It always takes a while for the cool technology to trickle down to affordable cars. Fuel injection has been around for over half a century, but only became commonplace in the last 25 years or so. Paddle shifters have also been around for decades, but many cars still don’t offer them as an option, including Mopar. That’s where backyard ingenuity comes in play.

During the course of the HEMI Highway Tour, Red Letter Dodge stopped by and visited Raymond Smith from Florida, who has developed a cheap paddle-shifter system for the Dodge Charger R/T.

Smith, whose license plate reads “PLCMAN,” or Programmable Logic Controller, is an electronics wiz, and felt that his Charger R/T was missing something; namely, paddle shifters. Smith took the paddle shifters from an AMG Mercedes (remember, Daimler owns Mercedes, and used to be partnered with Chrysler) and wired them up to work with his Charger’s transmission. Even better, he made a cheap ($210) kit that any car guy can do in his garage in about four hours to add paddle shifters to their own Charger.

Smith feels that the Charger should have had paddle shifters from the start, as it enhances the driving experience. Perhaps Chrysler is paying attention, and will actually add this as a feature to their upcoming cars. We can’t disagree with Smith; the idea of shifting from the steering wheel seems light years ahead of just letting the automatic have all the fun. Smith also developed a custom circuit board that lets you lock the front wheels for fiery burnouts, turn on extra cooling for forced induction engines, and other nifty features.