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INTRODUCTION

How did a comment from a car magazine editor evolve into a budget muscle car with a cartoon bird for a namesake?

That’s the same kind of question as asking why that cartoon bird’s idea of having fun is running down the road.

And, because it was the late 1960s when the first question was asked, the result was a legendary muscle car famous for its combination of high performance and low price: the Plymouth Road Runner.

It combined the high-performance chassis and powertrain hardware (with which Chrysler had equipped its midsize B-Body cars since 1962) with the lowest-priced, barely trimmed 1968 Belvedere body, creating a car whose sub-$3,000 base sticker price drew buyers to Chrysler-Plymouth showrooms in search of a budget muscle car that Ford and Chevrolet did not have in their 1968 lineups.

The Road Runner was a winner in its first year, and the midyear addition of a two-door hardtop model brought in even more young, prospective buyers to Chrysler-Plymouth dealers nationwide. The final 1968 sales tally showed that these young buyers purchased about 45,000 Road Runners, and the final results at many of the nation’s dragstrips showed Road Runners with lots of wins in Stock and Super Stock classes from coast to coast, many of them with cars that were, or could have easily been, driven to the track!

The iconic Road Runner adorns the front fender.

What did Plymouth do to improve on 1968’s success? It added a convertible Bird at the start of the 1969 model run. Then, in the spring of that year, it introduced an option package based on a ready-to-race 390-hp engine that cost about half of the Hemi’s extra charge.

On top of that, Motor Trend magazine selected the Road Runner as its 1969 Car of the Year, citing its combination of high performance and low price.

The 1969 sales of more than 88,000 Birds pleased Chrysler’s bean counters in Highland Park, who gave the Road Runner their blessing, as long as it continued to sell in big numbers.

Thus, for 1970, the Road Runner’s list of standard features, available options, and interior and exterior colors grew even longer. In addition, other muscle Plymouths joined it to create the Rapid Transit System.

Since 1961, Chevrolet had promoted its performance-minded models, equipped with a Super Sport option package, which included bucket seats, special trim, and any available Chevy engine. In 1968 it created the Chevrolet Sports Department to showcase the Super Sports along with the Corvette and Camaro Z28. Similarly, Dodge promoted its performance cars through its Scat Pack starting in 1968.

Plymouth’s Rapid Transit System was more than a “me, too” response to Chevrolet and Dodge. It included performance models on all four Plymouth vehicle platforms, from the compact A-Body Duster 340 to the full-size C-Body Sport Fury GT and Sport Fury S23, as well as the new E-Body ’Cuda and B-Body Road Runner and GTX. It had its own sales brochure and accessories catalogs, which performance enthusiasts at the time snapped up, as well as Performance Clinics by drag-race champions such as Ronnie Sox and Buddy Martin, who had conducted them since 1967, advising Plymouth drag racers about how to set up their cars for ideal on-track performance. That was in addition to print and broadcast ads highlighting Plymouth’s 1970 performance models.

If you were in the market for a new high-performance car in 1970, there was no better time to buy one. It seemed as though every new-car dealer on your hometown’s Auto Row (except Cadillac) had at least one high-performance model in its lineup, and those cars were front-and-center in print, radio, and television ads for the new 1970 cars during the late summer and early fall of 1969.

Moreover, in the minds of many Mopar mavens, the Bird had it all: looks, performance, and that unique horn.

1968–1969: THE BIRD EMERGES: PERFORMANCE ON A BUDGET PLAN

Muscle cars in the 1960s were built for and marketed toward male drivers under the age of 30, the vanguard of the baby-boom generation that was now of driving age, and who now could choose new cars far different from the ones their parents hauled them around in to school, baseball practice, Scout meetings, and other activities. These new cars’ engines delivered as much as 425 hp, richly textured bucket-seat or plain bench-seat interiors, and other luxurious options that included the same appearance, comfort, and convenience features that non-performance cars offered.

Here’s the original 1968 Road Runner logo, which appeared in black and white for that year only. By using the base Belvedere coupe body with police-car mechanicals, Plymouth was able to keep the base sticker price under $2,900.

The Road Runner’s success in early 1968 led to calls for a hardtop body style, as well as option packages that dressed up the plain Plymouth with Satellite-grade interior and exterior trim items. This car features the federally mandated front-seat headrests, which became required on all new cars built and sold on or after January 1, 1969. (Photo Courtesy Mecum Auctions)

However, those features boosted a car’s sticker price above $3,000, well beyond what many younger drivers (and potential new-car buyers) could afford.

Automotive writer Brock Yates noted this in one of his monthly columns for Car and Driver magazine. Around that same time, one of the crewmembers on Yates’ SCCA Trans-Am team, who was just 19 years old at the time, suggested that car makers offer a stripped-down, budget version of their muscle cars. It should be one that limited frills while putting the best and strongest 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 for 1969, citing its combination of performance and value. An advertising campaign built around this honor, with more Chuck Jones–animated TV commercials, helped the Road Runner’s image, and its sales, for the year.

How did the Road Runner do with the bean counters in Highland Park? For 1969, very well. With total-series sales of 88,415, which included 48,549 hardtops, 2,123 convertibles, and 33,743 coupes, it was the best-selling midsize Plymouth line of all. The Road Runner two-door hardtop was Plymouth’s best-selling two-door car of any kind.