That’s a bit of a power bump…
At the 2017 SEMA Show in Las Vegas, when we used to have such things, Ringbrothers showed up with a murdered-out, heavily-modified 1969 Dodge Charger named “Defector.” People were really excited about the muscle car since it took a beloved model and improved on it while preserving much of the factory aesthetics, even if pretty much everything was black. Fast forward three years and we’ve learned Ringbrothers have been playing with this muscle machine once more, this time dropping in a Hellephant engine for a dramatic power increase.
The Defector 2.0 was revealed on Ringbrothers’ Instagram page recently in most glorious fashion. We get to see the muscle car ripping a big burnout, the supercharger whining furiously. There’s no hood on the car in the video, so it’s not obvious if a new one is being fabricated or the existing hood is just being modified for the Hellephant.
As a supercharged 426ci Hemi V8, the Hellephant is appropriately named for its displacement. It’s also strong like an elephant, cranking out 1,000-horsepower. People were understandably excited and all Hellephants were sold out within 2 days of the engine becoming available to order online. Mopar says it made about 100 units
In case you don’t remember, to make Defector unique Ringbrothers chopped about 2 inches off the rear and moved the front axle forward a few inches. They also opened up the wheel wells and fit one-off HRE wheels designed like old Chrysler wheels for a completely unique look. The suspension was from Detroit Speed and the car was converted into a unibody. Under the hood was a 392ci Hemi V8 crate engine.
Thanks to social media builders can show off their work even when there are no events during the pandemic. It sounds like Ringbrothers has another Hellephant on its hands, because the shop asked on the Instagram post what other build people would want to see one of the engines in.
