For the cover car and some other rare and distinctive 1970 Road Runners, my deepest thanks go to Christine Giovingo at Mecum Auctions, as well as to Dana Mecum.
Reproduction-parts images were graciously supplied by these aftermarket sources, who are also due a big thank you: YearOne (Pat Staton), Auto Custom Carpets (Julie Tyson), and Auto Metal Direct (Aaron Hopkins).
Major thanks are due to all those at Chrysler Corporation who planned, styled, engineered, and built the 1970 Plymouth Road Runner at these Chrysler assembly plants: Lynch Road Assembly (Detroit, Michigan), Newark (Delaware) Assembly, St. Louis (Missouri) Assembly, and Los Angeles (California) Assembly. Thanks also to those who promoted and sold the Road Runner within Chrysler and its Chrysler-Plymouth Division, as well as to the Chrysler-Plymouth dealers across the United States who sold and serviced them way back when.
Plus a big shout-out to FCA Automobiles’ historic-services crew, who graciously let me use historic Plymouth images, including the 1970 Plymouth Rapid Transit System brochure.
My biggest thanks go to you readers who’ve wanted a convenient source of information about the third-year Bird for your home reference libraries or to give to a friend or relative to grace their collections.
A personal note: During the writing of this manuscript, my mother, Patricia Kindig Ross, passed away before she had a chance to read it and offer her editorial critique. An English teacher by training and the wife of a Chrysler materials researcher (my father, Stuart T. Ross) at the time of my birth, her inspiration and support will never be forgotten. Thanks, Mom!
And, once again . . . thank you, readers!
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.