No Late Braking for Jonny Smith’s Preserved ’68 Dodge Charger

Jonny Smith has always had a thing for the 1968 Dodge Charger, so much so that when he found one on eBay in 2006, he snuck out of dinner at the launch of a new Peugeot in Spain to make sure he had the winning bid on one he found in San Francisco. Then he got drunk.

Jonny is a well-known motoring journalist in the UK, who at the time was a presenter on the TV show Fifth Gear. Today, he is the host of the popular YouTube channel The Late Brake Show, as well as one half of the duo known across the internet as Smith and Sniff, along with former Top Gear scriptwriter Richard Porter. His love of old cars plays out in his popular series of barn find videos, as well as in the somewhat eclectic collection of cars he has owned over the years, from a Honda Insight to the car that he will never part with, his beloved ’68 Charger.

To those who see, or perhaps hear it driving through the villages of rural England near where Jonny lives in Lincolnshire, it probably looks like a bit of a rust bucket. There are hints of the original green in the trunk lid with its filled bullet holes – Jonny has no idea how they got there but the former owner says they were shot from the inside! The majority of the bodywork is a worn shade of brown while the hood is all black, the only part he repainted to cover up the fact that it had been used as a paint mixing bench in a workshop at some point in its life. Then there are the scratches, dents and even a broken grille, all elements that would have many charging off to the nearest body shop, but Jonny insists they all stay because each one is part of the car’s story.

This is a Charger with patina and preservation, not one to be turned into a concours queen. Not that work hasn’t been done on it. The trunk floor was rusty and needed complete redoing, the rust beneath the vinyl on the roof meant a complete strip and recovering, and Jonny has done a few small upgrades under the hood as part of restoration work he did when he first acquired the car.

“I’m never going to paint it, I’m just going to try and keep it preserved,” he says. “Mechanically, it’s weird because I went through it and largely restored it 18 years ago, and then things in the last five years have started to wear out. Then you go, well, that shouldn’t have worn out, I rebuilt the car and you realize that you rebuilt the car 15 years ago, so those bits are going to wear out. I’ve had to remind myself of the fact that, yes, I did replace them all, but I’ve had it long enough now to replace those things again, so just gradually keep on top of it mechanically, and try and keep it stored.”

But where did it all begin, why the obsession with the ’68 Charger? It’s a story that will be familiar to many Charger owners.

“I always had a thing for American cars, mostly born out of watching American TV shows like reruns of stuff from the ’60s and ’70s when I was a kid in the ’80s,” he says. “You’ve got all the usual influences, like The Dukes of Hazzard, The A-Team and The Fall Guy, all that stuff. Although I love The Dukes of Hazzard, I was really interested in the actual design of American cars, mostly of the ’60s.”

Jonny then started to read books about them, many of which he still has and it was the ’66-’69 Charger that appealed to him the most. Then, when he was 11 years old, his dad let him watch Bullitt.

“As great as Steve McQueen was, I just spent the whole film thinking the Charger is cooler than the Mustang,” he says. “Don’t get me wrong, the Mustang is a really handsome car and stuff, but it’s too good looking for me. It’s not sinister, whereas the Charger is sinister and I think it has an amazing presence. The more you look at it from different angles, particularly if you look at it from above, it has the most amazing shapes.”

After starting his career in motoring media, Jonny then started trying to fulfil his dream of owning a Charger. Then in 2008, the American recession kicked in and he found the right car on eBay in the US. The owner had bought the car to do up as a retirement present but the recession put paid to that.

“I wasn’t particularly looking for a four-speed manual, but when I saw that’s what it was, I went bloody hell, this is the one,” he says. “I had to chase it and as a motoring journalist I was on a launch in Spain with Peugeot and I had to make an excuse and got to my hotel room to bid frantically to make sure I won the car. It was so exciting that I don’t even remember what car I was on the launch for.”

Jonny had found the Charger in San Diego, but it had been delivered new to San Francisco, perfectly connecting his love of Bullitt. What confused him though was that in a city with such steep hills, it had been ordered with standard drum brakes. To this day, he still hasn’t upgraded them, something that he says means he has to be very cautious of other motorists who don’t realize what it’s like to stop a car with very little braking power. There’s definitely no late braking with this one, but one day he might add some servo assistance, he likes to give the car “a present” from time to time.

He has made a few modifications though, including switching to an electronic ignition and adding an aluminum radiator. HEMI^® rear leaf suspension was fitted, along with HEMI torsion bars to make it feel slightly stiffer and it now handles reasonably well, although he says you do have to commit a bit and then remember the brakes are still crap.

Another present he might give the car is a new clock inside the Tick Tock Tach because it stopped working. Jonny hasn’t done much with the interior, which the original owner clearly valued more than brakes because it was optioned with the cool buddy seat, headrests and a radio, although that doesn’t work either.

Jonny’s beloved Charger has become part of the family and a mascot for the latest stage of his career.

“Since I launched The Late Brake Show channel, it’s almost become the figurehead car, with the silhouette of it on the top of the YouTube page,” he says. “My kids have grown up with it, so they’ve known it forever and done a reasonable amount of miles in it. It was always a car that’s been reliable and fun to drive and it’s pretty comfortable. It kind of does a lot of things, but also I’m not bothered if it gets scratched, because it’s already telling a bit of a story with its war wounds.”

Each of those war wounds adds to the story of Jonny’s ’68 Charger, which over the years has changed his perception of what he expected to love about it.

“I thought it would be more about the way it sounds and the way it looks rather than the way it drives, but I actually thoroughly enjoy the way it drives,” he says. ”Lots of people don’t understand why I don’t make it go faster or stop better, but for all these years, I’ve decided I wanted to drive it like it was an authentic time machine, back to that moment in ’68 or late ’67 when it was made.”

Like most owners, he still has ambitions for the car, beyond the brakes and fixing the Tick Tock Tach that is.

“One thing I’ve never done, I’ve never driven it overseas,” he says. “I’d quite like to drive it across Europe or someone suggested I ship it back to the States and drive it and then ship it back here. It’s quite expensive to do that, I’m not sure I could justify the expenditure.”

Let’s be honest, owners of any classic car are not renowned for justifying the expenditure, so don’t be surprised if one day we see Jonny driving his ’68 Charger on those famous Bullitt roads.