Plymouth Belvedere 1967 images

The 1967 Plymouth Belvedere lived a double life — one version chased down traffic violators for the LAPD and starred in Adam-12s pilot episode, while another, ordered with the rare 425 horsepower 426 Hemi option, could out-muscle nearly everything else on the road. Only 720 buyers checked that Hemi box that year, making it one of the most overlooked factory Hemi cars Mopar ever built.

The “B”body full sized 1967 Plymouth Belvedere is available as a sedan, hardtop or convertible with two doors or a station wagon and hardtop version with four doors are also on the options sheet. The engines include six V8’s with the 427 cu in (7.0 L) Hemi at the top of the list. The engine is bolted to a three speed standard or a three speed automatic transmission. This was the vehicle of choice for the Los Angeles Police Department in ’67.

Our thanks to Gateway Classic Cars for the images here.

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Somewhere in Los Angeles in 1968, a brand-new cop show needed a patrol car for its very first episode, and the producers reached for whatever the LAPD was actually driving that year. That happened to be a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere, and thanks to Adam-12, this unassuming Mopar sedan became one of the more recognizable police cars in television history almost by accident. What most viewers watching at home never knew is that the very same Belvedere nameplate, ordered a little differently, could be had with an engine serious enough to embarrass half the muscle cars on the street that year. Just 720 buyers actually checked that box in 1967. What were the other buyers thinking, and what exactly did that box get you?

GTX Turned a Patrol Car Into a Predator

1967 was the year Plymouth added the GTX to the Belvedere lineup, and the standard engine alone was not messing around — a 375 horsepower 440 Super Commando V8 came in every GTX built. But the real story is the option box above it: for an extra $546, buyers could order the 425 horsepower 426 Hemi, the same legendary engine terrorizing the drag strips that same year, wearing what amounted to a mid-size family cars sheetmetal. Only 720 people paid the Hemi tax in 1967, which makes a Hemi GTX from this year one of the rarest, most quietly terrifying cars Plymouth ever built.

Meanwhile, Down at the Precinct

The regular-duty Belvedere earned its stripes a different way, serving as a genuine workhorse for the LAPD and NYPD from the late 1960s into the early 70s before the Plymouth Gran Fury eventually took over patrol duty. A standard 383 cubic inch V8 with a four-barrel carburetor made 325 horsepower — plenty for a black-and-white chasing down traffic violators, even if it could not touch what the GTXs Hemi option was doing a few trim levels up the same order sheet. Two completely different missions, one nameplate, and that is exactly what makes the 67 Belvedere worth a second look.

The GTX Badge That Started It All

1967 was not just an add-on trim exercise for Plymouth — the GTX launch that year effectively kicked off a proper GTX lineage that would run through the end of the decade, giving Plymouth its own answer to the GTO in a way the standard Belvedere never could on its own. Every GTX built that first year rode on the same B-body underpinnings as the Adam-12 cruiser parked a few trim levels down, which is exactly the kind of contrast that makes this particular model year worth digging into.

Why Detroit Loved Selling Cars to Cops

Fleet sales to police departments were a dependable, high-volume revenue stream for every Detroit automaker throughout the muscle car era, and Plymouth was no exception. Police-package options — heavy-duty suspension, upgraded cooling systems, larger alternators, reinforced frames — often used the very same components engineers had developed for performance trims, just bundled differently. That overlap is exactly why a seemingly humble patrol-spec Belvedere could share real mechanical DNA with the GTX sitting one option sheet away, and why automakers were happy to court municipal fleet buyers as seriously as they courted street performance customers.

The Belvedere’s Place in Plymouth’s Lineup

Belvedere occupied the middle rung of Plymouth’s 1967 lineup, positioned above the compact Valiant and below the full-size Fury, and it was this exact mid-size platform that hosted the GTX. The nameplate wouldn’t survive the decade in that form — by 1968, Plymouth folded Belvedere into the newly expanded Satellite line, and the GTX and the freshly introduced Road Runner carried the torch forward from there. Understanding where Belvedere sat in 1967 helps explain why the same basic car could serve as both an unassuming police cruiser and the basis for one of Mopar’s most fearsome factory options.

440 Super Commando: The Engine Doing the Heavy Lifting

The 440 Super Commando wasn’t built exclusively for the GTX — it was Chrysler’s big-block workhorse across the RB-series engine family, showing up under the hood of everything from full-size Furys to Dodge Chargers before the more aggressive 440 Six-Pack arrived at the end of the decade. Its role in the 1967 GTX represented the first time that engine had been dropped into a genuinely mid-size, performance-focused package, foreshadowing exactly the direction Mopar’s whole muscle car strategy would take for the rest of the era.

Adam-12’s Real-World Fleet Accuracy

Adam-12 built its reputation partly on a level of procedural and equipment authenticity that a lot of contemporary cop shows didn’t bother chasing — producers consulted real LAPD officers and leaned on actual department-spec vehicles rather than generic studio cars dressed up with a spare light bar. Choosing a genuine Belvedere patrol package for the show’s very first episode fit that same pattern, and it’s part of why the series still gets cited by both classic car enthusiasts and television historians as an unusually accurate snapshot of period-correct police equipment.

From Belvedere to Road Runner

Plymouth’s marketing shift toward affordable, no-frills muscle cars didn’t come out of nowhere — it grew directly out of what the Belvedere and GTX had already proven in the mid-size B-body market. When the Road Runner launched in 1968 riding on that same basic platform, it took the GTX’s big-block performance and stripped away the luxury trim to hit a lower price point, chasing buyers who wanted speed without the extra cost. The Belvedere’s success is really the first chapter of a strategy that would define Plymouth’s entire muscle car identity through the rest of the decade.

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