JC found, shot and posted a car that has made itself surprisingly scarce at CC over the years. Now if the RR had been available with a slant six and three-on-the-tree, I’m sure we’d have gone all gaga over one or two by now. Mike Butts did find a ’69 RR hardtop a few years back, but this 2-door coupe (with post) is closer to the 1968 original, which only came in this body style.
It’ll be interesting to see what the CC Chorus thinks about these non-original wheels. They’re in the original style, but obviously a few inches greater in diameter. Works pretty well for me. But I know we have some real purists here, especially when it comes to wheels.
Of even greater interest is what’s under the hood, and whether this is even an original Road Runner.
The “440” call outs on the upwards facing hood scoops are quite legible, but that’s a problem. The new six-pack A12 440, rated at 390 hp, was available in 1969 starting mid year. But…only some 1,432 of them were built, and they all came with a fiberglass hood held on with four hood pins, plain steel wheels and dog dish hubcaps. They’re even rarer (by a good margin) than the 426 hemi equipped Road Runners. This does not appear to be one of those unicorns. And it’s missing the black paint on the hood in any case.
My guess is this started out as a Belvedere coupe and was turned into a RR. Or somebody swapped in a 440 into a RR and didn’t bother to make it look authentic.
I’m shattered…
They had a horn that (IIRC) was painted lavender color and labeled “Voice of the Road Runner” lol
I’m pretty sure the 68 RR came both as a post coupe and a hardtop but I may be wrong. I do know that none of the 68 -70 cars were available with the 440-bbl engine from the factory. The 68’s only had the 383 and Hemi. The 69 and 70 had the 383, Hemi and the 440-6bbl available. The 69 6-bbl was the only one with the fibreglass lift off hood while the 70 cars including the Superbird just had a regular hood. I’m not sure if the regular 70 RR was available with the 440 4bbl but for sure the Superbird was.
They came in both coupe and hardtop. I owned a 68 hardtop.
The original build of the 68 RR was only a post coupe with Belvedere based interior. The hardtop with Satellite interior was added during the year, and the Satellite interior became an option for the RR post coupe.
Chrysler was caught off guard by the Road Runner’s success; the sales forecast was for only 4,000 cars. They ended up selling 10x that amount, and could have sold more if they’d had the capacity.
In fact, in addition to Plymouth adding the hardtop version, Dodge had to scramble to get the Super Bee into production for 1968 because Dodge execs initially thought the Road Runner was going to be a loser.
To me, there is “original” and there is “not”. The wheel and tire choice takes it to “not”, so the original source of the rest of it becomes a bit beside the point. These are good looking cars, but the best view of the ‘69s is the rear quarter view, as the taillight treatment is really well done on the ‘69s, IMHO.
These are really large for a “mid-size”, big on the outside and not very big on the inside. I like the ‘69s, but one can see how Detroit left the door wide open for space and engine efficient middle-market foreign cars to waltz right in and steal the show. The base models (Belvederes and Satellites) just didn’t cut it for mid-level daily driver duties.
Such a contrast to Mopar’s flashes of common sense in the early fifties and sixties, when they went for smaller on the outside but bigger on the inside. But unfortunately that didn’t sell, so…..(sigh)
What I think of the wheels: I like them, but they’d look so much better if the outer one inch of the rim were painted flat black to make the tire sidewall look taller and thus more authentic. I understand the frustration regarding original wheels on older cars though; I’m already finding there’s a paucity of high-quality tires for my 2007 VW with 15 inch rims; things get really dire if you need 13 or 14s.
Those wheels work well with the car and help to keep it “in theme”, whereas the Cadillac pickup the other day was more polarizing in that aspect (I liked the pickup, disliked the wheels, but it’s not my car so who cares). Basically it passes the test wherein I would happily drive this without further changes but not the Caddy. Original or tribute, this car looks great from here.
I’m fine with the wheels aesthetically, but to me they say “GTX”. A RoadRunner should have steel wheels.
Could be real, my thinking is RoadRunners didn’t really start peaking to current values until relatively recently and it’s not unlikely one of its owners dumped the 383 for a 440 at some point with focus towards performance rather than investment opportunity, and it’s state today is what investors might consider “unrestored” but too well kept to bother to restore.
I don’t mind the wheels, if you want to actually drive one of these cars briskly as intended having more rubber to grip and less sidewall flex is a very good thing, can always keep the factory Mag 500s and reproduction redlines in the garage
Looks great, I am fine if it is not a real RR as long as it is displayed and more importantly sold as such.
The wheels are also fine, they look similar in style to the Road Wheels and allow for more tire selections. It is challenging to find 14 in tires these days. Plus, if the owner upgraded the brakes smaller wheels wouldn’t fit. Here, the tires and likely brake upgrades are safety features.
