A factory Hemi Road Runner is rare enough on its own, but this 1970 hardtop belongs to an even smaller club: cars built with Chrysler’s TorqueFlite automatic instead of the four-speed most Hemi buyers demanded. MotoManTV takes it for a drive during a 2015 Classic Car Week special, digging into why Plymouth’s rarest drivetrain pairing almost never got ordered at all.
Plymouth built only 152 Road Runners with the 426 Hemi for the entire 1970 model year, and just 16 of those hardtops left the factory with a TorqueFlite automatic instead of a four-speed. That is the car MotoManTV tracked down for a 2015 Classic Car Week episode — a genuine, numbers-matching Hemi Road Runner built for buyers who wanted the engine without the clutch pedal. Two years after Plymouth launched the Road Runner as Detroit’s answer to a muscle car that regular buyers could actually afford, rising insurance surcharges had already turned the Hemi option into a rare order almost nobody checked off. This drive review skips the restoration-shop gloss and puts a real survivor on camera, engine note and all, showing exactly what buyers gave up — and gained — by picking the automatic.
Why Plymouth Almost Killed the Hemi Option by 1970
MotoManTV built its channel on access most car reviewers never get — factory floors, design studios, and race tracks — and its Retro Drive Review series is where the channel’s founder, who goes by MotoMan, spends time behind the wheel of unrestored survivors instead of the resto-mods that dominate car-show turntables. This episode, filmed as part of the channel’s 2015 #ClassicCarWeek push, puts him in a documented Hemi Road Runner rather than a clone wearing Hemi badges over a 440. That distinction matters more with this car than most, since Hemi Road Runners were already a vanishing order by 1970.
The walkaround leans on the details that separate a real Hemi build from the many recreations that have flooded the market as genuine cars became too expensive to modify — including the factory Air Grabber hood, which Plymouth made standard equipment on every Hemi Road Runner in 1970 while charging extra for it on 440-powered cars. MotoMan treats the drive the way a car this rare deserves, letting the 426’s idle and exhaust note carry long stretches of the review instead of narrating over it, and walking through the parts of the car most buyers would never think to check for authenticity.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
152 Cars, 75 Hardtops, and Only 16 With an Automatic
Plymouth borrowed the entire concept from Warner Bros., paying the studio $50,000 for the rights to the Road Runner name and cartoon likeness, then spending more to engineer a horn that reproduced the character’s signature ‘beep-beep.’ The bet worked almost immediately — buyers wanted a cheap, fast car with a sense of humor, and the Road Runner became one of Plymouth’s best-selling performance nameplates within its first year on sale. That popularity is part of why the Hemi’s shrinking take rate stands out: most Road Runner buyers wanted the horn and the attitude, not necessarily the most expensive powerplant on the order sheet.
Plymouth launched the Road Runner in 1968 as a deliberately stripped-down alternative to its own GTX — a car built to run hard, cost little, and carry a name and horn borrowed from a cartoon bird. By 1970 the formula hadn’t changed, but the market around it had. Insurance underwriters were charging steep surcharges on anything with a big-block under the hood, and dealers reportedly steered buyers toward the cheaper, nearly-as-quick 440 rather than order the pricier Hemi. The result was a collapse in take rates: against total 1970 Road Runner production of 41,484 cars — 24,944 hardtops, 15,716 coupes, and 824 convertibles — Plymouth built just 152 with the Hemi.
That 152-car figure breaks down further into 75 hardtops, 74 pillared coupes, and three convertibles, and within that already-tiny hardtop group, only 16 buyers chose Chrysler’s A727 TorqueFlite automatic over a four-speed manual. Most Hemi buyers in 1970 treated the car as a drag-strip tool and ordered the manual on principle; picking an automatic with the era’s most expensive engine option was almost a contrarian move. That same math — where the rarest configuration isn’t always the flashiest one — is why budget-minded muscle car shoppers increasingly skip the marquee nameplates altogether, the same logic that makes a well-sorted second-generation Camaro a smarter buy than chasing a six-figure Hemi clone.
The 426 Hemi itself needed no introduction by 1970. Chrysler had campaigned it since 1966 and factory-rated the street version at 425 horsepower at 5,000 rpm and 490 lb-ft of torque at 4,000 rpm, output that racers and engineers have long argued was conservative on paper to keep insurance premiums and NHRA handicaps in check. Paired with the Road Runner’s lightweight B-body and stripped-down interior, it made for one of the quickest cars Chrysler sold that year — automatic or not.
The window for ordering any Hemi Road Runner was closing fast by 1970. Chrysler pulled the 426 Street Hemi from the option sheet entirely after 1971, a casualty of tightening emissions rules and insurance surcharges that had already gutted demand across the muscle car segment. That makes this car’s automatic transmission a snapshot of the option’s final, least-popular configuration — ordered by a small group of buyers in the very last years anyone could check that box at all.
What Makes a Documented Hemi Automatic Different
A documented Hemi Road Runner with an automatic transmission occupies an odd spot in the collector market. It’s rarer on paper than the manual cars that usually command the biggest auction headlines, but it’s also more usable — no clutch to modulate in traffic, no worry about heat-soaking a manual linkage on a summer cruise. For buyers who want to actually drive a Hemi car rather than trailer it between shows, the TorqueFlite automatic turns a drag-strip special into something closer to a genuine grand tourer, without touching the numbers-matching drivetrain that makes it valuable in the first place.
That combination of rarity and drivability is exactly what MotoManTV’s episode captures — a car built for buyers who wanted the loudest engine Chrysler sold without giving up the convenience most of them actually wanted every day. Sixteen hardtops built that way in 1970 means most Mopar collectors will go their entire lives without seeing one in person, let alone hearing it idle through a stock exhaust system on camera.
Watch the full video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Related posts:
Abandoned for Decades in a Canadian Field, This 1970 Plymouth Road Runner Still Has Its Big Block
Dodge Built This 1971 Charger to Never Leave the Factory — Somehow, a Chicago Dealer Sold It Anyway
This 1970 Plymouth Road Runner Was Built to Get Smashed in Fast & Furious — The Crash Scene Never Came
The 1970 Plymouth Road Runner Buyer’s Guide: What Chrysler’s Own Salesmen Were Trained to Say
These Rare Mopars Sold for Pocket Change at Mecum Kissimmee — And Serious Collectors Are Kicking Themselves
A Numbers-Matching Mustang Boss 429 Just Went Unsold at Mecum Indy – So Did an Olds 442 W-30 Convertible
Dodge Built the Demon’s Quiet Replacement With 807 Horsepower – And Somehow Kept the Back Seats
A 1965 Dodge Monaco Sat Buried for 40 Years — Then Got the Cheapest Hemi Swap Anyone’s Ever Pulled Off
Only 178 1971 Dodge Charger R/T 440 Six Packs Were Ever Built – Richard Boehl Has Owned His Since 1986, Speeding Tickets and All
He Bought a Burned-Out Dodge Demon at a Vegas Salvage Auction — Then Gave It the Manual Transmission Dodge Never Built
