It’s fairly common for a junkyard carcass to be reborn as a racecar. Rusted, decayed, forgotten machines that get a second shot at life are often a cheap way to score a stripped-down starter platform. Using a flood car is less common, but starting with a vehicle that had been fully submerged in salty seawater after a violent hurricane is essentially unheard of. However, when the team at High Horse Performance (HHP) got their hands on a 2010 Dodge Challenger SRT that had died a watery death thanks to Hurricane Sandy, they transformed it into a small tire ride worthy of radial racing’s Ultra Street ranks.

Originally, HHP had built the Challenger as a pristine, potent street car for a customer in New York City. “When Sandy hit in late 2012, the car was three stories underground in a parking garage and the whole thing flooded,” shared High Horse Performance’s founder, Joshua Schwartz. Locked in a concrete tomb filled with incredibly corrosive saltwater from the Atlantic Ocean, the Challenger’s electrical systems were fried, and its future seemed bleak.

Fortunately, Schwartz saw the opportunity in a marine salvage. HHP purchased the soggy maritime muscle car from the customer, brought it back to the famous Mopar shop’s facility in Smyrna, Delaware, and got busy gutting it bare.

Every single salt-corroded wire, every waterlogged interior piece and panel, every component not needed for racing purposes was promptly stripped away. The initial chassis work, excluding the installation of a 10-point cage by Ron Rhoads at Rhodes Custom Auto, was handled in-house at HHP.

“We initially back-halved the car and updated it to a 25.5 SFI certification,” noted Bruce Maichle, head of HHP’s race division that is responsible for successfully campaigning Rob Goss’s record-setting and Gen III HEMI-powered Challenger in both X275 as well as Limited Drag Radial, among many other cars. “We ran it in Ultra Street in 2020 on stock suspension and with a 76mm turbo, but from when we had designed the build, to when it came out, the class had gotten so much quicker that we weren’t competitive.”

Schwartz was running 4.70s in the eighth mile, while the rest of the field was clicking off 4.60s, and although the team fought hard, tuning and tweaking everything they could, it was ultimately decided that a new direction was needed. “We couldn’t make up the difference without revamping the entire build,” added Schwartz.

So, the Challenger was sent to Gary Rohe Race Cars in 2021 for an overhaul. It wasn’t just an update; it was a complete transformation in which Rohe’s team took point in upgrading the chassis to 25.3 SFI certification status.

Rohe redid the rear of the car, incorporating a custom four-link suspension, and Strange Engineering full-floater for maximum strength and safety. A spindle-mount front suspension was added, while weight was removed from every possible area, and a set of custom-fabricated headers were installed.

When the Challenger returned from Rohe, it went to what Schwartz jokingly refers to as “Bruce Maichle’s race car jail” at HHP. There, Maichle meticulously oversaw the next stages of drag car development.

“At first, we planned to stay with the turbo combination, but when Whipple announced its latest generation of superchargers, we decided to go all in on that instead,” Schwartz explained. “We’ve had great results with Whipple on our other HHP Hellcats, so it made sense to go that route here, too.”

Working with the team at BES Racing Engines to build and button up the bullet, HHP spec’ed out the 432 cubic inch Gen III HEMI stroker engine with the best race-proven parts. The foundation of it all is an innovative Gen3 Performance Products solid cast aluminum block, filled with Ross pistons atop GRP connecting rods and rotating on a Winberg crankshaft.

The high-flowing aluminum Thitek cylinder heads were completed with a valvetrain consisting of Jesel rockers and solid lifters, actuated by a solid roller COMP cam. “It’s also got a Moroso oil pump, vacuum pump, and valve covers, along with a custom HHP 3/4” billet motor plate for the Whipple,” added Maichle, the mastermind responsible for fabricating and installing all the goodies. The hoses and fittings came from Brown & Miller Racing Solutions. “It also has a custom ram air inlet made by Modern Street Customs and Mike Kostic.”

