Contemporary car shows are packed with restored muscle cars from the golden era, but what you see is a very small fraction of what automakers produced at the time. Many of these rigs are still rotting away in junkyards and barns, while some have already been scrapped.
It may seem hard to believe that someone would simply abandon a muscle car, but it wasn’t unusual back in the day. As the muscle car era faded away and most drivers shifted toward more fuel-efficient vehicles, many high-compression rigs were parked for good when fixing them became too expensive. Most began to resurface decades later with severe rust issues. This 1968 Plymouth Road Runner is one of them.
The Road Runner is quite a common barn/junkyard find. Plymouth’s entry-level muscle car at the time, the nameplate moved tens of thousands of units per year during the golden era. Specifically, Plymouth moved nearly 176,000 examples from 1968 to 1971. While the 1971 version is a bit scarcer (13,664 made), the 1968-1970 Road Runner is common in scrapyards.
This 1968 coupe didn’t end up in a junkyard, but that’s not to say it got a better fate. The previous owner opted to park it in a forested area on his property. Not only did it end up stuck between a few trees, but it also collected quite a few holes over the years. Or should I say decades because this Mopar has been sitting since the 1980s.
Documented by YouTube’s “Winged Anglers,” this Road Runner was rescued alongside other classics parked on the same property. The cars would have gone to the crusher otherwise, so Ted Stephens at Stephens Performance stepped in to save a few. In addition to the Road Runner, he picked a 1970 Dodge Coronet 500, a 1958 Plymouth Plaza, and a Chrysler New Yorker.
The 1968 Road Runner is obviously the most valuable and sought-after of the bunch, but the coupe emerged with several issues. Not surprisingly, after a few decades of full exposure to the elements, the car’s paint is rather crusty, while the floors are pretty much gone from sitting close to the swampy ground.
It’s not all terrible news, though. The vehicle appears to be complete inside and out and sports a cool color combo: Alpine White paint with a blue interior. Moreover, it still has a drivetrain, in this case, a 383-cubic-inch (6.3-liter) V8 paired with a three-speed automatic transmission. The engine appears to be original, which is good news for collectors.
Brand new for the 1968 model year, the Road Runner came with just two engine options that year. The 383-cubic-inch V8 was standard, while the 426-cubic-inch (7.0-liter) HEMI V8 was the only option. The 440-cubic-inch (7.2-liter) Six-Barrel became available in 1969. Most Road Runners were ordered with the standard 383, so this example is far from rare.
Of the 44,303 units sold in 1968, a whopping 43,294 were ordered with the base 383 V8. Of these, 28,138 units were pillared coupes, like this car, and 14,431 got the automatic gearbox. Needless to say, it’s not the kind of classic anyone would restore because it’s rare. But that doesn’t mean it should be crushed. I’m not getting my hopes up about seeing it returned to the road, but at least it’s out of the woods. Check it out in the video below.