Sometimes these things find me. Last Sunday, I had innocently sauntered back behind this mechanics garage near my home outside Cleveland, Ohio, to get a closer look at the five-to-ten-acre lot that's being cleared for, of all things, a self-storage facility. Imagine my delight when I saw this 1971 Plymouth Road Runner, one of my all-time favorite MOPAR's, just sitting back here like a patient waiting for the doctor to pop into an examining room.
Just like that my attention went from lamenting how a mini forest was being obliterated to slobbering over this ancient Chrysler B-body. I like all 1971-1974 Road Runners but these pre-1973 safety bumper models are my favorite. What's something like this worth? And what would I pay for it if it was? Seeing how insane this used car market is, to say nothing of how hyper inflated the market is for "classic" cars, I'd say at least $7,500.
Yeah. As if. I did my research and I found I was way off. These things, like many a pre-1973 anything, are worth a literal boat load. NADA pegs this low retail at $13,750. Average retail $37,600, high retail $60,900. Tiiiiim-berrr! There goes my bank account.
Nothing looks particularly scary about this thing that money can't fix. Not the puddles of coolant, oil and transmission fluid underneath it. Not even the blue plastic semi-tarps telling me the interior is probably stinky and full of mold and mildew; I didn't open either door as I have to assume there's cameras everywhere back here. Although, that small Philips head screw in the bezel right there tells me this car probably didn't get the TLC it should have over the last fifty-one years. How could anyone do that? Sorry. Fanboy me talking as I think this one special car.
Chrysler's late and on occasion pretty good if not great Plymouth division built what they called a "Road Runner" between 1968 and 1980. They paid Warner's Brothers a licensing fee to use the cartoon likeness of their Road Runner. Wylie E. Coyote too in certain applications. So, if you've ever wondered, the cartoon came first. A special horn could blurt "Meep-Meep" like the Road Runner did when he was taunting Wylie in the shorts.
At first a "stripper", performance orientated two-door sedan based on the Belvedere, for 1971, Road Runner was redesigned using Chrysler's at-the-time current fuselage design ethos and shared its sheet metal and underpinnings with the also new for-'71 Satellite two-door. Unlike the 1968-1970 boxy, Belvedere based Road Runners, the 1971-1974 models didn't share any sheet metal with their four-door versions. While still a "performance" car, the bargain basement pricing along with the bare bones axiom was discontinued. Along with the swoopy sheet metal, Road Runners became more elaborately equipped, dare I say "luxurious".
Funny, I've never been a fan of full-size Chrysler "fuselages" but there's something about these intermediates I love. Enough to drop more than ten-grand on one's that a basket-case? Oh, of course not.
Sadly, these sold poorly. Chrysler, while not nearly as tiny as AMC. was nonetheless all but a niche purveyor compared to Ford and GM and it's said their loyal, conservative proletariat were not fans of these cars. What's more, insurance premiums were skyrocketing on anything construed as a performance car not to mention emissions and safety regulations strangling the fun out of everything too. They were terrible on gas as well but Chrysler was deep-sixing these cars long before the OPEC embargo happened in the fall of 1973.
For 1975 only, "Road Runner" was based on the new-for-1975, personal-luxury-car themed Plymouth Fury two-door that was essentially Plymouth's version of the Chrysler Cordoba. Chrysler-Plymouth dropped the Fury based Road Runner after 1975 using it as a trim package on the new-for-1976 Plymouth Volare that slogged through the end of the Seventies in relative obscurity if not infamy.
Something tells me someone bought this, and had it trailer-ed back here so the shop can go through it telling the buyer what it needs. Along with its mechanicals needing to be sorted, it'll need glass work, a paint job and who knows what on the interior. Despite being fairly rust-free, not a given up here in northeast Ohio, the bill to get it at least to "average retail" is going to be steep. I'd say at least., all in, $40,000. What with the purchase cost, I'd have a hard time getting my head around the value proposition of this car. And someone dropping the dark side of $50,000 on something like this is going to want it original and unrestored.
As they, the emotionless experts say, don't buy an old car and then restore it, buy one that's already been restored. You'll never get your money back. Especially these days.
Fun fact, despite what the Warner Brothers cartoon series would have you believe, Coyotes are actually twice as fast as road runners. Coyotes have been timed up to forty-three-miles per hour. The fastest road runners can run approximately twenty-miles-per-hour.
No comments:
Post a Comment