[Lee Stewart]

From the time Plymouth decided they wanted to sell a youth oriented inexpensive muscle car to the final prototype (shown here) was a scant 2 months - an unheard of short time in the auto industry. This included choosing a name, negotiations with Warner Bros for licensing the name, which took just a single day, all the art work for the ads and getting the signature horn.

Though Jack Smith is considered the "Father" of the Road Runner he was not the person who originally thought up the idea of the car. That credit goes to Brock Yates, a writer for Car & Driver. Robert S. Anderson (vice-president in charge of the Chrysler-Plymouth sales division) asked Brock, “What do I do to get the kids’ attention?” Brock’s advice was, “Take a car and just strip it down. Anything that isn’t essential, get rid of it. And then stuff the biggest engine you've got into it, so that car will sit at a red light and go: Vroom, vroom, vroom. All the other cars will see it, and they’ll be so frightened that they will run up alleys and hide. Do that car and you'll get their attention.”