Joeb427

iTrader: (1)

Highly optioned too.

LexBob2

A $50 coupon, I'm in. $2.700 is about the cost of a factory nav system these days. I wonder what it would be worth today in good condition?

mmarshall

Thanks. That brought back memories. When I was in high school, the Road Runner and its bird-graphics and beep-beep-horn was one of my favorite muscle-cars, though it was not as well-built as GM competitors.

If Chrysler did a retro version today, I'd buy one, though the sister Dodge Charger R/T just isn't quite the same.

Sulu

Funny how "Radio, Heater" were once considered as options.

I too remember the Road Runner as a little kid.

Autoplak

As I remember,
1. No passenger side view mirror
2. Radio was AM only with 6 push buttons
3. Rubber floor mats. Not carpet
4. Front bench seats. Not power
5. Air conditioning was the side vent windows
6. You could do engine work with normal kitchen utensils.
7. Roll up windows
8. Individual push door locks
9. Full size spare
Did I miss anything?

Aron9000

Weren't seat belts optional? I'm sure by 1969 they were standard, but before Nadar published his book, I don't think your standard 1962 Falcon or Biscayne came with them.

Also $2695 equals about $18,300 in 2015 dollars. Cars were cheaper back then, but then they didn't last nearly as long either.

Joeb427

iTrader: (1)

True!
100K miles was a lot.

Vehicles weren't very good in accident safety back then either.

I remember as a kid,my uncle was a milkman and he would stand up in his milk truck and drive.

mmarshall

1.You manually-adjusted your driver's side mirror with your hand outside...no power-motors or remote-manual cable. Most cars didn't have mirrors on each side yet.

2. Wipers were either on/off (sometimes 2-speed). There was no intermittent-function, which was annoying in light rain.

3. Recirculating-ball steering was imprecise, slow, and developed some free-play across the middle with age.

4. Drum brakes sometimes had to be hand-adjusted as they wore.

5. Breaker-point ignition meant tune-ups and replacement of a number of ignition parts every 5000-10,000 miles......a PITA.

6. Carburators often meant drivability problems with fuel-mixture and fuel-flow.....mostly on cold starts. (IMO, even more of a PITA than tune-ups).

7. No clearcoat on the paint meant constant waxing (and paint color coming off in the rag and on your hands)

8. Lead in the gas sometimes fouled spark plugs.

9. Heavier-weight oils and weaker batteries sometimes meant jump-starts in the winter.

10. Nice side-swivel front vent-windows sometimes lessened the need for air conditioning. Also, rear windows rolled all the way down.

11. In most cases, you 2-way manually-adjusted your seats, and the entire front bench seat moved forward and back, just one way, in one piece. Some cars came with buckets, but the majority were bench. Even on the Road Runner, a bench was standard, with optional buckets. Most American cars had no rake (seat-back-angle) adjustment until years later, though with some luxury cars, the entire seat tilted up or down in a 4-way or 6-way adjustment.

But, on the other hand, those cars, back then, had personality, and became a part of you like it is difficult for many of today's cars, with their appliance-like character, to do so. Driving, of course, was also much nicer, with uncrowded roads and nicer scenery from less development. The bad part, of course, was relatively poor engineering and lack of reliability in those vehicles.

The Plymouth Dodge 225 (3.7L) Slant-Six and 318 (5.3L) V8 might (?) run the better part of 150-200K if well-maintained, but, with the possible) exception of the Chevy Stovebolt straight-6s used in the Checker Marathon taxicabs back then, few other engines could reliably exceed 100K mles. That was considered a benchmark. Most other engines started showing signs of ring/valve/bearing wear around 70-80K, with resulting increases in oil-use. (you learned to check the oil every time you filled up with gas, and often carried a few extra quarts with you in the trunk, or bought them as needed).

Although lap-only belts were sometimes optional before then on some cars, separate lap and shoulder belts became standard in 1968 by the Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966, which, as you note, Nader helped push through Congress. Later on, to help unclog the mess of spaghetti in both front and back seats with all those separate belts, the three-point system we have today became standard.

The car I first learned to drive on, BTW......a 1963 Plymouth, had no belts at all.

