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A green Road Runner sits against a plain background, daring Mopar fans to name its exact model year from the details alone. Plymouth built this car across three closely related seasons, and the differences are subtle enough to trip up even seasoned collectors. Read on to find out which year this one actually is.
Most muscle cars of 1967 made you pay extra for the engine that mattered, the Plymouth GTX just built it in standard, wrapping a 440 Super Commando inside comfort-focused styling borrowed from the upscale Satellite. Buyers chasing even more performance could step up to the fabled 426 Hemi, but most stuck with the 440 for good reason. Here is why Plymouth’s gentleman’s muscle car approach to the GTX still holds up as one of the smarter muscle car formulas of its era.
1967 was the year the Plymouth Satellite got quietly outranked by its own family. The new Belvedere GTX arrived that year with a 440 wedgehead V8 and the 426 Hemi, an engine Plymouth had already been selling in the Satellite since 1966. The Satellite carried on as Plymouth’s value performance pick, powered by a 383 available with either a two-barrel or four-barrel carburetor. Here’s how the B-body pecking order shifted in a single model year.
Plymouth needed an answer to the Pontiac GTO, and in 1967 they built one by dropping a standard 440-cubic-inch, 375-horsepower Super Commando V8 into a dressed-up Belvedere and calling it the GTX. Unlike most muscle cars of the era, buyers didn’t have to option their way up to big power – Plymouth handed it to them standard, with the fabled 426 Hemi waiting as an upgrade.
Jim Isherwood spent decades behind the wheel of Mopar Super Stock race cars, and this ride-along in his 426 Hemi-powered Satellite GTX Belvedere captures exactly why fans still talk about him. Since his passing, the comment section has turned into something between a technical breakdown and a tribute. Watch, and listen, to understand why nothing else sounds quite like a Hemi under full throttle.
The 1957 Plymouth Fury’s dual-quad 318 was Plymouth’s only true factory high-performance A-block engine, offered for just two model years before vanishing from the lineup. Sold in a single body style and a single factory color, Sand Dune White, the Fury was instantly recognizable and genuinely rare from the day it left the showroom. Here’s the engineering and marketing story behind a car distinctive enough that one family shipped theirs across the Atlantic.
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.
Beneath the plain sheetmetal of this mid-size Plymouth sat one of the rarest engines Chrysler ever sold to the public: the 425-horsepower Street Hemi, built for NHRA stock classes and barely civilized for the street. Only 677 Belvederes were built with it in 1966, a year before the GTX name even existed to advertise what was under the hood. Buyers got forged internals, dual four-barrel carburetion, and a torque curve that demanded a reinforced rear axle. It’s the missing chapter most muscle car fans skip straight past.