Harnessing the power of 7,000 angry horses and blasting down the quarter-mile at 331 mph quickly turns boys into men and men into heroes. No typical clock-punching 9-to-5 here, just a day where every moment is spent trying to go just 0.001 seconds faster than the day before-that is what professional drag racing is all about. No one races a Funny Car faster than Gary Scelzi when he's behind the wheel of his Mopar/Oakley Dodge Stratus. Cross marketing both industries, Oakley teamed with Dodge and Al & Ed's Autosound to build a one-off drag truck that replicates the dragster's crazy paint scheme and attitude
At first glance, the Oakley Dodge Ram may look like a slickly painted red truck with black wheels; however, the nuances of this truck lie in the mild additions from nose to tail that the untrained eye would most likely miss. Delivering the truck to Street Concepts in Huntington Beach, California, Oakley entrusted its newest vision to Sean Williams and his talented crew of show vehicle builders. Sean contacted several invaluable shops and manufacturers to get the project underway. Twins Custom Concepts in Orange, California, created the trick Oakley O hoodscoop on the stock hood, cut the slick O exhaust cut outs in the bed, and created the mesh grille inserts with rivet-like attachments. With the metalwork complete, paint was needed to make the drag truck look the part. Recruiting the talented artists from Banshie Studios in Beltsville, Maryland-those who paint Scelzi's Funny Cars-Oakley flew the guys out to Fix Auto Body in Anaheim, California, where head artist Chuck Buckler perfectly matched the Funny Car's graphics using House of Kolor pigments. Blasting off the hood is Gary the Wild Thing, wearing his patented Oakley shades and suffering from the -force typically associated with fighter jets. Rounding out the exterior modifications, Twins Custom Concepts created awesome billet O door handles and fabbed trick-looking parachutes into the tailgate.
Stopping the truck doesn't require deploying the chutes, however, thanks to the Brembo big brake kit. Inside the front, KMC Hotwheels Sixty-Eight 22x10-inch wheels are Brembo 15-inch rotors with eight-piston calipers. Out back, exposed behind the huge 24x12-inch custom Hotwheels hoops are 13-inch rotors clamped by Brembo six-piston calipers. Wrapping the black-faced, two-piece wheels are BFGoodrich g-Force T/A KDW tires measuring 285/35ZR22 in the front and 305/35ZR24 in the rear. Lowering the Dodge to respectable levels are front drop spindles, coils, and a trick four-link in the rear installed by Twin Custom Concepts. Twins also created the large-capacity fuel cell, giving the truck range enough to make a couple passes. Pop the heavily modified hood and the 5.7L Hemi reveals an AEM Brute Force polished intake and Bassani Xhaust exiting out the O tips bolted into the bed.