The Hellwagon is an audacious build, perfectly pairing two things we love: the vintage Jeep Grand Wagoneer in all its wood-paneled glory and the outrageous supercharged 6.2-liter Hemi V-8 found in the Hellcat and other hot-blooded FCA products. They’re two great tastes that go great together, right? It’s hard to argue that this retromod doesn’t have a serious proto-Trackhawk vibe, which increases the appeal.
But as slick as the build is, and we’ll get to looking at it in detail for a second, we’re a bit shocked that other than the big stonkin’ V-8 swap, this old Jeep otherwise looks stock. But its builder, Dennis Collins of Collins Bros. Jeep in Wylie, Texas, told us that’s not much of an issue from a mechanical standpoint. For one, it is mostly stock, but Collins notes the stout Grand Wagoneer chassis can handle the power.
There’s plenty of room up front for the Hellcrate motor, which weighs about the same as the 360-cubic-inch V-8 that originally resided there. The Dana 44 axle out back is capable of standing up to the torque. And, yes, while the three-speed automatic transmission seems outwardly unchanged, the rebuilt heavy-duty Chrysler A-727 Torqueflite in this creation can handle up to 900 horsepower. To make the gearbox work with a slightly different Mopar bell housing and the existing Jeep transfer case required some swapping of parts, but the end result looks stock, bolts up to the Hellcrate, and shouldn’t blow up despite having to deal with 650 foot-pounds of torque. Plus the fueling system is good for up to 1,400 horsepower, so if a 1,000-hp Helliphant crate engine pops up this Jeep should be ready to feed it.
Collins’s mission was to keep things looking as stock as possible, and he tells us this cost him some serious coin in the build. Rather than use aftermarket gauges, he made the originals talk to the engine, for example, using a GPS sending unit to track speed; its signal was then fed into the existing square speedometer. To keep the column shifter intact, a full three days of fabrication converted a series of linkages into a cable setup. A few things required more significant changes, like the Vintage Air setup replacing the stock HVAC system, and converting the brakes to hydraulic boost from vacuum. And a 3.0-inch custom exhaust sounds appropriately feral on the road—check it out in the video below.
All told, Collins estimates this build took his team 460 man-hours and would carry a $93,000 retail cost to perform the conversion, not counting the purchase of the very rare factory Colorado Red Grand Wagoneer. While Collins’s shop builds around 24 restored or custom Grand Wagoneers a year, they’re usually commissions—the work’s not undertaken until the buyer is already involved. This one wasn’t, more of a labor of love and done with a particular attention to detail that we can really appreciate.
