Photography courtesy of High Horse Performance

Fresh out of the High Horse Performance garage is the 2006 Dodge Magnum of South Carolina’s Nate Jenkins, which is destined to shake things up in the HEMI Outlaw class of the Modern Street Hemi Shootout in 2024.

Jenkins, who owns Southern Import Collision Center in North Charleston, South Carolina, has been an HHP customer for over 10 years, according to High Horse Performance’s Bruce Maichle, who we talked to get the detail on the build. The wagon has been three years in the making for the longtime customer.

“The goal was to simply build a fast Dodge Magnum,” Maichle tells us. “It still had a 25.3 chassis and an IRS, and the ProCharger kept breaking belts, so I said, ‘Let’s convert it to a gear drive and back-half it.”

Maichle and the HHP team used a lot of experience and knowledge gained from Rob Goss’ Dodge Challenger racing program that formerly competed in the NMCA Street Outlaw category.

“It’s a tamed-down version of Goss’ car,” Maichle explains. “Gary Rohe back-halved it and put struts on. It still had steel fenders and the stock hood and we looked for a carbon-fiber nose because it needed to get a lift-off front end to make it easier to work on.” Maichle searched for one but couldn’t obtain the only one he came across, so he contacted Modern Street Customs in Newark, Delaware, and talked to them about it. “We’ve had them do some carbon stuff for us before, and I asked him if he would do it and he said, ‘Yes.’ “It took a while, but it’s a true one-piece front end that weighs about 12 pounds. We had someone airbrush the lights in and it looks very stock.”

For the drivetrain, HHP turned to its usual partners for this type of build. BES Racing Engines put together the 430 cubic-inch Gen III Hemi, which is based on HHP’s Gen3 Performance Parts solid, cast-aluminum block and topped with Thitek cylinder heads and a Marcella Manifolds intake and throttle body. Jesel Valvetrain components and belt drive move the air in and out, and Billet Atomizer fuel injectors and an Aeromotive fuel pump provide the methanol to burn.

Coan Engineering built the Turbo 400 and torque converter for the F3R-112-ProCharged combination, and HHP installed a FuelTech FT600 ECU for engine management.

Wade Hopkins of Southern Speed Racing is currently wiring the Magnum and will setup the engine calibration using the FuelTech software once it is ready to fire up.

Maichle isn’t quite sure what the final race weight of the Magnum will be, but said the goal is to run 4.30s. He also noted that the Magnum’s 120-inch wheelbase will prove to be a challenge on the tuning side, but the 9-inch rearend with Moser Engineering axles and third member and Quarter-Max four-link suspension should be up to the task of driving the 315 Pro Mickey Thompson tires into the track surface.

“We’ll be testing in Florida by December,” Maichle says. “I want it to be the first 6-second Magnum.”