Gather up, ye tree huggers and electric-car types. Assemble and weep. For your worst collective nightmare is poised and ready to be born unto the (paved) world.

Yes, my alt-fueled friends. Tires will twist and smoke, high-octane carbon-based fuel shall verily vaporize, and brightly-colored hellions shall launch across the landscape at irresponsible speeds and cast a dark shadow upon ye, ye pilots of econoboxes and hybrid vehicles.

And lo, much giggling and mashing of feet will be heard.

Yes, if all goes to plan, Daimler Chrysler is going to make the Challenger; a no-excuses, in your face muscle car that, more than any factory-sired retro-rod yet made, recalls our devotion to the gods of excess horsepower and its own apocryphal roots.

With looks arrived at after much R&D (Re-thinking and Doing-over, undertaken with a 1970 version parked right there in the room), those roots are very, very close to the surface. Every aspect of the new car is immediately recognizable, from the deep-set quad headlights to the upkick on the Challenger’s flank to the body-wide taillight treatment and rectangular dual exhausts. No simple retro undertaking, this. If the new Mustang is an homage to the early/mid days of the pony car, Daimler-Chrysler’s trippy time machine lands us right at the beginning of the end of the era, just hours before the folks came home and the party came to an abrupt, and not entirely comfortable, end.

And, by God, it’s got a Hemi.

Can life get better? Well, yes. Highway 61 has rolled out a feature-jammed, suitable-for-worship 1/18 model of the concept car, in four historically (and hysterically) accurate, high-impact colors: Sublime Green, Panther Pink, Challenger Red, and of course, Plum Crazy.

The sculpt is on my sample is excellent, the Sublime Green color is awesome, and the execution of all the various bits and pieces very nice, indeed. At first glance, it looks too big. Thank the model’s accurate, slab-sided replication of the new car’s architecture and wheels-outward stance for that. Rolling on scaled-down 20” front and 21” rear wheels and wearing lots of prototypically correct carbon-fiber patterns on its hood, grille, and rear end, this maker’s first latter-day muscle model scales perfectly and looks just right.

You get the H61 treatment here, from opening doors, hood, and trunk to a working multi-link suspension and steerable wheels. The hood’s hinged with spring and scissor units and even has working butterflies in its intakes. Shut lines are very good, with the only problem on my pre-pro being a hood that stays open a skoshe until pressed into subservience.

What’s remarkable about the model is its detailing. Good looking as it is, the Challenger doesn’t afford Highway 61 the opportunity to wow the collector with flashy chrome or exterior bells and whistles in the way, say, a ’53 Kaiser might. But the purity of the car’s form hasn’t kept the company from delivering some neat second-glance visuals like intricately-etched brake calipers and cross-drilled discs, separately cast and installed parking and marker lights, and real steel mesh in the grille.

Interior trim looks spot-on, according to the pile of photos I’ve culled from rabid car-guy magazines. The piston-bore gauge bezel and pistol grip shift are done well, and the pumped-up seats are adorned with the concept’s back to the future pattern, replete with body-colored accent stripes. You can slide those seats, and pose the visors, too. Life is good.

Under the hood is the 6.1 Hemi, the 425-horsepower, 420 lb/ft motive force that promises domination over lesser cars to anyone with good credit; Highway 61 has built in detailing where they could, with chromed injector rails, wiring to the intake sensor, and a great palette of Hemi orange, silvers, blacks, and gloss and matte finishes. The valve cover design varies from those I’ve seen in magazines – they have orange squares beneath the “H-E-M-I” on each side. The H61 version, though decorated with the word and cast in the correct shape, doesn’t.

Maybe they know something we don’t. Judging by the immaculately piped and wired chassis and the crunchy castings that replicate the suspension – so thoroughly realized that the rear brake lines are routed through intricate loop hangers – I’d reckon the H61 crew spent a good deal of time poring over a real live Challenger.

From its carpeted trunk to the miniature “R/T” in its grille, this is a nicely turned-out offering I’ll be poring over, myself, for a long time. Highly recommended, at around sixty-five bucks.

-Joe Kelly