Over the past few years, Ringbrothers has emerged as one of America's premier custom car builders. According to Jim and Mike Ring, they started painting and working on car bodies "as early as 10 or 11 years old." As adults, the brothers have built up a back catalog of crazy fast and drop-dead gorgeous cars out of their workshop in the small town of Spring Green, Wisconsin. However, that workshop is a collision repair shop, and Ringbrothers only produce one or two original masterpiece builds a year. The company's third business is in making and selling billet accessories, as well as custom fiberglass and carbon fiber pieces for customer's builds. We're concentrating on the cars here, and these are our favorite Ringbrothers builds so far.
ADRNLN: 1971 De Tomaso Pantera
The ADRNLN was built in 2012 and debuted at the 2013 SEMA show. The 1971 Pantera you see below was originally destined for a restoration, but the owner was taken by cancer. His widow wanted the project finished to honor her husband, and her only request was that it kept its yellow paint. Now, under the hood, ADRNLN has a Wegner Motorsports sourced LS3 V8 engine making 600 horsepower. The real story is how much detail has been put into the overall aesthetic and interior. Nike got involved, and you can spot sole waffle on the pedals, and upper material backing the dash gauge. Nike even made a pair of golf shoes to go with the car and sourced the ADRNLN license plate. ADRNLN was last seen changing hands at auction for $330,000.
G-CODE: 1969 Chevy Camaro
Every part of the G-code Camaro is bespoke, from the brown leather interior upholstery to the hand-laid carbon-fiber hood. Nothing was left untouched, and the $600,000 price tag hammers that point home. The color is a custom hue called Blue Print, and under the hood is an LS3 V8 hooked to a Whipple supercharger to help it get to an output of 1,000 hp. That power is controlled by a six-speed transmission and a center-force clutch, and making sure the tires wrapped around custom HRE performance wheels stay on the tarmac is a full Detroit Speed suspension setup.
Recoil: 1966 Chevy Chevelle
Ringbrothers loves a Whipple supercharger and added one to a Wegner Motorsports LS7 for the Recoil build. Simplicity was the keyword for the build despite owner Chris McPhie ending up with 980 hp under the hood. The re-imagined and frighteningly fast 1966 Chevelle is race-ready, complete with five-point racing harnesses and a Racepak gauge cluster in a custom-made billet housing. The hand-laid carbon fiber panels are finished in a paint color called Sand Storm. It rides on HRE wheels with massive tires, particularly on the back, where they measure 345/30/20. It's reported that Recoil took 5,000 hours to at a cost of $70 per hour plus parts.
2013 Ford Mustang Switchback
Ringbrothers usually focus on classic muscle cars, but 2012 was a golden year for modern modified Mustangs, and the builders went all-in on a 2013 model. A ProCharger supercharger system was fitted to the 5.0-liter V8 engine along with a 409S dual exhaust system and headers from Flowmaster. The 575 hp was just the start, and Ringbrothers went to town on the exterior with a carbon-fiber body kit and front splitter, aluminum side vents, and a 2-piece modular carbon-fiber hood with an interchangeable insert. The single-piece wheels measure 19-inches at the front and 20-inches at the rear, all wrapped in Nitto tires.
Espionage: 1965 Ford Mustang
The Espionage build, based on a 1965 Mustang, makes the newer model above look tame. The drivetrain includes a carbon fiber driveshaft and DSE Ford 9-inch rear end, so it's strong enough to take the 959 hp generated by the 427ci Wegner Motorsports built V8. The LS7 engine also features ported heads, a competition camshaft and crankshaft, and a 2.9-liter Whipple supercharger. New carbon fiber panels help widen the Mustang by a full two inches on each side and are painted with a color called Spy Green. While its dubbed Espionage this is not a covert car by any stretch of the imagination.
Seaker: 1971 K5 Chevy Blazer
Before it became a crossover, the Chevrolet Blazer was a beefy truck-based SUV. The Ringbrothers modern take has a naturally aspirated LS3 crate motor stuffed under the hood making 430 hp. The body has been lifted by just an inch and the wheel-wells opened up in order to fit custom vintage-style 17-inch wheels from Circle Racing Wheels. The bodywork has been smoothed out a little and painted in the Mercedes color Brazilian Smoke. A bikini top and roll bar was added, and the interior wrapped in brown leather and a custom dash added.
Defector: 1969 Dodge Charger
A 1969 Charger is a badass car, but the Ringbrothers Defector takes things to a whole new level. It has a lot of engine under the hood, but the Dodge's body is where most of the 4,700 hours of work went into. The wheelbase has been extended by three inches, and two-inches have been removed from the trunk, giving it an even more aggressive look and stance. Under the hood is a Wenger Motorsports tuned 6.4-liter Hemi V8 with the sound helped by a Flowmaster exhaust system. Ringbrothers have given no performance figures, but we're not sure they even matter here.
Madam V: Cadillac ATS-V
What you are looking at here is, essentially, a modern Cadillac ATS-V wrapped with the heavily modified bodywork of a 1948 Cadillac. It's the opposite of a restomod, and under the hood is a bone-stock turbocharged 3.6-liter V6 engine while the interior also remains standard. That means this mid-century Caddy hotrod comes with an electronically-aided chassis, traction control, an eight-speed automatic transmission, and, most importantly, Track Mode.
Valkyrja: 1969 Chevy Camaro
Every year for SEMA, Ringbrothers tries to top itself, and 2019 was no exception. The 1969 Camaro Valkyrja doubles down on coming up with a modern design that looks like it could still have come hand-built out of GM's design studio in the 1960s. It seems like a restomod but Valkyrja is virtually a whole new car and a lesson in how to build a flashy contemporary classic while avoiding straying into over the top garishness. However, there's never anything wrong with going over the top under the hood. Valkkyrja sports a Wegner Motorsports LS3 outfitted with a 2.9-liter Whipple supercharger. It lays down 890 hp through a beefed-up 6-speed Tremec gearbox and a carbon-fiber driveshaft.
1972 AMC Javelin AMX
This piece of muscle car insanity was built for Prestone, the antifreeze specialists at a reported cost of around $500,000. It doesn't look like a stock Javalin as Ringbrothers went nuts with the carbon fiber panels to correct some of the car's less aesthetically pleasing design choices, particularly at the front end. Ringbrothers also widened the wheel arches to fit massive 20-inch wheels, and those wheels measure 11 inches wide at the front and 13 inches wide at the rear. Under the hood is Dodge's 6.2-liter supercharged Hellcat V8, but this one has been cranked up to 11 by Wenger Motorsports to generate 1,036 hp. If there's a better looking and faster AMC Javelin AMX on the planet, we would love to see it.