A 1975 Plymouth that is still roaming the roads in 2017 isn’t exactly a common sight. Between the issues going on within the company and the quality control issues that Chrysler Corporation experienced in the mid-to-late 1970s, it’s more likely that you’ll see a Hemi car on the street than you will a Satellite or Fury. Even rarer still is the one-year-only 1975 Road Runner. Based upon the B-car platform and sharing a two-door hardtop body with the “small Fury”, the 1975 Runner was a lot of lasts: it was the last RM21-coded Road Runner, it was the last Runner available with a big-block, and it was the last “intermediate” sized performance icon from Plymouth. The follow-up, the 1976 Volaré Road Runner, was little more than a tape-stripe package and a 360 that tried to act like it was tough.

7,183 1975 Road Runners were built, and without even bothering to look, it’s easy to assume that very, very few examples remain. So when I saw this bright green and black example parked underneath the trees at Beech Bend, I had to investigate. I’ve seen this car once before, at the Mopar Nats last year, and have seen it countless times while searching the model…it’s in the top listing for images on Google. Small wonder why…Dan Purcell’s Plymouth is striking to look at, and it’s unabashedly simple in execution: it’s meant to be a driver.

The custom hood callout, reminiscent of the 1971 Duster 340, is playing up a fairly stock 360 mill under the hood, hooked to an automatic on the column. In Dan’s own words, it’s not that wild, but when the Road Runner starts up, it barks with more enthusiasm that most 1975 cars can be bothered with making. The paint was chosen on a whim, and he’s freely open about admitting that some alcohol might have been involved in not only the color choice, but the application process. It’s a ten footer, but it works. The interior is all reskinned, so instead of the funky corded materials that ChryCo was using at the time, you have black vinyl that’s piped with matching green. It’s not stock, and that doesn’t bother Dan one bit. Another non-stock upgrade is in the dash: a 140-MPH speedometer raided from a police car. A rare factory tach is slated to be installed soon.

Dan had seen the car appear and disappear on eBay repeatedly before he finally made the call to bring the forlorn B-body into his garage. Everything, from tip to tail, has seen some kind of attention, and it’s certainly nowhere even close to being concours restored. But what is cool is that the car will never be that picture-perfect machine. Dan doesn’t look at his cars that way, least of all the Runner. If the car is on a trailer, it’s because something broke. The Runner wasn’t even supposed to be at the show, but it was pressed into service when his son’s car wouldn’t quit overheating.

Twenty years ago, this car would have been blasted because it was a reminder of the bad old days of what shouldn’t have been. It was a plucked Road Runner, with it’s horsepower a distant memory and it’s body a bloated shell of what once was. But now? When was the last time you saw one cruising up the road with a healthy burble emanating from the pipes? When was the last time you saw a lime-green anything out and about for any reason? Dan’s got other cars…if you look in the photos, the blue 1969 Satellite is his, too, and he just recently added a late-model Challenger next to his mid-2000s Dodge Charger Daytona, but the Road Runner visibly is one of his favorites. He might re-work the paint to be better, and little details here and there will be addressed as needed, but overall, he’s content to put miles on the clock and keep the Plymouth moving along.