YouTuber Slaps Amish Buggy Wheels on a Dodge Challenger Hellcat—and It Really Works
Just a few more horses than those wheels are designed to handle.
Living in Pennsylvania, it's commonplace for me to see a horse and buggy galloping down the road. Some younger coachmen will command horses adorned with fancy dressings, while others deck out the buggies themselves with modern lighting and other "mods." It's sort of the Amish way of sticking it to the man—or simply customizing a buggy to their liking. But if there's one thing that I've never seen, however, is a carriage in the shape of a Dodge Challenger Hellcat.
There's a first time for everything though, and that time is today thanks to YouTuber Whistin' Diesel (less commonly known as Cody Detwiler). That's right, the same one who destroyed a $100,000 Ford Super Duty and taught us an important lesson about the geometry of the wheel. Hint: square doesn't work well.
Detwiler picked up a set of aluminum carriage wheels with the sole intent of placing them on the Hellcat, which meant he had a set of standard hubs welded to the carriage wheels and added spacers so that they would clear the fenders. Aside from compromising the turning radius, the wheels added a certain amount of pizzazz to the ride that caught of attention from onlookers, most of who were quick to the draw with their smartphone cameras. Couple that with a man dressed in what appeared to be Amish garb behind the wheel, and you start to trend on the internet.
The YouTuber began the tell people it was his "HellBuggy" and joked that he had "699 more horses than all the other buggies" under the hood, which were more than enough to produce one of the weirdest burnouts I've ever seen. Detwiler also learned that it's probably a good idea to stop when the rubber flies off the wheels, because the metal will cut through asphalt.
Surprisingly, Detwiler says that the car feels quite normal to drive, except of course when going over a bump. He later mentions that he took the car up to about 170 miles per hour. Now, I'm no buggy wheel engineer, but I'm going to take a wild guess and assume that they aren't quite rated for that speed.
The car, unfortunately, wasn't able to escape the experiment without a little bit of paint-related carnage, but that's to be expected when you buy a car with the sole intention of destroying it. I have to say that my favorite part about this entire experiment is removing the tire noise from the hoonage, as it really lets the supercharger whine shine in concert with the 707-horsepower 6.2-liter V8.
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