Road Test TV lines up two of Chrysler’s rarest factory muscle cars, a 1968 Plymouth Road Runner and a 1968 Dodge Super Bee, both fitted with the legendary 426 Hemi, for a naturally aspirated quarter-mile grudge match. The comments reveal an audience less interested in who wins than in celebrating two genuine Mopar icons running clean 11-second passes. Watch to see how two of Detroit’s most feared engines settle a very friendly family argument.
Two cars roll to the line, and for once nobody in the stands is rooting against either one, because both drivers are already on the same team, the one that only exists inside the letters M-O-P-A-R. What plays out over the next eleven seconds is not a rivalry so much as a family argument settled at wide-open throttle, between two of the rarest and most feared engines Chrysler ever bolted into a B-body. By the stripe, one of them wins, but watching the replays and the comment section afterward, it becomes clear that almost nobody watching actually cared which one crossed first.
425 Horsepower That Detroit Never Fully Admitted To
Road Test TV’s footage pits a 1968 Plymouth Road Runner against a 1968 Dodge Super Bee, both cars fitted with Chrysler’s legendary 426 Hemi and its factory dual four-barrel carburetor setup, officially rated at 425 horsepower from the factory. That horsepower figure was famously conservative even in period, part of Detroit’s unofficial gentleman’s agreement to keep insurance underwriters from panicking, and Hemi owners have spent decades since arguing the real number sat considerably higher on a dyno. Whatever the true figure actually was, 425 horsepower from a naturally aspirated big block in a car this light was already enough to make both of these cars legitimate 13-second machines straight from the factory showroom floor, no modifications required.
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Chrysler’s Budget Muscle Cars, Built Around a Cartoon and a Bee
The Road Runner and Super Bee occupy a specific and important niche in muscle car history as Chrysler’s answer to the budget muscle car boom of the late 1960s, cars built to deliver Hemi and 440 performance without the luxury trim and higher price tags of their R/T and GTX siblings. Plymouth famously licensed the Road Runner name and cartoon likeness from Warner Bros. for the privilege, while Dodge countered with the Super Bee as its own stripped-down performance special. Finding either one with the optional 426 Hemi installed, rather than the far more common 383 or 440, puts a car firmly into the rarest tier of factory muscle cars still surviving today.
Why Naturally Aspirated Still Matters to This Crowd
What makes this particular matchup notable is that it is naturally aspirated, no turbos, no superchargers, nothing but cubic inches and compression doing the work, a point several commenters make explicitly and approvingly. One writes that the best part of the whole race is that it stays true to the Hemi’s original engineering, “just cubic inches,” even allowing for whatever mild period-correct modifications either car might be running underneath its stock-looking exterior. In an era increasingly dominated by boosted engines even within the classic muscle car hobby, races like this one carry a certain purity that draws its own dedicated audience.
A Channel Built Entirely on Head-to-Head Drag Matchups
Road Test TV has spent years building a library specifically around matchups like this one, pairing rare and desirable classics head-to-head down a quarter mile rather than staging static shows or interview-heavy content. The channel’s description leans into that identity directly, branding itself as living “hi performance,” and its back catalog includes dozens of similarly matched pairs, giving longtime subscribers a reliable format they return to again and again. For fans who grew up reading magazine drag test comparisons, this channel functions as a direct video successor to that print tradition.
Forty-Nine Years With the Same Road Runner
One commenter’s story stands out from the rest of the thread: a viewer who bought a 1972 Road Runner with a 340 small block at nineteen years old, held onto it for forty-nine years, and only finished a full restoration within the past year, putting just 500 miles on the freshly rebuilt car. That kind of multi-decade ownership arc is not unusual in Mopar circles specifically, where the emotional attachment to these cars runs deep enough that owners frequently keep the same example for the majority of their adult lives, restoring it piece by piece as time and money allow rather than trading up.
Two Cars, Both in the 11s
Both cars run in the 11-second range in this particular pass, a detail multiple commenters flag with genuine enthusiasm, since achieving consistent 11-second quarter miles on a naturally aspirated, largely stock-configured 1968 muscle car is a meaningful benchmark even by today’s standards. One viewer specifically credits driver Dave Dudek’s handling of the Hemi Super Bee for the strong showing, a name recognized among drag racing regulars on the vintage muscle car circuit for consistently well-prepped and well-driven Mopar entries at events across the country.
