From Flashlight Holder to Badassador: Ricky Radford’s Dodge Journey

Some people find their passion. Others are born into it, handed a flashlight before they can drive and told to hold it steady while Dad wrenches on another carburetor. Ricky Radford falls squarely into the latter category.

“I’ve been around cars my entire life,” Radford says. “Growing up, my dad was a Marine, and he had a bunch of old, cool, classic cars, and most of those happened to be old Mopar_®s. He had a couple Dusters, some Dodge Darts, a Roadrunner – you name it. Our entire life kind of revolved around cars.”

A 1969 Plymouth with a 383 under the hood started everything. It was the kind of car that makes enthusiasts weak in the knees. Radford’s grandfather found the car through connections in Tennessee. When he told Radford’s father about it, it was a done deal. They hauled it back from Tennessee and made it the weekend show car.

But nothing lasts forever. Eventually, Radford’s father lost interest, and rather than let a car like that sit and deteriorate, he sold it. The money from that sale became Ricky’s entry ticket into the modern Mopar world – a 2016 Scat Pack Challenger, brand new, zero miles, in Plum Crazy Purple.

“That’s a hell of a first car,” is the only reasonable response to that kind of fortune.

Two weeks later, Radford was in the garage pulling parts off it. His father nearly had a heart attack.

Between his father’s classic Mopar vehicles and his own cars, Radford had plenty of mechanical training. But he took it a step further, joining the Marine Corps and becoming a mechanic on F-35 jets and helicopters. The precision work on military aircraft translates surprisingly well to automotive engineering, even though the scales differ dramatically.

“I was always somewhere wrenching on something,” Radford explains. “Every day is something new, whether I get a new part and I want to install it, or try something different that I haven’t seen done yet.”

That Challenger became his rolling canvas. SRT^® Hellcat front bumper. SRT Hellcat hood. Interior trim pieces color-matched to the Plum Crazy exterior. A Starlight headliner. A widebody kit that required taking a Sawzall to a fifty-five-thousand-dollar car – something that would make most people queasy, but not to someone who learned to wrench before he could drive.

He drove that Challenger everywhere, racking up 105,000 miles before selling it in 2023. The car took second place at a Sumo Speed Springfest event in Virginia Beach its first year, then first place the following year after more modifications. But life changes, circumstances shift and Radford eventually needed something with four doors.

In 2022, stationed in Yuma, Arizona, Radford received a bonus for changing his job in the Marine Corps. He paid off debt, then decided to reward himself with something fun. First came a supercharged C7 Corvette. Then, less than a month later, a 2016 SRT Hellcat Charger appeared for sale at $48,000 with only 24,000 miles. The Charger was too good to pass up, especially with a four-year-old son who made climbing in and out of the Challenger’s back seat increasingly difficult. He made the only logical choice. Sell the Corvette quickly and commit to the Charger!

“Literally, as soon as I got it to the house, I threw the aftermarket wheels I had on,” Radford says. The build moved fast from there. A widebody kit from Krotov. Air suspension bought used on Marketplace for $1,800. Wrap sponsorships that let him change colors whenever he wanted, which turned out to be every three months.

“Anybody that knows me, especially with the Charger, is like, man, that car is a different color every three months because I either get bored with it or somebody gets the same color and I’m like, well, time to switch it up.”

He learned to wrap cars while deployed in Kuwait, watching YouTube videos during downtime when internet access allowed. Once back stateside, he wrapped the Challenger, secured sponsorships and started doing his own work. Free material, personal labor, constant evolution.

Not everything went smoothly. The Charger caught fire at the rear end while Radford was experimenting with shooting flames out of the exhaust. A friend wrecked it while driving Radford home, tearing off the front end. Then came the mechanical failures: a bent push rod, a blown ring land and, finally, the catastrophic failure – a hole in the block.

“It’s never good to pop the hood and be able to see inside the oil pan,” Radford admits, laughing at the absurdity of it all.

Radford missed the initial launch of the Chief Donut Maker program. Active duty military life doesn’t provide the flexibility for elaborate video applications. But as he prepared to leave the Marine Corps, he started looking ahead. One morning, while scrolling through MSN news articles, he found a story about DodgeGarage with a link to become a Badassador.

“I was like, this is pretty cool,” Radford recalls. “All my buddies I work with were like, ‘Oh, you should apply, who knows, you might get it.’ And I was like, yeah, probably not, but we’ll see.”

He applied anyway, mentioning his active duty status and asking if that would be a problem. Dodge said they could work with it – this wasn’t about giving your entire life to a corporation, but about mutual support and shared passion.

The Dodge community’s tight-knit nature meant Radford already knew many of the other applicants: Sal Cordova, Ultra SRT John and both Boosted Motorsports guys whose YouTube channel taught him how to rebuild engines. They kept in contact through the selection process, checking in with each other about calls and updates.

Everyone got the call.

Now Radford travels to Indianapolis for podcast recordings, attends Roadkill Nights, gets invited to media drives for vehicles like the 2026 Durango SRT Hellcat Jailbreak, and sits down with Dodge executives he never imagined meeting. The group of Badassadors started a podcast together, poolside at their first event.

“It’s truly like family now,” Radford says. “The whole Dodge team, everyone I’ve met throughout their organization. I never thought I’d go this far.”

There’s poetry in how things come around. Radford started holding flashlights for his father while he worked on Mopars. He worked as a technician at a Dodge dealership during high school, drooling over SRT Hellcats that came in for service. Now he’s a Badassador with a direct line to the brand, creating content, recording podcasts and living a life built around the cars that shaped him from childhood.

“I’m always trying to do something,” he says. “Whether it’s helping people out with their cars or coming up with ideas. Cars, cars, cars, 24/7. And family. I have a four-year-old, so he’s a handful right now. But other than that, just cars and my kid. That’s about it.”

That four-year-old is growing up the same way Ricky did – around cars, watching Dad wrench, absorbing the culture of horsepower and HEMI^® engines. Maybe someday he’ll hold the flashlight while his father works on yet another Dodge, continuing a tradition that spans generations.

For now, Ricky Radford is living proof that passion, persistence and a willingness to take a Sawzall to a new car can lead somewhere unexpected. From Tennessee Roadrunners to Arizona Hellcats, from Marine Corps mechanic to Dodge Badassador, it’s all the same story – a guy who can’t imagine doing anything else but working on cars, one way or another.

And with a year-long Badassador contract still running and a garage full of possibilities, there’s plenty more story left to tell.