{"id":18461,"date":"2018-08-14T09:45:49","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T13:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dodgegarage.com\/news-api\/?p=18461"},"modified":"2024-03-25T11:24:48","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T15:24:48","slug":"joel-vandiver-dodge-challenger-road-racer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/owners-clubs\/2018\/08\/joel-vandiver-dodge-challenger-road-racer.html","title":{"rendered":"Joel Vandiver – Dodge Challenger Road Racer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dodge is in the middle of setting the drag racing world on fire with the release of the new 2019 Challenger Scat Pack 1320, the \u201cfastest naturally aspirated, street-legal muscle car available.\u201d\u00a0And the buzz from the Dodge Challenger SRT\u00ae<\/sup> Demon moves to the new Redeye as that technology trickles down. But, the Challenger isn\u2019t a one-trick pony. It can go around corners…and Joel Vandiver\u2019s does it better than most.<\/p>\n

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Joel\u2019s claim to fame is being on the TV show R U Faster Than A Redneck?<\/em>, where \u201cregular\u201d people could race their hopped up imports against a selection of Rednecks in American muscle.\u00a0Joel\u2019s weapon of choice: a 2008 Challenger SRT that had been converted to race in the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) and National Auto Sport Association (NASA).<\/p>\n

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Joel and I have been race buddies for years and I\u2019ve told his story countless times (usually when someone is talking out of their hind end about how Challengers can\u2019t turn, yadda\u2026). \u201cI built the Challenger with the hopes of getting some sponsorship by winning races in a car that was different. If I had built a Corvette I would have been just another fast guy in a Corvette,\u201d said Joel.\u00a0You can see pretty quickly that Joel likes doing things his way.<\/p>\n

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Let me set the stage…this wasn\u2019t Joel\u2019s first modern Mopar\u00ae<\/sub>. He had previously built a Dodge Charger Pursuit into a racer. Yes, he turned a police car into a track day toy…complete with a black and white paint job and a push bar still mounted to the nose!\u00a0The #77 build wasn\u2019t as simple as adding a cage to a stock Challenger…no, this started with a Canadian chassis, a wrecked Charger SRT8\u00ae<\/sup>, an engine from a different Charger, some JB Weld and various parts from Craigslist. Throw it all together and you\u2019ve got a surprisingly well balanced and highly competitive car.\u00a0\u201cTwo clear advantages come to mind,” said Joel, “and first is the great engine (a 6.1 HEMI\u00ae<\/sup> that has been stroked out to a 426). The second is that the car has one of the best designed braking systems out there. I routinely out-braked cars weighing three to five hundred pounds less, all with stock SRT calipers and rotors. All I did was add racing pads, braided lines and cooler hoses.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Joel\u2019s success in the Challenger included wins across the Southeast and that caught the attention of the producers of a new-at-the-time TV show, R U Faster Than A Redneck?<\/em>\u00a0 The host was Jon Reep, a comedian and the \u201cThat thing got a HEMI?\u201d guy from the TV commercials.\u00a0They recruited Joel to be part of the \u201cMullet Mafia\u201d and he was featured on the show. \u201cI was asked to be on ‘Redneck’ because I was about the only one tracking a modern Mopar.\u00a0Most of the contestants were from the southeast and enough of them knew the car was fast on track and avoided it in the elimination rounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure, you\u2019ll see plenty of Dodges at the drag strip, and even some at your local stock car track.\u00a0But Joel has won a LOT of trophies with his Challenger, and as far as we know, he\u2019s the most successful amateur roadracer in a modern Mopar.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s fun to speculate on the future and, obviously, we don\u2019t know what\u2019s to come down the way, but Joel tells me, \u201cI hope for the future that Dodge will build a lighter platform and still use the HEMI and try to directly compete with GM and FOMOCO in roadracing.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, the next time someone tries to tell you a Challenger is just a straight line car, show them Joel\u2019s machine.\u00a0It proves what you get when you mix a great chassis, a powerful engine and a bunch of determination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dodge is in the middle of setting the drag racing world on fire with the release of the new 2019 Challenger Scat Pack 1320, the \u201cfastest naturally aspirated, street-legal muscle car available.\u201d\u00a0And the buzz from the Dodge Challenger SRT\u00ae Demon moves to the new Redeye as that technology trickles down. But, the Challenger isn\u2019t a one-trick pony. It can go around corners…and Joel Vandiver\u2019s does it better than most. Joel\u2019s claim to fame is being on the TV show R U Faster Than A Redneck?, where \u201cregular\u201d people could race […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":18661,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2624],"tags":[754],"class_list":["post-18461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-owners-clubs","tag-dodge-challenger"],"acf":[],"custom_fields":{"post_thumbnail_image":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/thumbnail-9.jpg","icon_selection":"article","external_link":"","featured_article":[],"upload_background_image":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18461"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18461"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18666,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18461\/revisions\/18666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}