Some of my history, Restored!
A super rare 1972 Roadrunner from my past!
1972 Plymouth Roadrunner factory equipped with:
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1972 Plymouth Roadrunner factory equipped with:
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As a student at Abilene Christian University, I put together a 426 max wedge engine in a 1973 Challenger and stored it to collect later as I set off to serve my country.
Well, in late 1984 I returned to pick it up and a prior owner of the max wedge wanted his engine back so badly, he offered up this 1972 roadrunner as trade. I had to think about this carefully, as I had a beautiful 1965 426 Plymouth Satellite I wished to install the max wedge into, but a precursory glance at the roadrunner told me it seemed to be a fairly unmolested, original (except paint and wheels. Gold paint? What were they thinking?) Roadrunner GTX 440 with all the luxury options, yet oddly contained a 4 speed with pistol grip shifter (Why the luxuries and a standard trans?). I decided to take the trade and flat trailered the car back from Texas to Colorado (I had the trailer for my Challenger, which was way too radical for such a trip).After arriving in Colorado, I had the car checked out thoroughly and found it was, indeed, an all-original numbers matching factory sunroof car. Wow!. Being still in the Navy, I continued to drive the car when I made it to Colorado, but that was not very often, so generally, the car tended to sit for a good portion in a protected environment. I never could trace the history of the car prior to the owner I received it from, someone spent an awful lot of money in 1972 for this thing!
I was then forced into a situation where I had to sell my vehicles (long story about corrupt people here), and to make the long story short I ended up selling off all my dreams very cheaply (luckily while I was in the Navy I was still building up my 1969 Dodge GTS 340). Sigh... the things we do for our country
Anyhow, I had been looking for the GTX for years afterward, and out of the blue in 2002 I get a call from a gentleman in Ohio who had just restored the car. Woo-hoo! I secretly wanted the car back but it's obvious it had developed a rust / high use problem after I had owned it (the man that bought it took it to the Washington area. Ugh! Thankfully though, it appears he kept everything intact). And being the new owner put in thousands and thousands of dollars not to mention buckets of sweat and blood, I didn't go down that alley.
January 2003 Mopar Collector's Guide featured this car on page 54 (with some obvious publisher's creative interpretations and typos).
A big, big thanks to David Bardeen who now owns the car, sounds like he's restoring it properly, and stirred up some good old memories (though now I feel really, really old!). The pictures of the car with gold paint and wheels (yes, that's how I received it - yuck!) were taken by me, all of the new pictures are courtesy of David, as now it's His car (wow, it hurts just saying that!).
| Following Photos were taken in the mid 80's when I owned it. | ) |
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| Following Photos courtesy of David Bardeen, but optimized and reduced for the web | ) |
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| And of course, the Mopar Collector's Guide and a couple of pictures from it. |  |
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