There are many ways to improve a Dodge Challenger. You could fit better tyres. You could add more power. You could simply drive it very quickly and make everyone within a five-mile radius wonder what that noise was.

Or you could call Liberty Walk.

The Japanese tuning company has taken an early third-generation Challenger and covered it in enough bodywork to make the standard car look positively apologetic. Finished in warplane grey, the LB-WORKS Challenger gets enormous flared arches, a front splitter, vented bonnet and a three-piece ducktail spoiler.

And, naturally, the arches are bolted onto the body with the sort of exposed hardware that suggests the car was assembled during an argument.

The wheels are black and Y-spoked, while adjustable air suspension allows the Challenger to squat dramatically close to the ground. This is excellent for photographs and considerably less excellent when confronted by a speed bump designed by someone who dislikes cars.

The important thing is that Liberty Walk hasn’t attempted to turn the Challenger into some fragile show-car sculpture. The original structure remains underneath, while the mechanicals have largely been left alone.

This particular example even gets a variable-valve exhaust, presumably because there was a terrible fear that people might not notice it.

And that is the beauty of the Liberty Walk formula. It doesn’t necessarily make a car faster. It makes it wider, lower and significantly more ridiculous.

The Challenger was already an enormous slab of American muscle. Now it looks like an American muscle car designed by someone who has spent rather too much time staring at fighter jets.