Murph under the hammer

Collecting Cars is gearing up to auction a racing legend’s one-off Dodge Charger restoration by Ringbrothers. 

Greg Murphy, Kiwi V8 Supercars legend and four-time Bathurst 1000 winner, has entrusted the online auction platform to sell his stunning 1969 model. 

The muscle car was built by world-renowned US custom workshop Ringbrothers. Nicknamed Captiv, Murphy’s one-off custom Dodge Charger was shipped to Ringbrothers in Wisconsin as a rolling shell in 2019 after undergoing initial work in New Zealand. 

Mike and Jim Ring then completed the multi-year build, which saw every facet transformed. The Charger is powered by a supercharged Hellcat crate engine mated to a six-speed manual gearbox from Bowler. 

The glass-smooth body is finished in Porsche signal yellow and features subtle changes thanks to almost 1,000 hours of painstaking custom metalwork. 

The body has been integrated with the car’s the chassis to create a unibody structure from the Charger’s original body-on-frame design. One-off HRE wheels wrapped in 295 (front) and 345 (rear) section tyres fill the Charger’s arches. 

The interior, like the rest of the vehicle, is entirely custom, featuring modified Recaro seats, a unique steering wheel and MOTEC instrument cluster. 

The undercarriage is just as stunning. The custom-made floors were built around the contours of the bespoke exhaust system. One-off components abound, from the rear-vision mirrors to the front indicator housings, which were manually milled. 

“Pretty much every part of this car is custom,” says Mike Ring. “We really wanted it to scream ‘Charger’ without being heavily modified.” 

This second-generation model was made famous in the Steve McQueen movie Bullitt and the US television series Dukes of Hazzard. Bidding opens at collectingcars.com later this month.