Plymouth Road Runner 1968 images

Plymouth expected to sell about 20,000 Road Runners in 1968. It sold roughly 45,000, enough to land in third place behind only the GTO and Chevelle SS 396 for muscle car sales that year. The formula was simple: a standard 383-cubic-inch V8 rated at 335 horsepower, a stripped interior, and an optional 426 Hemi for those willing to pay more. It turned out buyers didn’t need luxury trim to want serious performance, they just needed the price to make sense.

The Belvedere based Road Runner was created by Plymouth to give its customers a lower priced option than the uptown Satellite based GTX. The goodies are left on the shelf, although every power option in Mopar’s arsenal could be had, and, the new model has a rock bottom sticker price. Initially the Road Runner is only available as a two door coupe, with a “B” pillar, but this was so successful a two door hardtop (without the “B” pillar) is in showrooms later in ’68.

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MCF thanks Gateway Classic Cars for the images provided here

The first Roadrunners off the assembly line were spartan indeed with vinyl mats and only a rubber boot to cover the four speed floor shifer-no console was even available, but all units did have the unique and easily recognized “Beep-Beep” horn from the Road Runner cartoons. Plymouth did pay Warner Brothers a bundle of cash for the rights to use this sound and the Roadrunner logo. The options originally available did include, P/S, P/B, front disc brakes, power steering and AM radio. although the cost goes up with each addition.

Plymouth’s own sales team didn’t believe in the car. Internal projections for the 1968 Road Runner topped out around 20,000 units for the year, a modest number for a division that needed a hit, not a footnote. Nobody at Plymouth expected a stripped-down, cartoon-branded muscle car with rubber floor mats to outsell nearly everything else in the segment. Then the orders started coming in, and they didn’t stop. By the time the numbers were tallied, Plymouth’s cautious little experiment had turned into one of the biggest surprises in Detroit that year, and the reason why says as much about buyers’ wallets as it does about horsepower.

Standard Muscle, No Apologies

Under the stripped interior and cartoon horn, the Road Runner’s standard engine was no afterthought: a 383-cubic-inch V8 rated at 335 horsepower and 425 lb-ft of torque, paired with a standard 4-speed manual transmission and a floor shifter. Buyers who wanted an automatic could step up to the 3-speed TorqueFlite, but the base combination alone was enough to put the Road Runner solidly in muscle car territory well before anyone opted into the expensive stuff.

The $714 Question

For buyers who wanted more, Plymouth offered the 426 Hemi for an extra $714, a steep add-on in 1968 dollars, rated at 425 horsepower. It was the same engine dropping into GTXs and Road Runners’ pricier siblings, but here it sat under a hood that started thousands of dollars cheaper than the competition, which is exactly the combination that made the car such a threat to established muscle car nameplates.

That value proposition is what blew past Plymouth’s own sales projections. Expecting to move around 20,000 units for the model year, the division instead sold roughly 45,000 Road Runners in 1968 alone, more than double what anyone in the boardroom had planned for.

That put the Road Runner in third place for muscle car sales that year, trailing only the Pontiac GTO and Chevrolet’s SS 396 Chevelle, a remarkable showing for a car built on the idea that buyers didn’t need power windows or a padded dash to want serious performance.

The lesson wasn’t lost on the rest of Detroit. Within a few years, nearly every manufacturer had its own back-to-basics muscle car answering the same question the Road Runner had already settled: how much car do you actually need to strip away before performance stops selling itself?

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