Wisconsin-based Speedkore is a tuning and building company with an impressive track record of converting historic muscle into modern works of carbon-drenched art. Its latest build? The Evolution, a carbon-bodied 1970 Dodge Charger with a tweaked Demon engine. Evolution dazzled the crowds at SEMA this past year, where it debuted, and Jay Leno was equally impressed with the 966-horsepower behemoth.
Speedkore vice president Dave Salvaggio brought Evolution to Leno’s Burbank garage, where the comic got to test out the 3,200-pound Charger. The format for Leno’s videos is typically a garage walkthrough first, and then the test drive, but this video’s inverted, and it opens with Leno delicately trying to get the hang of the powerful Dodge. You can see the back end gets a little squirrelly on Leno, and you can hear him carefully modulating the throttle to get Evolution seated. Throughout the process, that honking supercharger whines gloriously.
Leno quickly masters the Evolution and it’s back to the garage for poring over the car in detail. The frame and VIN are from a 1970 Charger, but the chassis and bodywork is all completely custom, designed and fabricated by Speedkore in its shop. The carbon fiber has a bronze hue, and the weave is all painstakingly matched so it moves in the same direction through the car, Salvaggio informs Leno. “It feels hundreds of pounds lighter, which it obviously is,” Leno says, noting that the door could be made of paper mâché. In the engine bay, some of the parts are 3-D printed, like the air intake, and some of the filler caps.
Since demand is now quite high for late ’60s and early ’70s Chargers, donor bodies are harder to come by, and original ones may be riddled with rust. Salvaggio says Speedkore has honed the body-making process to the point where it can produce a body in about a week and a half that will fit on a ’68, ’69, or ’70 frame. Check out the video for yourself above.
