CarBrandLogos archive · Plymouth · 1968

PlymouthRoad Runner

Muscle stripped back to an engine, a bench seat and a cartoon horn.

Photo: Ermell · CC BY-SA 4.0

The story

A defining chapter in Plymouth history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Plymouth Road Runner, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

By 1968 the muscle car had grown expensive. Options lists had swollen, prices had climbed, and the young buyers the cars were nominally aimed at were increasingly unable to afford them. Plymouth's response was to go the other way, and the Road Runner is the purest expression of the idea.

1968 Road Runner green rear · CZmarlin — Christopher Ziemnowicz, releases all rights but a photo credit would be appreciated if this image is used anywhere other than Wikipedia. Please leave a note at Wikipedia here. Thank you! · Public domain

Design and engineering

The recipe was subtraction. Take the mid-size Belvedere body, fit a rubber floor, a bench seat and minimal trim, delete anything that did not make the car faster, then install a 383 V8 breathing through cylinder heads borrowed from the larger 440. Buyers who wanted more could order the 426 Hemi or, from 1969, the 440 with three two-barrel carburettors. What they could not order was luxury, because that was the point.

1969 Plymouth Road Runner 383 · Sicnag · CC BY 2.0

In production

Plymouth then bought the name. It paid Warner Bros. for rights to the Road Runner character and for the cartoon's sound effect, which was engineered into a purpose-built horn, and the whole package was marketed with a straight face that the competition could not match. It worked immediately: sales far exceeded Plymouth's forecasts and Motor Trend named it Car of the Year for 1969.

1975 Plymouth Road Runner · dave_7 from Lethbridge, Canada · CC BY 2.0

Legacy

The car did not survive the decade intact. Rising insurance premiums, emissions controls and the fuel crisis hollowed out the segment, and by the mid-1970s the Road Runner was a trim package on progressively smaller cars, running out in 1980. Its first three years remain the argument for what the cheap muscle car could be.

At a glance

The facts that define it.

Produced

1968–1980

Technical specification

The Road Runner, in detail.

Production: 1968–1980
Class: Mid-size (1968–1975); Compact (1976–1980)
Layout: FR layout
Assembly: United States: Detroit, Michigan (Lynch Road Assembly); United States: St. Louis, Missouri (Saint Louis Assembly)
Manufacturer: Plymouth (Chrysler)

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