Chrysler got a great deal on the WB licensing for the RR, including use in commercials and so forth. There’s a nice story by Hemmings I think and YT videos on the subject.
I don’t like larger rims in general due to the negative effect on the ride. These aren’t as
massive and garish as some and look fairly appropriate.
The big wheels, the red paint and the 440 emblems tell me that it was, in a previous life, a medium metallic green Belvedere with a 318 and a Torqueflite on the column.
Does anyone else over 60 remember many red Road Runners back in the day? The ones I remember were those multiple shades of Mopar metallic green or blue, gold/bronze or pastel yellow – pretty much the same colors that were on Valiants and Fury IIIs. Who wants “arrest me red” when you buy a car like a Road Runner? People bought those for go, not for show, and the fewer speeding tickets, the better.
Out here in California the Roadrunners were often orange or red. Very few of any other color if my memory holds. Never seen one in gold, bronze or yellow. Most GTX’s (the fancy Roadrunner) were blue out here, with white or black vinyl tops.
No, I don’t recall a lot of “loud” colors.
I had one it was “Grampaw Green,” in and out. lol
It was a short timer and I don’t recall a lot about the car or the deal.
The purple “Voice of the RoadRunner” labeled horn is about all that boils up.
Olds and Pontiac I recall more of in loud colors, but that’s just one of those hunches that Paul likes to tear me apart for, so strike it from the record. lol
With so many mild and wild colours to choose from, who would pick red? Too predictable.
Red was also relatively common up in BC too. I purchased a red ’69 from a friend that was a Chrysler tech late in 1970. Post body, black interior bench seat 383 4speed. Wish I had it now.
There were 7,063 Belvedere coupes built in 1969 vs. 33,743 Road Runner coupes, so I think the odds are that it did begin life as a RR. Only the VIN would tell the real tale.
I remember very few red or orange Road Runners back when they were new. But the one that sticks in my mind was a B5 Blue 69 convertible with black top and blue interior and whitewall tires with full wheel covers. I was working on a school project with a classmate and his Dad picked us up from school to drive us home in it. It’s the only Road Runner I’ve ever ridden in. This would have been in the spring of 1969.
I could certainly believe it is a clone, but Stumack makes a good point that the RR was a relatively high volume super car. There are a lot of them out there and they are not so super valuable as to keep people from modifying them. Now an original 440 car would be much more valuable than a regular 383, so my bet is that it is a real 383 Road Runner with a transplanted 440.
I find aftermarket modern wheels on muscle cars pleasing if they complement the car well, though my personal tastes run more to stock wheels. I am not a fan of modern large wheels that mock the style of originals, though. They look distracting to me, like pick one: original or custom but don’t try to split the baby with big diameter wheels trying to look like something they are not.
Although Chrysler, more than Ford or GM, had a penchant for ‘anything goes’ during the sixites, the 440-4v Road Runner is one of those mythic unicorns that never originated from the factory, but it’s easy to understand why some people think they did.
For starters, there was the 440-6v. I would imagine a few of those were converted to 440-4v. It would be easy to tell on a 1969 with the fiberglass lift-off hood, but not so much with the later 1970-71 that used the Air Grabber hood which was available across the board.
And with all of the GTX equipment easily swapped onto a Road Runner, it was no problem to slap on 440 emblems, whether the engine was actually a 440 or not.
Then there’s the story about Maryland-bound 1970 Superbirds. The Superbird came with a 440-4v as standard equipment, but Maryland did not recognize the NASCAR nose-cone as a bumper. So, Maryland Plymouth dealers converted the doghouses of their Superbirds back into Road Runners, so there were a few of those floating around (although they’ve all been surely converted back into much more valuable Superbirds by now). And there were likely a few non-Maryland dealers who did the same thing in an attempt to more the hard-to-sell Superbirds, too.
Finally, while the GTX model was technically discontinued as a separate model for 1972, it was ‘then’ possible to order up a 440-4v in a Road Runner from 1972-1974. But they were classified as a ‘Road Runner/GTX’, complete with car emblems that said exactly that.
What’s interesting is these 440-4v anamolies only apply to the Road Runner, and not the Super Bee. You never hear about a factory 440-4v Super Bee, but there are sure lots of stories about an early 440-4v Road Runner built at the factory. But it just didn’t happen.
Roadrunners were exclusively coupes at first. Hardtops came later in the 1968 production run. Convertibles were introduced for 1969. Where was this photo taken? It looks like it has a retro 7 digit version of the old 6 digit 1963-1969 California black plates. I don’t recognize the street scene. I’m wondering why it’s parked in a red tow away zone. I can’t read the engine call-out so I’ll take your word it says 440.
