1971 Plymouth Road Runner: A New Fuselage, Two Horsepower Numbers and 55 Hemis

Plymouth's 1971 Satellite brochure introduced its performance intermediates under a photograph of Richard Petty's winged No. 43 Plymouth at speed on a banked track. Below it sat the new GTX and a red Road Runner hardtop, and the copy kept the old joke alive: the Road Runner was "our low-cost high-performer (Beep-Beep)," with a heavy-duty suspension and fat bias-belted tires. The picture at the top of the spread was last season's car. The Road Runner beneath it had a new body, a new engine chart and, as the year's numbers would show, a much smaller audience than the one that had made it Plymouth's surprise hit.

Chrysler's intermediates took a swoopy, fuselage-style redesign for 1971, in Ate Up With Motor's description. Old Cars Weekly notes that the Road Runner received totally revised sheet metal shared with the Satellite Sebring, and a grille that looked like a big loop around the front. The model also narrowed. The brochure's model chart lists the Road Runner only as a two-door hardtop, V8 only, whereas Plymouth had built 1970 Road Runners as 24,944 hardtops, 15,716 coupes and 834 convertibles, by Over-Drive's count. The pillared coupe that had been the stripped street racer's natural body and the convertible that had once drawn buyers away from the GTX were both gone.^1,2,3

The engine chart on the brochure's specification page is the most revealing document of the year, because it prints two horsepower columns side by side: gross, and net as installed. The Road Runner's standard 383 four-barrel is listed at 300 gross and 250 net on 8.5:1 compression. The optional 440 with three two-barrel carburetors is listed at 385 gross and 330 net on 10.3:1, and the optional 426 Hemi, with the Air Grabber, at 425 gross and 350 net on 10.2:1. The GTX's standard 440 four-barrel, 370 gross and 305 net, was not offered in the Road Runner at all. Plymouth was already showing buyers the smaller numbers.

One engine buyers actually received is missing from that chart. The 1971 Plymouth B Body Registry's production table lists 1,681 Road Runners built with the 340, 438 with manual transmissions and 1,243 automatics, yet the brochure's engine table has no 340 row. The registry does not name the record behind its figures, and the brochure does not say when its table was set, so the gap is best left as it stands: the small-block Road Runner existed in quantity, and the catalog printed for the year did not list it. For a car built on the idea of a big engine in a cheap body, the 340 was a telling addition.⁴

The production figures show how far the market had moved. The registry counts 14,218 Road Runners for 1971, 13,664 for the United States and 554 for Canada and export, against the roughly 41,000 of 1970. Its US engine table accounts for all 13,664: 11,682 with the 383, 1,681 with the 340, 246 with a 440 and 55 with the Hemi, plus four Hemi cars for Canada. The 383 therefore powered about 85 percent of US cars. Old Cars Weekly prints 7,952 as its 383 figure, which matches the registry's 383-automatic row rather than the 383 total, and it calls all 246 of the 440 cars Six-Packs, consistent with the brochure's chart.^4,1,2

The transmission split was just as lopsided. The registry divides the 383 cars into 3,730 manuals and 7,952 automatics, the 340s into 438 and 1,243, and the 440s into 137 manuals and 109 automatics. The Hemi was almost evenly split, 28 manuals and 27 automatics among the 55 US cars. Only among the rarest engines did the manual gearbox hold its own. Old Cars Weekly gives the Road Runner's list price as $3,120 early in the year, rising to $3,147 around May 31. The brochure's options chart shows what that price bought as standard, heavy-duty brakes and heavy-duty suspension, and what it left to the order form, including the Air Grabber, hood pins, tachometer and front and rear spoilers.^4,2

The new body invited new color and trim. The brochure's paint chips include In-Violet Metallic, Sassy Grass Green, Bahama Yellow, Tor-Red and Curious Yellow, each marked optional at extra cost. Inside, the standard Road Runner seat was an all-vinyl bench with individually adjustable head restraints; pleated all-vinyl buckets were optional, and the Rallye instrument cluster was shared with the GTX. Plymouth's brochure copy insisted that "even our lowest-priced performance car" came through with proper padding. The Road Runner that had once sold itself on what it left out was now being described partly by what it put in.

The period tests suggest the car remained quick but not spectacular. Old Cars Weekly, summarizing Motor Trend's March 1971 issue, reports a 383 Road Runner with 3.91 gears reaching 60 mph in 6.7 seconds and running the quarter-mile in 14.84 seconds at 94.5 mph, and a 440 car with 4.10 gears also reaching 60 in 6.7 seconds but running 15.02 seconds at 96 mph. Those times belong to the two test cars as reported secondhand, not to every Road Runner. The same article says Road Test magazine named the Road Runner its U.S. Car of the Year, a second magazine honor in three years for a model whose buyers were leaving.^2,1

Ate Up With Motor names the reason plainly: punitive insurance rates continued to take their toll. The upscale sibling suffered worse. The same registry counts only 2,942 GTXs for 1971, and Mopar Connection's retrospective puts 1971 Hemi GTX production at 30 cars, 11 with four-speeds and 19 with TorqueFlites. Together the two performance Satellites came to 17,160 cars for the year. The insurance explanation comes from a secondary history rather than from Chrysler's own sales analysis, but the direction of the numbers needs no interpretation.^1,4,5

On the racetrack, Plymouth's fortunes ran the other way. NASCAR's catalog of Richard Petty's victories records his third Daytona 500 win in 1971, his Atlanta win over Bobby Allison that made him the first stock-car driver credited with more than a million dollars in career winnings, the fall Richmond race that clinched his third championship, and a Texas finale won ahead of teammate Buddy Baker. Those results belong to Petty Enterprises' prepared race cars, not to any showroom Road Runner. The irony is hard to miss: in the season the brochure put Petty's Plymouth at the top of the page, only 55 US buyers ordered a Hemi Road Runner.^6,4