A Rivalry That Was Never Really a Rivalry
The broader appeal of this video, and of Road Test TV’s catalog generally, comes down to a simple truth that the comment section states more than once in slightly different words: if you do not like Mopar, you probably do not really like muscle cars. That is obviously a biased opinion coming from a self-selected audience of Chrysler loyalists, but the passion behind it is genuine, and a matchup between two factory Hemi cars, run clean and naturally aspirated down a quarter mile, is exactly the kind of content built to reinforce that loyalty every time it gets watched again.
Telling These Two Cars Apart at a Glance
Even devoted Mopar fans sometimes need a second look to separate a 1968 Road Runner from a Super Bee at highway speed, since both share the same B-body platform and similar overall proportions. The giveaways live in the details: the Road Runner’s cartoon badging and distinctive beep-beep horn versus the Super Bee’s bumblebee stripe wrapped around the tail, along with trim-level differences in grille treatment and taillight design between the Plymouth and Dodge divisions. For a factory drag race like the one Road Test TV captured here, those cosmetic differences matter less than what sits under each hood, but they are exactly what lets a trained eye identify the cars instantly from the video thumbnail alone.
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See how those hemi’s dig in those rear wheels. I bet 90/10’s upfront
The launch is awesome. Kind of a shame that Road Runner with a hemi, has a 3 on the tree shifter.
It’s a automatic
Oops my bad
David Simmons Everybody makes mistakes, no big deal.
Nice race!
Check out those times and speeds! Yeah someone tell me again how fast chevy and Ford were those are street beasts right there, by far the fastest stock muscle cars ever built!
A stock 426 HEMI made more like 480HP in reality.
Hemis were beasts at the top end. The ZL1 427 and LS6 454 were a match on the “street” and not that outclassed on the strip ( IN STOCK CONDITION) The Roadrunner never came “stock” with the ass end lower than the front ( better weight distribution for traction). I haven’t been under the hood on any of these cars and God knows what kind of gears they have in the diff. But If all cars that I mentioned had the same gear ratio, same “carb tuning” ( remember these Hemis had factory dual quads and the LS6 and L88, ZL1 had one 4 barrel) and they all had the same exhaust (headers) The difference would be more driver skill because they tested back in 67-70 to be a couple tenths of a second difference in the Quarter. A 440 Cuda was actually faster ( on the street and at an eight mile strip) than the Hemi Cuda. If you had the proper drag tires and some really low gears like 4:56-5:00 along with a 4 link setup the Hemi would walk away from anything except a “tuned” LS6 Chevelle with similar setup.
It gives you all specs before they race and believe me I’ve seen them all growing up a mile and a half from Woodward ave. chevys fords olds Pontiac and have worked on both fuel and top alcohol cars but I’ll take a 426 over any of those motors and I’d like to see a 440 out run one I’ve seen them run against each other and brother it don’t work. And your answer to the dual carbs on a hemi a single carb at that time would not been able to feed enough fuel to keep it running. Those are quarter mile times a actually drag race and a stock hemi with slicks and a 4.12 gear will pull the front end up no problem so yeah they can come out of the hole extremely strong delivering a huge amount of foot lbs of torque. Only the 427 Chevy was close in comparison. And yes roadrunners were stock have you ever looked at Chrysler suspension compared to Ford or GM? Totally different set up, one has leaf springs (mopar) the others don’t.
Alex Will yep, you would have to tune a chevy to get it to go faster,. had a friend had 383 roadrunner, went against 454, chevelle, both were into racing, the 383 whooped the chevelle 2 times in a row,,
WOW! time is unreal!
I always had 727 modified with a reverse manual valvebody. Great for the strip. Not a good cruising car on the highways depending on the gear ratio. I always liked 411 or 391’s
America Muscle!
Being a Mopar guy having a Mopar as a daily driver 64 Dodge 440 to be exact putting those two cars side-by-side is just wrong and cool at the same time what a drag race
Robert Amatangelo
Owned 2 68 road runners with 440s but I loved the look of a 68 or 69 super bee