A Real Petty Blue 1972 Plymouth Road Runner Survivor Just Hit the Market
A genuine Petty Blue 1972 Plymouth Road Runner has surfaced for sale in Texas, and it is the kind of honest, documented survivor you can drive while you slowly bring it back.
Offered by American Steel Classics in Celeste, this RM23-coded car still wears its factory TB3 Basin Street Blue paint, better known in Mopar circles as Petty Blue, and keeps its numbers-matching 340 small-block and 727 automatic intact.
Real RM23 Road Runner With Matching-Number 340
The VIN decodes as a real RM23 Road Runner, and the seller says both the 340 V8 and three-speed TorqueFlite are numbers-matching to the car. In 1972, the 340 was the small-block performance choice in the lineup, slotted below the new 400 and the 440 4-barrel that effectively carried the old GTX torch.
Factory spec is classic early-’70s B-body: blue bench-seat interior, column shift, white canopy vinyl top and a white roof stripe over that Petty Blue bodywork. It was ordered with power steering and air conditioning too. If you want to see what the earlier, more hardcore version looked like when new, it is worth comparing it to a clean 1970 Plymouth Road , or to the winged big brother in the form of a 1970 Plymouth Superbird.
Documents, Metal And Patina All Line Up
What really sets this ’72 apart is how much of its paper trail is still with it. The ad notes an original warranty card with the first owner’s name and the selling dealer in Portales, New Mexico, plus the original “facts and info” sheet with the VIN printed, emissions booklet, Chrysler brochures, engine rebuild paperwork from 1990 and other receipts. The original VIN tag, fender tag, broadcast sheet, door sticker and partial VIN stampings are all said to be present.
Structurally, the seller calls the car “very, very solid,” with rock-solid trunk floor, main floor, frame rails, rockers and cowl. Cosmetically, it looks like what it is: a well-preserved driver with worn original paint, light weathering and an interior that has aged but not been hacked up. It runs, drives, stops and steers, and is explicitly pitched as a “drive it while you fix it” project rather than a dead shell on four flats.
A More Attainable Way Into The Road Runner Story
The asking price sits in the high-teens, well below what you would expect to pay for a freshly restored high-compression ’70 or a wild movie-spec build. Celebrity-grade cars show how far you can go with the platform if money is no object.
This Petty Blue survivor is aimed at a different buyer though, someone who wants real history, matching numbers and rock-solid metal, but is happy to live with patina and chip away at the details between weekend drives.
