Drag week has been a very popular event over the past few years, and while the competition has been getting tougher, the cars have been getting faster and are better looking than ever. These cars need to be able to withstand a day of racing, then high-tail it on the open road to the next event where it dons racing tires and hits the 1320 once more.

We often see these cars towing trailers where the tools and extra parts are kept, and this beautiful twin-turbo Hemi Belvedere in the Turbonetics booth is no exception. Built with Drag Week in mind, this build takes on the essence of a show car, with all the power it needs to compete at the track.

Looking more like a very nicely restored dark blue metallic 1966 Belvedere, David Meyers’ Plymouth — and original Hemi car — exudes the kind of perfection that makes gear heads drool unexpectedly. The car is so, dare we say, perfect, that it almost doesn’t look like something that is going to get thrown in gear, with pedal mashed, heading for the traps to beat out the next lane.

One of our favorite builders, Troy Trepanier of Rad Rides by Troy put this car down with a sleight of hand and bit of magic with the blatant fixture out back. The parachute pack can be removed, and the factory-style dog-dish hub caps popped back onto the custom aluminum front wheels to bring this car back to cruising status after spending an afternoon of eight-second runs.

The car was purchased on eBay for a paltry sum that would have you clicking over to find one of your own right now. But as you can guess, when something is too good to be true, it usually is, and the car was not in very good shape. It was stripped down to bare metal and before Troy worked his magic to bring this car back to respectable Hemi status.

About That Hemi

Under the hood of the Belvedere is a very clean, custom build Hemi with some very cool non-factory parts dressing it up. The gray and black look under the hood makes it present more like a show car, but don’t let the clean looks fool you.

The Keith Black Hemi engine registers at 526 cubes, and with a set of Stage V aluminum heads the 9.0:1 mill is putting down 1,100 horsepower. Lots of custom work was done to this engine, but if you do the math, that seems like a lot of extra ponies for a built, 526ci Hemi, right?

That’s where more magic comes into play, because if you follow the exhaust from the headers down through the back of the car, you’ll find a pair of custom TNX 45 series turbochargers mounted up behind the rear axle. Meyer stated that he wanted to keep his times in the mid eight-second range, but there’s always room to go bigger and put down more power.

Inside the car, all the comforts of a street musclecar can be found, from air conditioning to a custom audio system that is fed from a rather mundane-looking AM radio. But even the sound system packs a little magic dust, and when Meyer is out cruising the boulevard or heading out to the next eight second visit, the tunes come alive and the car is once again a cruiser rather than a street fighter on steroids.

The steelies in the back give it the classic weekend warrior look, but as we said, this car can run with the street crowd or the strip crowd, because it’s every bit the Drag Week masterpiece, and spent a week generating draw-dropping glares in the Turbonetics booth.

Check out the new TNX series turbochargers on the Turbonetics website, and keep an eye out for this ultimate sleeper 1966 Plymouth Belvedere with the twin-turbo 526 Hemi. It will be hard to miss unless you’re just too stunned to notice it.