Vintage Cars: Vintage Plymouth, beep beep, vintage plymouth

Question
My husband and two sons recently restored a 1968 Plymouth GTX. My husband insists that there is no such car as a Roadrunner GTX. He says the GTX came first and the Roadrunner was a stripped down version that came after as a cheaper model and the two are separate cars. Is this true? Thank you

Answer
Donna, how I hate having to choose sides when it comes to questions like this, BUT- your husband is absolutely right.  The GTX was Plymouth's response to Chevy's Malibu SS396 and the Pontiac GTO.  Although youth-oriented, by 1968 these cars were becoming unaffordable to the very group they were supposed to appeal to.  Plymouth re-thought the equation and realized the main appeal of these cars was performance, so the Road Runner was developed around one thing- performance- and stripped out all the rest.  The first Road Runner was actually a 2-door sedan (or "pillared hardtop" as Plymouth's version was sometimes referred to), with the hardtop version coming later.  The car was SO plain that Plymouth felt it needed something to get the kids' attention, so the Road Runner character was adopted to make the car more interesting, turning it int an instant conversation piece.  The "beep-beep" horn was a touch of genius, IMHO.  Within a couple years, the competition had their own version of the Road Runner, including the GTO Judge, Heavy Chevy and the Dodge Super Bee.  I guess nothing succeeds like success!