More Mayhem, Please!

I bought back the General Mayhem ’68 Dodge Charger! If you’ve watched my Roadkill show (on MotorTrend cable TV or on the MotorTrend app), then you know why this is a big deal to me. Not only did I get my hands back on one of today’s most unaffordable body styles, but also on a car that meant a lot to my career and that provided some of the best days ever on the show. Here’s the story

- David Freiburger

In the beginning, circa 2007, I traded a set of Mopar Performance aluminum big-block heads for a rolling, gutted hulk of a ’68 Charger that didn’t have a passenger fender or any of the grille and bumper parts. I got it from a guy who goes by Jonny Mopar online, and who continues to help me with parts for the car today. The Charger was originally destined for a web show called CarJunkieTV that represented about a yearlong hiatus from my editorship of HOT ROD. When CarJunkie folded, I returned to HOT ROD and simultaneously began hosting the Roadkill show not long afterward. The Charger ended up in what would become my favorite Roadkill episode of all time and the one that took the longest to complete—it’s also one of the few that remain on YouTube. It’s episode 23, first posted in December 2013, and as of this writing, 15 million people have watched Mike Finnegan and I cobble together the Charger with swap-meet parts and a 440 big-block that we tugged from a fullsize motorhome. The car was dubbed the General Mayhem. If you’re on the MotorTrend app, you can also see the original General Mayhem in episode 25 (a multi-car shootout) and again in episode 32 where we hopped it up a bit and had the greatest fun you can imagine blasting around the track at DirtFish rally school. It was like living in Hazzard County for real.