinely modern performance hardware underneath. The nearly 725,000 views this particular video has racked up reflect how much appetite exists for content that isn’t just a restoration story, but a demonstration of what happens when a builder takes a legendary shape and pushes it into a completely different performance category. GRIZZ isn’t trying to be historically accurate-it’s trying to be fast, loud, and unmistakable, and by every account in the video and comments, it succeeds on all three counts.

More Than 1,000 Horsepower to the Wheels

The headline number in the video’s title-over 1,000 rear-wheel horsepower-is a figure that would have been almost unimaginable to the engineers who built the original aero cars in 1970, when even the fastest factory Hemi-powered Superbirds and Daytonas made a fraction of that output at the crank, let alone at the wheels after drivetrain loss. A dyno figure north of 1,000rwhp typically means forced induction, a heavily built bottom end, and a drivetrain engineered to survive repeated abuse at speeds most street cars never approach. Combined with the car’s 194mph top speed, GRIZZ sits in a performance tier closer to purpose-built land-speed or high-end tuner cars than anything Chrysler’s assembly lines produced during the muscle car era. It’s a useful illustration of just how far modern engine building and forced-induction technology have pushed what’s possible inside a body style originally designed for NASCAR aerodynamics rather than triple-digit street speeds.

Superbird or Daytona? The Comment That Corrected Everyone

One especially sharp-eyed commenter pointed out a naming detail worth taking seriously: strictly speaking, Daytona would be the more historically accurate nameplate for a Dodge-badged aero car, since the Superbird name was reserved specifically for Plymouth’s version of the winged aero warriors, while Dodge’s own entry in the aero wars carried the Charger Daytona name instead. It’s a small but meaningful correction, and one that Mopar purists take seriously-Superbird and Daytona share a family resemblance and a mission, but they’re distinct models built by distinct divisions of Chrysler, with different production numbers and different collector values today. Whether GRIZZ’s exact badge lineage leans Dodge or Plymouth in its styling cues, the comment is a useful reminder that wing car isn’t a single model-it’s a small family of aero-era specials, and getting the nameplate right matters to the enthusiasts who’ve spent decades tracking down real examples of each.

The One That Got Away – A Real 1970 Superbird Story

Among the comments was a personal story with real weight to it: a commenter recalled an ex-partner who once owned a genuine 1970 Superbird and sold it decades ago, a decision they came to regret watching cars like GRIZZ resurrect the shape for a new generation. The commenter specifically remembered an 18-wheel car hauler arriving to take the Superbird away alongside a load of exotic cars, a detail that underscores just how significant that original Superbird actually was-worthy of being shipped with genuine exotics rather than treated like an ordinary used car. Original 1970 Superbirds are now among the most valuable muscle cars in existence, with surviving examples commanding prices well into six and seven figures at major auctions. Stories like this one are common in the Mopar community: cars sold for practical reasons decades ago that would represent life-changing money if their original owners had simply held on.

The Doppler Effect Heard Round the Comments

Beyond the numbers, plenty of viewers zeroed in on something simpler: the sound. Commenters specifically praised the doppler effect captured as GRIZZ blew past the camera at speed-the way pitch shifts as a fast-moving car approaches and then recedes, something that’s genuinely difficult to capture well on video and even harder to fake convincingly. That kind of authentic, high-speed flyby audio is part of what separates a video like this from a static dyno pull or a slow-speed cruise clip; it gives viewers a visceral sense of exactly how fast 194mph actually feels from the outside, even through a screen. For a build defined almost entirely by extreme numbers-over 1,000rwhp, nearly 200mph-the sound is the detail that makes those numbers feel real rather than abstract, and it’s clearly a big part of why Gearhead Flicks’ footage of GRIZZ resonated as strongly as it did with viewers.

Stolen, Then Found: GRIZZ’s Wild Detour

Adding another layer to an already unusual build story, one commenter mentioned that GRIZZ was stolen at some point and later recovered-a detail that, if accurate, only adds to the car’s reputation as a high-profile, closely watched build within the community that follows Highsmith’s work. A car capable of 194mph and built around a six-figure investment in forced induction and drivetrain work is exactly the kind of target that draws unwanted attention, and recovering a stolen vehicle of this caliber intact is far from guaranteed. Whatever the full details of the theft and recovery, it’s the kind of story that tends to follow high-performance custom builds once they reach a certain level of notoriety online-enough visibility to attract admirers, and unfortunately, enough visibility to attract the wrong kind of attention too. That GRIZZ came back at all speaks to either quick recovery work or a car distinctive enough that it couldn’t stay hidden for long.

Next Stop: The Nevada Open Road Challenge

Perhaps the most concrete detail to come out of the comments was a reply, apparently from someone close to the build, confirming that GRIZZ would be competing in the Nevada Open Road Challenge-a real, sanctioned event featuring both a half-mile shootout and a 90-mile open road race on public highways closed for competition. That’s a serious proving ground for a car built around a 194mph top speed claim; events like the Open Road Challenge are where builds like GRIZZ get tested against a stopwatch rather than just a dyno sheet or a straight-line flyby. For a car that started this feature wrapped in confusion over its own name, ending on a note about a legitimate, high-speed competitive event reframes GRIZZ as more than a show car or internet curiosity-it’s a build with real performance ambitions, backed by a top speed and horsepower figure that will get put to the test on an actual course rather than just claimed in a video title.

See the full video above and join the conversation in the comments.

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