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Bob Welling served as a Marine in Vietnam, came home a died-in-the-wool Chevy guy, and still ended up chasing down a piece of 1968 Mopar history decades later. What started as a simple fix for an engine rattle turned into a full supercharged Hemi build — one so powerful that hitting the throttle at highway speed sends the rear end sideways. Read on to find out how a tribute to Dodge’s rarest factory drag cars became Bob’s daily street cruiser.
A Ford Shelby GT350 built by Cordes Performance Racing runs an F1A Procharger, ARH long tube headers, and E85 fuel to a claimed 923 horsepower at the wheels — on a completely stock bottom end. At Shifts3ctor’s California Airstrip Attack in Coalinga, it lines up against a Chevrolet C7 Corvette Z06 kept close to factory spec. The horsepower gap looks enormous on paper. Watch to see whether launch and traction close it at all.
The man who shaped the 1968 Dodge Charger sculpted the design between official assignments, in clay, as something closer to a personal project than a sanctioned program. It became one of the most recognizable American cars ever built, and he left Detroit shortly afterward without ever styling another production vehicle. Decades later, builders are still reinterpreting his lines in Pro Street form, which is its own kind of credit.