With 2,600 cc Injector Dynamics injectors and a Weldon system supplying the powerplant with Q16 fuel, Schwartz is proud of the result: the most powerful Whipple-supercharged Gen III HEMI on the planet with 1,850 horsepower at the crank as confirmed by BES’s engine dyno.

Backing the powerful Gen III HEMI is a transmission and torque converter from Coan Engineering, and a Motion Raceworks shifter. “Jason [Coan] has been good to us,” Maichle continued, “and we’ve had good success with Goss’s car, which also runs Coan components.” Additionally, a Precision Shaft Technologies carbon fiber driveshaft links the transmission to the rear.

Santhuff front struts and rear shocks make up the core of the Challenger’s suspension, and the parts have been proven to plant the nearly two-thousand horsepower to the pavement. Meanwhile, crucial stopping power is provided by TBM Brakes at all four corners, and a set of classic RC Components wheels gives the Mickey Thompson radial rubber a home.

When running elapsed times as quick as the Ultra Street field, safety is also a top priority. Schwartz had his car outfitted with a complete fire suppression system from Foxfire, twin Stroud Safety parachutes along with a Stroud air launcher, Motion parachute handle, White Safety Equipment window net and 7-point harness, and a DSP pour-in seat with matching DSP head pads.

While Optic Armor windows save weight, the guys realized they had a decent amount of wiggle room when it comes to making the roughly 3,150 pounds as required by the Ultra Street ruleset, so they decided to get a little fancy.

“A lot of work went into this car, and it’s one of the nicest to ever come out of our shop. We paid a lot of attention to detail, and it sure looks like a winner,” shared Schwartz, who had Chrome Race Cars work their magic with the HEMI to give it a chromed-out shine truly worthy of a winner’s circle photoshoot.

Of course, a big part of the Challenger’s good looks is the flawless Mopar Indigo Blue paint that was expertly sprayed by Jamie Bartlebaugh at Modern Street Customs. A true artist with steel and fiberglass, Bartlebaugh also hung a new one-piece fiberglass front end from Glasstek with an integrated custom hood that he designed especially for High Horse Performance’s use. “The hood is the same we use on our ‘TomCat’ Hellcat and Goss’s Challenger, available from HHP,” affirmed Schwartz.

The final assembly and finishing tasks were handled at High Horse’s headquarters. As the Challenger finally neared the finish line of its build process, it was transported to Southern Speed Racing in Tupelo, Mississippi, where Wade Hopkins worked on the wiring, installing the FuelTech FT600 engine management with its integrated data acquisition tools.

Despite the Dodge not being quite finished just yet, the HHP team already has plenty of data thanks to its record-setting “TomCat” Dodge Challenger Hellcat, which runs a 3.8-liter Whipple supercharger of its own, among many other things.

“TomCat has a similar build as the Ultra car’s motor, and we’ve had great results with it. We beat a guy named Dan a lot,” laughed Schwartz, poking fun at his rivalry with Dan VanHorn, owner of Rockingham Dragway and the Modern Street HEMI Shootout series. “A lot of the testing that we’ve done with TomCat has actually been for this Ultra car.” Although TomCat isn’t as fast and runs in a different class, it helped HHP gather a lot of essential data that the team can use to extrapolate an advantage from and shorten the learning curve moving forward.

“This build has been years in the making,” Schwartz reflected in anticipation of seeing it out on the track again, likely with a debut in the summer of 2025. “We’re ready to see what it can do and hope to be at the front.” Once the initial sorting out and testing is complete at HHP’s home track, Cecil County Dragway in Maryland, Schwartz will campaign his Challenger in Ultra Street at events including the Radial Outlaws Racing Series, Strange Street Car Shootout, Modern Street HEMI Shootout, and more.

From the devastating floodwaters of Hurricane Sandy, to the threshold of Ultra Street dominance, Schwartz’s resuscitated HHP 2010 Dodge Challenger is more than just a racecar; it’s a testament to High Horse Performance’s resilience, innovation, and unwavering dedication to building the baddest Gen III HEMI-powered rides on the planet.