If Looney Tune’s Road Runner had its own car, it had to be super fast. After all, the Road Runner is one of the fastest birds in ‘biz. If you don’t want to believe us, just ask Wily Coyote. Going back, if the Road Runner had a car, it would be this one: the Plymouth Road Runner.

Named after the popular cartoon character, the Plymouth Road Runner had three generations of models tucked under its belt. Produced from 1968 to 1980, it was considered (just like its namesake) one of the fastest muscle cars around. How fast was it? Well, the first generation was able to hit the top speed of 105 mph in just 13 seconds covering ¼ miles, with the last generation being the slowest, achieving 88 mph in 16 seconds covering the same quarter-mile distance.

But what made the Plymouth Road Runner memorable was that Plymouth was able to incorporate the image and sounds of Looney Tune’s Road Runner into the car. To do this, Plymouth had to pay Warner Brother $50,000 (a hefty sum back then) to get the rights to use the character. This resulted in the Road Runner character appearing in various apparel released along with the muscle car.

The best though was how Plymouth incorporated the sound that the Road Runner made into the vehicle’s horns. Remember the “beep, beep” sound the character used? Well, Plymouth managed to develop a horn that sounded just like that for the car. So whenever owners blew their horns, it sounded like the Road Runner was telling the other driver to “get the (put your choice expletive here for that added effect) out of the way.” Again, Plymouth had to shell out a big sum of $10,000 just to have the sound produced. But overall, it was an amount worth paying.

Thanks to these characteristics, the Plymouth Road Runner managed to rise in popularity which has transcended even to this day. It has since appeared in an episode of The Simpsons, the movie The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift, and was even used by the character Shaft in some of his movies.

Source: Wikipedia