1970 Plymouth Road Runner. Scott Ross
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powertrain and chassis inside a body devoid of excess trim, with a cabin that also echoed the “no frills” theme.
Plymouth’s product planners developed such a car for 1968, using their newly restyled two-door sedan body and police-car hardware under the hood and underneath the car, while leaving out fancy stripes, fake scoops, and fake-mag, full-wheel covers.
WHAT TO CALL IT?
A Saturday-morning cartoon show and the voice of its title character helped Plymouth and ad agency Young & Rubicam make up their minds.
The Road Runner Show, created by animator Chuck Jones, debuted on CBS-TV’s Saturday-morning cartoon lineup in September 1966. Jones had originally created the cartoon for Warner Bros. big-screen endeavors in 1954. Later, Warner Bros. included it in its package of televised Saturday-morning cartoons that began airing in 1962, the same year that the studio closed Termite Terrace, the building where its legendary animation department worked. Animators including Jones, Isidore “Friz” Freleng, and Robert McKimson followed the lead of fellow animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and opened their own studios to create the highly in-demand animated shows. Jones struck a deal with Warner Bros. to create new Road Runner cartoons, and thus the show was born.
The colorized Bird appeared with the Exterior Decor Option group, which added the same trunk trim panel used on Satellite and Sport Satellite models, as well as other brightwork that wasn’t available on base-series Road Runners.
One Saturday in the spring of 1967, a Chrysler Product Planning Department staffer heard the voice of the show’s title character emanating from the suburban Detroit den where his children were watching television. (It was also something that I likely heard at the same time, being a devotee of the cartoon bird, and watching that same show every week on that same Detroit station.) The cartoon bird famously spent its time happily beep-beeping and running down the roads of a stylized American Southwest while evading the efforts of Wile E. Coyote to catch him (using the latest Acme Corporation weapons and gadgets, which never seemed to work . . . except for catching Wile E., that is).
The five-spoke Magnum 500 road wheel was a popular option for much of the Road Runner’s production history. First offered in 1968, they were available long after the 426 Hemi and Track Pak axle packages were discontinued.
Before you could say “Acme Super-Atomic Road Runner Catcher-Fryer,” Chrysler and Young & Rubicam made a deal with Warner Bros. – Seven Arts to license the cartoon bird’s likeness and sound for $50,000. (Seven Arts was the name of the studio after surviving founder and studio boss Jack Warner sold it in 1966, and it reverted back to Warner Bros. after another ownership change in 1969.)
Black-and-white stickers of Chuck Jones’ creation went on the budget muscle Plymouth’s doors and trunk lid, along with “Road Runner” nameplates. These were the only elements of style that the otherwise-barebones car had, except for the twin-scooped hood (shared with the GTX) and blacked-out version of the base Belvedere radiator grille. Plymouth developed a special horn that mimicked the “beep beep!” sound of the cartoon bird. With those items, the police-car hardware, and a choice of two engines (383 or 426 Hemi) and two transmissions (4-speed or automatic), the Plymouth Road Runner was born.
For 1969, the Road Runner hardtop was not only the best-selling Road Runner, it was also the best-selling two-door Plymouth of any kind. Options included a vinyl top and matte-black hood stripes, as well as the 426 Hemi, which powers this Road Runner hardtop. This car is one of 421 Hemi Road Runner hardtops built in 1969. (Photo Courtesy Mecum Auctions)
The base sticker price for the 1968 Road Runner coupe at the start of the 1968 model year was $2,870, which was about $500 less than a GTX hardtop’s base price.
Young and not-so-rich muscle car buyers now had an alternative to penny pinching to save up for a new muscle car that cost nearly $4,000. They didn’t have to scour the back rows of used-car lots and back pages of newspaper classifieds to find an affordable performance car that hadn’t been beaten on (much) by a previous owner.
Visual changes for the Road Runner and all other 1969 midsize Plymouths were minimal. Big, new taillights at each corner shed their built-in back-up lights, and the Bird’s trunk lid didn’t receive a Satellite or GTX-type metal-trim insert as an option.
To say that the 1968 Road Runner was a surprise hit for Plymouth is an understatement. Demand was so high that it led to a pillarless hardtop version in early 1968, as well as Dodge’s own budget muscle car, the Coronet Super Bee, which also went on sale in early 1968.
Final sales totals (per Standard Catalog of American Cars 1946–1975) showed 44,599 Road Runners rolling out of the assembly plants where the B-Body Plymouths were built (Newark, Delaware; Lynch Road Assembly in Detroit; St. Louis, Missouri; and Los Angeles, California). It outsold the GTX by a good margin: Sales of 29,240 Road Runner coupes for the full year and January–June sales of 15,359 Road Runner hardtops outpaced GTX’s full-year totals of 17,914 hardtops and just 1,026 convertibles.
The Road Runner also received plenty of attention from Plymouth’s price-class competition, which entered the budget muscle segment of the new-car market for 1969. Most notable was Ford, which similarly de-trimmed its midsize Torino GT fastback and two-door hardtop to create the Torino Cobra, offering the Police Interceptor 428 as its standard engine or the hotter, new-in-1968 428 Cobra Jet as the sole option.
The 440 Six Barrel featured three Holley 2-barrel carburetors atop an aluminum intake manifold by Edelbrock. It created a 390-hp screamer that cost about half the price of the Hemi option. (Photo Courtesy Mecum Auctions)
Chevrolet still marketed its SS396 equipment as an option package on the Chevelle Malibu two-door hardtop and convertible. It also made the package available on the base Chevelle 300 Deluxe two-door sedan for 1969.
Pontiac considered powering a budget version of its GTO with a high-output 350-ci Pontiac engine. However, when Pontiac boss John DeLorean supposedly said, “Over my dead body will a 350 power a GTO,” the company decided to install the latest version of Pontiac’s Ram Air 400-inch V-8 into what became the Pontiac GTO Judge.
For 1969, Plymouth didn’t stand pat with the Road Runner. That year, a convertible joined the lineup, the options expanded to include more of the comfort and convenience features available on regular-gas Satellites and Sport Satellites, and a third engine choice became available that spring. It was the 440 Six Barrel, a version of the 440-inch, RB big-block engine that sported an Edelbrock aluminum intake wearing three Holley 2-barrel carburetors, all under a pin-on fiberglass hood, in a package (Code A12) that left off hood hinges and hubcaps and delivered a 390-hp ready-to-race screamer for just $462.80 extra. (The Hemi, in contrast, cost an additional $813.45.)
Motor Trend magazine was so impressed that it crowned the Bird its Car of the Year