You’ve probably seen a few classic Mopars with a modern HEMI stuffed under the hood, but what about one that’s been combined with a Viper too? Robert Ellsworth got the bonkers idea to take a 1970 Challenger, build a widebody kit for it, and sit that body on a modified Viper chassis. The final product is a wild car known as the “Highway Star”, and it’s the coolest Frankenstein‘d Mopar you’ll ever see.

Robert has always been obsessed with cars and surrounded himself with friends who had the same passion. When he was in high school, Robert would have the latest car magazines and high-performance parts catalogs stuffed in his backpack and being used as bookmarks in his textbooks. He even dated, and eventually married the daughter of a hot rod shop owner.

The Highway Star wasn’t a planned project, it just sort of happened. Robert noticed they had a bunch of parts lying around the shop that might fit together and things took off from there.

“My father-in-law picked up the Challenger as a parts car since it was too far gone to restore in his eyes. We knew that everything under the car would need to be replaced. Well, out behind the shop there just happened to be a few sections of Viper frame and he started taking some measurements and doing some thinking. He figured out that if we did some cutting here and trimming there we could get a Viper chassis to fit under a 1970 Challenger,” Robert says.

To make everything fit, the team at the shop lengthened a 1997 Gen 2 GTS Viper chassis and hand-built a steel widebody kit for the Challenger. To power the new creation, a 6.2-liter Hellcat engine was picked up from a junkyard. The blower was replaced with a unit from SDG Motorsports that was modified to make even more power. On E85 and using a stock ECU, this combination makes a tire-shredding 900 horsepower to the tires through a TREMEC transmission and a Mantic triple-disc billet clutch.

A Northern Radiator cooling system keeps the Highway Star cool while it’s on the track. Lubrication is provided by a custom Peterson dry sump oil system. Fuel is fed to the engine via a pair of fuel pumps that suck E85 out of a Pyrotech fuel cell.

The Viper’s IRS and suspension has been augmented with various aftermarket parts from Complete Performance Motorsports, and Viking Crusader triple adjustable shocks. Highway Star’s brakes have been upgraded with big rotors from Baer. Inside the car, it’s all business with a pair of race seats, basic gauges, and a full 10-point roll cage.

So, why would you build a wild Frankenstein vehicle like this? For Robert the answer is simple, to go out and have as much fun as possible.

“My father-in-law likes to say, ‘you know, the thrill doesn’t have to last only 10 seconds, right?’ When you go to a road course race track in a car like this, you can basically run as long as you feel comfortable, more or less. We go to different events where we can run 20-minute sessions. The car really handles good and we’re going to make some improvements to help it run even better next year,” Robert states.

A 1970 Dodge Challenger mixed with a 1997 Dodge Viper isn’t something you see every day, or would even think could work together. This wild creation that Robert Ellsworth and his father-in-law have unleashed on the world is really cool. It’s always great to see people think outside the box and find ways to save muscle cars that might have been crushed.