You might remember we featured Jay Pettit’s black 1969 Road Runner in the July 2018 issue of Classic American. That car had a 440cu in engine, but Jay’s always yearned to own a Hemi. “I was looking for a genuine Hemi car for many years, but every time I thought I’d saved enough the prices went up again. I finally got my hands on one in the middle of last year.”
Yes, this unassuming light blue 1966 Dodge Coronet 500 is a genuine WP23 code car – meaning a 426 Hemi was squeezed into its engine bay. “My Coronet was built July 22, 1966,” says Jay, “for that model year there were 339 Hemi-engined Coronets, 204 of those were four-speed manual transmissions, just 29 of those had power disc brakes and mine is the 25th one of them built.” Of course, it’s fairly straightforward to replicate a Hemi
