If you hadn't guessed, my name is Ryan and I am the proud owner of a '71 Plymouth Road Runner.
There are many, many powerful thoughts and memories that emerge when trying to put together a concise bit of info for this section. So here goes...
hang on and try to picture this.
December 17, 1970 was the day my 71 rolled off the line in St. Louis, Missouri. That was a little over a year
before I was born. Regardless, the eventual junction and place in time
that I have with the "bird" as many have grown to call it,...was undeniable.
My Uncle David purchased the bird used sometime in 1972. He piloted the bird for approximately two years
before selling it to my other uncle, Charles. I never got to know my uncle "Chuck", as he was called. He died in a tragic snowmobile accident in 1975, but his legacy lived on and many stories loom from it.
I've been told he'd never give up when he was behind the wheel,
he'd rather take the engine to the outer limits and risk scattering it than concede to the car trying to overtake him. If something were to happen,
he'd repair it...no big deal. Luckily the 383 withstood
whatever RPM it was beckoned to in the glory days and took the bird wherever it was going. Ask anyone who rode or who was behind the bird,.. there's something about that
third gear! I recall a story that my uncle Ray told, who had a 70 GTO at the time. That GTO had a 400 with supposedly 50 more horses than the Plymouth. He was taken by surprise one day as the road runner came up fast and then screamed around him. When Ray saw the bird coming, he mashed the pedal to the floor
and had that Pontiac screaming as he saw two quick puffs of spent black fuel smoke out the tailpipes when the bird engaged third gear. That was it, as the orange mopar edged farther and farther ahead...it wasn't going to be caught.
After My uncle's passing, My father Fred took over ownership of the bird. It was the daily transportation to work for my parents
during a tough economic time in the 70's. After a while it became mostly my mother Rose's car. She drove it to work for several years.
I can remember getting dropped off for school, and watching the wile bunch oogle over it.
Finally in the mid 80's after the bird became tired in many respects, it was decided to park the 71 and embark on a full restoration.
The restoration became an enduring, consuming event that may have tried the patience but not the determination. The body was stripped,
reworked, reconstructed and painted all in a little garage in northeastern Pennsylvania by people not paid by cash,...but by pride.
That is what makes this story complete. Every aspect of the restoration was done by my Dad, my Mom and myself....with a couple other family members and friends lending a hand from time to time. I graduated high school in 1990, and my parents gave me the keys to the bird.
There could be no greater gift I could have received, I was humbled and moved. This car has always been a source of
great pride and heritage for me.
Now-a-days the bird sits garaged & covered, waiting for a local show or a sunny Sunday ride through the Pennsylvania countryside.
The roads this car has driven, the people it's carried, and the memories that abound when it's seen or ridden in, are
powerful images indeed. Every memory that has been written or lived gets passed on to the next generation, my children, and that is what it's all about!
