Sanitary Sleeper

With 493 CI Under the Hood, This Coronet Is Ready for the Street.

- Tommy Lee Byrd

There are certain cars that make winning look easy—as if it didn’t take a lot of effort to make it look so good or make so much power. This 1965 Dodge Coronet is one of those cars, thanks to a super-slick paint job and a nicely disguised engine under the hood. While it looks like a show car and has all the right bells and whistles, this Coronet is packing a secret under the hood and actually has a pretty serious history on the dragstrip. The car belongs to Ring gold, Georgia, resident Ken Meredith, a lifelong Mopar guy who learned the trade from his father, Kenneth.

Ken has been fooling with Mopars for decades, and he has a day job as store manager for Byrd’s Automotive, a Sikkens paint supplier. When he’s not selling paint supplies to local body shops, he’s in his own shop wrenching on project cars. His background in bodywork and paint means that all of his projects get massaged and treated to a killer paint job, but he didn’t stop with a slick paint job on this Coronet. Since the car spent much of its life on the dragstrip, Ken wanted to give it a few more horsepower than the car’s original 273ci engine could provide.