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22 economist suntribune wheels thursday june 6 2002 the road runner owes its very existence to the craziness of the times as well as an ani mated bird that constantly outwitted and outran a fourlegged foe during the 1960s chrysler along with gm and ford pulled out all the stops to produce the biggest and baddest cars around after all there was a huge popu lation bulge of baby boomers weaned on guitars surf music and hot rods who loved cars preferably cool ones the ford mustangs overnight success easily proved that point now corporate atten tions turned to making cars that not only looked hip but went really really fast pontiacs 1964 gto was the first to cash in on this lucrative mixture of hor mones and horsepower the divisions engineering and marketing whiz kids led by the infamous john z delorean first came up with the ingenious idea of cram ming an intermediatesized coupe with a bigcube motor then shipping it off to kid- hungry dealers complete with an eye-pop- pingly low sticker price it didnt have to stop on a dime or provide crisp handling in fact few cars did the gtos primary mission was to light up its skinny biasply rear tires while making the anguished sounds of a thousand bellowing beasts under the hood chrysler corporation didnt exactly arrive late to the bigengine lowbuck party a year following the gtos birth intermediate dodge coronets and plymouth satellites could be optioned with blistering v8 power including on special order only the awesome 425- horse hemi however try as it might chrysler hadnt found the right recipe to get the kids flocking to dodge or plymouth show rooms meanwhile the competition gtos ss chevelles ford fairlanes and t tt tt tl w jlvljlnllnl jlldlv bleftbeepi the like were winning over the hearts and minds of millions of youthful speed worshippers just when it seemed they would never get in the game a spark of inspiration ignited within plymouths product plan ning department the idea was to take a strippeddown intermediate model fill it with a highoutput motor and send the resulting lowpriced concoction on its merry way the icing on the cake would be its cartoon character name the road runner and its unmistakable beep beep horn in fact the horn was probably the most exclusive and at 50000 to develop probably the most expen sive single ingredi ent that went into the road runner mix with a goal of less than 3000 actual base price was 2870 the 1968 road runner didnt come with many or any for that matter frills deleting equip ment that was not essential to meet ing the road runners price objectives made attaining the per formance criteria even easier less stuff means less weight which means a quicker faster car that han dles and stops bet ter all with less power there would be no air conditioning no bucket seats and no rolldown rear windows at least initially instead you got a thinlycovered bench seat columnshift automatic or floormounted fourspeed shift with no console and popout rear windows no one seemed to mind especially considering what came under the hood of the belvederebased body the standard engine for the road runner was a unique 335horsepower version of the 383 b motor hardly a technical marvel for the day but a stout basic performer it fea tured a mild camshaft moderate compres sion ratio largevalve 440cylinder heads and dual plane castiron intake manifold as well as castiron exhaust manifolds exiting into dual mufflers thats it nothing fancy it was good enough though when coupled to the lightweight unibody for quarter mile times in the high 14second range at 100 mph 160 kmh of course the underpinnings were of the heavyduty variety including hd drum brakes and torsion bars up front and chunky leaf springs and a heavyduty 8 34- inch rear end with 3231 gears out back although the road runner could be ordered with dressy rallye wheels standard- issue steel rims and dogdish hub caps were more than likely what you saw on the streets in 1968 but you had to be careful you see for 1 968 there was only one engine option the 425horsepower 426 hemi an option equaling one fifth of the base price of entire car the hemi ensured street supremacy for chrysler and gave the road runner nearly overnight legendary status the 375-horse- power 440 rb engine became available in 1 969 as did the convertible the 1968 road runner might not have represented the pinnacle of styling and technology for the day but it did offer budg etconscious performanceoriented buyers exactly what they wanted unfortunately its a simple recipe few automakers have been able to duplicate perhaps in the same manner as a fine wine for that reason the 1 96870 road runners have earned a very special place in the annals of automotive history and in our hearts how do we know a little bird told us jeff melnychuk is managing editor of wheelbase communications a world wide supplier of automobile news reviews and features mmm away lease financing 4bmth3 r mffl drive away lease mm no security deposit no money down no 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