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Posts Tagged: Hemi Road Runner

Matt Barczak was driving to inspect a rare Hemi Road Runner when his father read a strange trim code off a classified ad from the back seat: what’s an X33 Camaro? That single question sent Matt three and a half hours across Pennsylvania in the middle of a January night — and what waited in the barn wasn’t just one forgotten Trans-Am homologation car. Read on to find out what a documented 1969 Z/28 and a 1970 AAR ‘Cuda were doing under the same dusty roof.

Road Test TV lines up two of Chrysler’s rarest factory muscle cars, a 1968 Plymouth Road Runner and a 1968 Dodge Super Bee, both fitted with the legendary 426 Hemi, for a naturally aspirated quarter-mile grudge match. The comments reveal an audience less interested in who wins than in celebrating two genuine Mopar icons running clean 11-second passes. Watch to see how two of Detroit’s most feared engines settle a very friendly family argument.

A genuine 426 Hemi Road Runner, one of only 152 built in 1970, lines up against a 1972 Oldsmobile 442 W-30, one of just 772 built that year, in a quarter-mile grudge match that splits the difference between torque and top end. The W-30’s blueprinted 455 gets off the line first, but the Hemi’s legendary top-end pull closes the gap by the traps. Viewers have been arguing in the comments ever since about which car actually deserved the win. Watch the run and decide for yourself which factory got it right.

The 1968 Plymouth Road Runner was built to bring performance back to buyers who could not afford a GTX, which makes the 426 Hemi option one of the strangest contradictions Detroit ever offered. A stripped-out car with rubber floor mats and a cartoon bird on the fender could be ordered with the most feared engine in America. Car and Driver clocked one at 13.54 seconds at 105 mph straight off the showroom floor. Read on for what that combination actually cost and how few buyers took it.

A 1968 Hemi Road Runner and a 1970 Hemi Cuda share the exact same 426 Hemi, the same 425-horsepower rating, and the same Torqueflite automatic — yet this quarter-mile shootout from Road Test TV isn’t close to even. One car leaves the line with what viewers call a genuinely bad reaction time and still crosses the stripe first. Commenters are left arguing about gear ratios, tire choice, and whether 4.56s are involved. What actually separates two nearly identical elephant motors on race day?

Road Test TV uncovered a 1970 Plymouth Road Runner that had been sitting since the ’70s — and the VIN tells a story most barn finds can’t match. Chassis 00015 makes it the pilot car for the entire 1970 model year, and it’s one of only 44 built with the 426 Hemi. Air Grabber hood, pistol-grip shifter, and a story decades in the making are all still intact under the dust.

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