I’ve spent some time shopping for a decent condition original 68 RoadRunner that I can afford. There are lots of projects in conditions that range from pretty bad to “you have got to be kidding me.” Lots of FrankenCars out there, assembled from parts of several cars or completely stripped rotted hulks with a few new parts screwed on.
This one could be a real RR with an engine swap. It wasn’t unheard of years ago and there is now a real trend to build 440s taking advantage of the long production run for use in motor homes which ended in 1978. There was a subsequent run of RB crate engines from Mopar. I think those have been discontinued for a while but there is healthy support for the 440.
It could also be a 383 RR with 440 call-outs, it’s easy enough. It could also be a Belvedere/Satellite in RR drag. Check the VIN.
My opinion on the wheels is mixed. I prefer RoadRunners with steel wheels or 5 spoke Americans. The Chrysler road wheels are okay and I can appreciate the larger diameter aftermarket versions but these are so large and the tire sidewalls are so short all I think about is how harsh the ride will be when you add it onto the already stiff stock ride. You will feel every seam and joint on the highway with your ass. I would want more sidewall height.
As far as colors went, B5 blue was very popular in the Bay Area. Mopar had many shades of green, variations on on Medium Green Poly and there were lots of green RRs running around here. Gold, Bronze, Orange and Yellow, both sunshine and ochre were also fairly common. Bright red was rare in my experience.
The building behind the car is City Hall in Reno, NV.
If it was a Satellite/Belvedere they did a good job of covering up any trace of the Belvedere/Satellite nameplate on the fender just aft of the headlights.
The hood paint was optional. For 1968, it was a large patch centered in the middle. 1969 got two large patches on each side of the hood.
But an even bigger deviation are the blacked-out headlight bezels: they’ve been done incorrectly on this car. The ‘real’ ones aren’t completely blacked-out and have some chrome touches. And I’m not all that sure that any Road Runners came from the factory with chrome trim around the wheel wells, either.
And it’s definitely true that the 1969 Road Runner was the most common year with the highest production: it was the number one selling musclecar for that year (84,820), beating out number two Chevelle SS396 and driving the heretofore number one GTO all the way down to number three. One-in-four 1969 Plymouth intermediate-sized cars was a Road Runner, and it was so popular, Chrysler executive (and eventual co-CEO) John Ricardo wanted to expand the line to include sedans and station wagons.
I thought something about those headlights didn’t look quite right somehow, but put it down to my ignorance of the real thing.
Still my all time favourite car and has been since I saw a picture of one when I was about 16.
Don’t particularly like the larger wheels on this, but understand the reasons for them,
I think they look best with Magnum 500s, but wheels are the easiest items to change so not an issue.
Don’t care if its real or not, its just beautiful, I like the coupes (with pillars), best as the original cartoon ads featured them and you still get the same gorgeous roof as the hardtop.
Like this !!!
Wow! Surprisingly close look!
Classic!
Imagine if we still advertised cars like this. Photoshop a Hellcat into the picture….. 🙂
Cartoonish embellishments in advertising with relatively sedate and very attractive real world styling? Nah, today cars need to look like the cartoon in the flesh!
I’ll take it just the way she sits… wheels are like ladies shoes….. u choose and wear the ones u want until the next party. Back in the day a set of Keystone Klassics was my pic and still would be a consideration for me. But I don’t have a RR so my talk is cheap! Lol
It might not be original, but I love it anyway.
Only thing I don’t like is the Arrest-me Red paint. They had some pretty neat colour names, but I don’t suppose they called it that.
I’d prefer something like…..
As someone who was almost of driving age at that time, there were no 440 engined RoadRunners in1968. All RoadRunners were 383. The GTX, which I seem to recall debuted in 1967 with a 440. The GTX was a rather premium Plymouth sedan. The RoadRunner, OTOH, was a budget “muscle car.”
And 426 Hemi don’t forget
The wheels: No, no, no not ever. Pure visual blight.
Take them off immediately and give them to some kid in your neighborhood. Put on -anything- that was around in the late ’60’s era.
Correction, to be clear, the original RoadRunner utilized the same body as the 2-door Satellite sedan.
Nice car !.
Wheels are an incredibly subjective thing, I too prefer stock or close to it looking , these aren’t ugly .
The “Beep-Beep” horn was made by Sparton and was just a regular forklift horn in lavender with a decal .
I found a N.O.S. one at a swap meet in the 1980’s, apparently I and the seller were the only ones there who knew what it was or cared, my son took it against my wishes and now claims he doesn’t remember .
I wonder if he sold it or what .
-Nate