With all of the extreme builds that we’ve seen here at powerTV, we’ve made – over time – a very special effort to find the most unorthodox, non-conventional rods and customs that we could possibly muster. When it comes to the unadulterated “need for speed,” there are no bounds to which mankind will finally stop.
But in the case of this unfinished Caterpillar turbine-powered, ’72 Dodge Charger, enough is just never enough. A lot of muscle car enthusiasts may go off for hours about how they have the muscle car that is just fast enough to break the whole thing loose, but with this CAT-powered Mopar, it literally is fast enough to “break the whole thing loose.”
That’s because the powerplant of choice in this later B-body is a 500-horse version of Caterpillar’s turbine, 553-2-1 engine. At this point, it’s clear that all of us, including Jalopnik, have looked at this mechanical “freak of nature” and shrugged our shoulders at it, trying to figure out not only what the hell it is, but why the rod-builder in question decided to spearhead a CAT-powered muscle car and why the Charger is still sitting unfinished.
Some, like Jalopnik, speculate that the cold winter nights in Sweden, where this build comes to us from, may be one of the reasons why this ’72 Dodge remains a work in progress. Jalopnik also speculates that the turbine-powered Charger is a bit of an oxymoron, existing as an American build that’s over-the-top, yet hailing from a country in which everything, including Volvo and Ikea, are thought to be “safe and practical.”