Plymouth GTX 1970

The 1970 Plymouth GTX offered buyers a choice between three big-block V-8s — a 375-hp 440, a 390-hp 440 Six Barrel, and a 425-hp 426 Hemi — but only 7,748 were built that year. Just 72 left the factory with the Hemi, making surviving examples exceptionally rare today. The GTX’s declining sales that year foreshadowed Plymouth’s shift toward other muscle car nameplates in the years that followed.

A very clean and beautiful 1970 GTX…

By 1970, Plymouth’s answer to the muscle car wars had already earned a reputation, but the numbers behind that particular model year tell a story most casual fans never hear. Buyers walking into a Plymouth dealer that year faced a genuinely strange decision: three different big-block engines, each promising a different flavor of the same aggression, and only one of them was rare enough that finding an actual survivor today borders on luck. Production had fallen sharply from prior years, and Chrysler was already quietly shifting its marketing muscle toward flashier stablemates. Somewhere in that decline sits a car that, decades later, deserves far more attention than the sales chart it left behind ever suggested.

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Three Engines, One Very Different Ownership Experience

The standard engine was a Super Commando 440 four-barrel V-8 rated at 375 horsepower, with an optional 440 Six Barrel bumping that to 390 horsepower, and a 426 Street Hemi topping the range at 425 horsepower. Buyers could pair any of them with either a high-upshift TorqueFlite automatic or a heavy-duty four-speed manual, riding on a standard 3.55:1 rear axle ratio.

A Production Number That Explains the Rarity

Total 1970 GTX production fell to just 7,748 units, with 6,400 buyers choosing the base 440, roughly 680 opting for the Six Barrel, and only 72 ordering the Hemi. That collapse in volume — and Plymouth’s shrinking Hemi take rate specifically — is exactly why a genuine numbers-matching GTX from this year is so difficult to find today.

A Nameplate on Its Way Out

The GTX badge itself would not survive much longer — 1971 was its final year before Plymouth folded the model into the GTX-less Road Runner lineup entirely, making 1970 effectively the beginning of the end for the standalone GTX identity. That context matters for collectors: a well-preserved 1970 example represents one of the last model years where the GTX existed as its own distinct trim rather than a memory absorbed into a more famous stablemate.

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