Stories about carmakers having to crush pre-production models that can’t get VINs, titles, and therefore are not street-legal continue to haunt us over the web, but can’t anybody find a way to avoid performance cars going into the crusher? Well, the latest adventure from YouTuber/builder Tavarish bring us just that—the vlogger received a pre-production 2021 Challenger Hellcat Redeye from Dodge last year for a racing event and, instead of giving it back as it came, decided to strip off all the SRT bits and use them to upgrade a base V6 Charger rental to Redeye spec, thus fulfilling two dreams with one build.
Tavarish, whose real name is Freddy Hernandez, built a massive YouTube following—two million subs should account for that—by seeking the cheapest examples of enthusiast vehicles (supercars included) and then restoring them to their former glory.
How Tavarish got a free Dodge Charger Hellcat
So, with Dodge having some pre-production units to spare, they offered the said 2021 Charger Redeye to the aficionado, asking him to put the 797 horsepower to use while racing other car personalities at an event dubbed Roadkill Nights—some of you might be familiar to the velocity gathering, which involves closing the legendary Woodward Avenue in Pontiac, Michigan so enthusiasts can enjoy street-legal drag racing.
The vlogger also got $10,000, which he used to get himself a 2017 Dodge Charger V6 that used to be a rental car before getting stolen and mistreated in ways that, among others, left the interior in need of a detailing that would remove the reportedly killer smell. But why bother with cleaning the clean-title, salvage auction-bought Dodge when you can simply strip off that Hellcat Redeye’s cabin along with the performance parts and install everything on the once-a-beater?
The vlogger released a series of videos meanwhile, with the most recent one having landed just hours ago (completely showcasing the project, this is Part II of the build documentation and the first clip embedded below).
Tavarish’s V6-to-Redeye Charger is now ready to roam the streets and lay waste to opponents at the track. And, for the record, Part I (the second clip below) shows the V6 Charger losing the bits that needed to go,
Building a Hellcat in your garage
Together with his crew, Tavarish reduced the V6 Charger to a shell (as always, he actually does a bit of the work himself), removing the interior, together with the climate control system (to get rid of the smell) and even the audio hardware, while also fixing some body panels and replacing the final parts of the quarter panels, with the overfenders included in the factory widebody of the Redeye requiring dedicated holes.
The first startup of the Tavarish Dodge Charger Hellcat Redeye awaits you at the 19:44 point of the second video, but you might also want to check out the second half of the clip.
That’s because you’ll see the muscle car getting resprayed in the factory Go Mango Pearl, among others. And, in case you’re wondering, the whole operation took more than the five days the YouTuber advertises in the videos, but he estimates the total amount of work done for the transformation is within those limits, with their rest of the time being spent waiting for parts or moving the vehicle to and from the paint shop.
How to do a burnout in the Dodge Charger Hellcat Redeye
It’s extremely simple (once the supercharged 6.2-liter V8 is in), with Tavarish demonstrating it at the 48:43 timestamp, while generating a fair amount of tire smoke.
As for the next step, the enthusiast will take the built-not-bought Redeye to a runway, so perhaps we’ll get to see a top-speed attempt (after all, this is a factory sedan that can go past 200 mph/320 kph).
