Junkyard Find: 1975 Plymouth Road Runner
We got an overview of Colorado’s Brain-Melting Junkyard yesterday, and today we’ll take a closer look at one of its residents. This is one of the rarest of Road Runner s, a one-year-only version that was based on the downsized B-Body Fury
The original 1968-70 Road Runner was quite a deal for muscle car shoppers; you got the same kind of absurd power as the Pontiac GTO and Ford Cobra Jet Torino, but cheaper. Plenty of these cars survive today, but most of us can’t afford a nice one (though a Road Runner-ized Belvedere could be built on a more limited budget). However, you can afford a genuine 1975 Road Runner… if you can find one.
The interior shows some Cordoba influence. I wonder if those buckets are covered in Corinthian Leather.
I always enjoy the simplicity of factory AM radios of the 1960s and 1970s. The crazy thing is how expensive car audio gear was back then; this radio was probably a $200 option.
The hood release was broken, so I didn’t get any shots of the smog-gear-strangled 318 or 360 that almost certainly lives in this car. 1975 model-year cars are emissions-exempt in most states, so it would be easy to upgrade this car to proper power levels.
Here’s the only thing I bought during my visit to this yard; I saw the Kansas Wheat Centennial license plate on this car and had to have it for garage decoration. Five bucks well spent!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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With a bit of attention, especially to the floors and interior, that would make an excellent weekend runabout.
What is that car doing in the junkyard? It seems restorable to me. N.A.D.A. now has the high retail value of 1975 Roadrunners at more than $20,000. I wonder how that car got to be junked so early. With 1975 license plates on it, could it really have been junked after less than a year? 11/16/2019