Fizzboy7

A new car that was "ready to run?" I'd hate to think there was an alternative to that.

mmarshall

The term "Ready to Run" meant it was ready, right from the factory, to take on its competition at the drag strip. Gotta remember, that was at the height of the American muscle-car era in the late 60s, when the only thing that mattered with many cars was the 0-60 and quarter-mile turns. If it handled like a battleship on cornering.......for the most part, nobody cared, unless you were into European sports-cars.

(BTW, the Road Runner's primary competitors in those days were the Chevelle SS, Pontiac GTO, Ford Torino GT/Cobra, and its own corporate brothers Plymouth GTX, Dodge Charger R/T and Super Bee R/T. The Mercury Cyclone CJ, Buick GS400, Olds 442, and AMC "The Machine" Rebel were also competitors, but less of a factor).

Aron9000

I'd argue the Road Runner's biggest competitor was the Nova, not the Chevelle, because they were the cheap, no frills, light weight machine from GM. I've driven a 1969 Nova 396 SS, and your assessment of nobody really cared about the rest of the car except what was under the hood and quarter mile times was pretty accurate.

Sulu

I remember those separate lap belts and shoulder belts. Those seatbelts did not retract, so the lap belts -- similar to non-retracting airplane lap belts -- lay all over the front seats. The shoulder belts, never being used, would remain folded and tucked into its holder along the roof-line, immediately above the front door. If those shoulder belts were used, they would have to be untucked, unfolded and pulled down from their storage location; after use, it would take some effort to refold and retuck, so would have remained hanging as spaghetti, as Mike mentioned.

Thanks to Volvo, that developed the modern 3-point seatbelt, we no longer have to worry about those spaghetti seat belts.

mmarshall

No. Actually, the Nova SS, being Chevy's domestic high-performance compact, competed not against the Road Runner (which was a mid-sized coupe by 1960s standards), but against Plymouth/Dodge's smaller compact Dart/Demon/Duster 340 (a few of them had the larger 383 stuffed in, but it was not a popular option because the 340 gave as good or better performance with less weight and bulk). Ford didn't really have a true high-performance competitor at that time in this compact class, as they chose to keep their Falcon and Maverick compacts more mundane and pedestrian....although a later Maverick "Grabber" debuted, which was more show than go. AMC competed in the compact high-performance class with the Rambler Scrambler and its patriotic red-white/blue paint-scheme, but found few buyers.

I grew up with these cars....and went through high school with them, as did most of my friends. I liked those cars, just like any normal teen-ager of the time. Unlike many teens of the era, though, I also liked big, full-sized, heavy, soft-riding cars that pampered your cush in a way that today's smaller, lighter (luxury) cars with firmer chassis/suspension/wheels generally don't. In fact, when I was in college and bought a BIG Buick used, I got some ribbing from some of my friends about having a Grampa-mobile. I loved it, though.

There was a down-side to those 60s-vintage muscle cars, though. They proved quite dangerous in the hands of careless, immature, over-eager, or unskilled drivers (which, unlike me, some of my friends were). Their high accident rate led to many injuries/deaths, skyrocketing insurance premiums, and their atrocious gas mileage helped lead to the first gas crisis of the early 1970s.

(A friend of mine at the time, for example, had a purple Dodge Challenger 440 tri-carb six-pack that, driving around town with it, averaged 96 miles on a tank of premium leaded 100-octane fuel....and the tank held over 20 gallons, which meant less than 5 miles to a gallon. ).

92 SC400

^^^ That MPG is crazy. My Dad used to brag about getting around 11-12 MPG in his '70 Challenger w/340... Your friend put that to shame! haha

mmarshall

That's partly because he was often doing burnouts to show off....that 440+6 had enough torque to pull a house off its foundation...and, under full-throttle, it was sucking gas through three two-barrel carburetors all at once. It had so much torque that the wide-oval rear factory tires often couldn't handle it....the rear tires would just sit there and spin, and the car would go nowhere for several seconds. The 340 on your dad's car, in contrast, was a smaller engine, weighed less, balanced the front/rear weight bias a little more evenly (the big cast-iron 440 put all the weight up front, away from traction on the rear wheels), and, of course, the 340 got better gas mileage. That's why the 340 was so popular.

(And if you think THAT was a lot of gas-guzzling, consider that some versions of the Chrysler 426 Hemi and other comparably-sized V8s from Ford and GM had two four-barrel carbs on them. You don't want to know how much it cost to keep them refueled).