When it was new, this 1968 Plymouth GTX would have been a car that commanded respect on the street. It is 53-years since it rolled off the production line, but this classic could still hold its head high in modern muscle ar company. It is a survivor that presents well and is now looking for a new home. Located in Penryn, California, you will find the GTX listed for sale here on eBay. There have been no bids since the listing opened at $65,000, but 70 people are watching the No Reserve auction.
The GTX presents nicely for a classic of this age. The owner admits that the vehicle has received a repaint in the past in its original Electric Blue. The panels look remarkably straight, and the owner claims that the car has never had any accident or rust repairs. That means that we’re looking at all genuine Mopar steel in this beauty. It seems that the GTX has spent its life in California, and that is good news when it comes to the question of rust. There are a couple of spots of surface corrosion inside the trunk, but these are of no huge concern. Fixing those would take little time and would cost peanuts. It also appears that this is the only corrosion issue of any type in the GTX, with the whole car looking remarkably clean and sound. The trim and chrome appear to be in good order, while there are no problems with the glass.
This Plymouth’s party piece can be found when we lift the hood. This GTX is no shrinking violet, with an engine bay that is full of Hemi goodness. This is the 426ci monster that should be pumping out 425hp. This engine is numbers-matching, but the rest of the drivetrain has undergone some changes. The original TorqueFlite has made way for a 4-speed manual transmission, while the 8¾” rear has been swapped for a 4.10 Dana. That sounds to me like someone might have wanted to undertake their fast motoring a ¼-mile at a time. Would it have been a success? Most probably. This current configuration should see the car capable of firing through the ¼ mile in around 13.5 seconds. Even in original trim, the 13.9-second ET wouldn’t have been anything to sneeze at. The engine bay presents exceptionally nicely, but as is the case with any Hemi-equipped classic, the critical questions will always revolve around how well they run and drive. In this case, the answer to both of those questions is positive. The owner says that the GTX runs and drives well, which means that this beauty is set to terrorize the tarmac.
So, the exterior looks good, the drivetrain is in rude good health, bringing us to the interior. There isn’t a lot to complain about here. The door trims are original and are in good condition. It appears that the same is true of the carpet and headliner. The dash looks nice and unmolested, although the pad is cracked. This isn’t a problem because the owner is including a replacement pad in the deal. The seats have recently received new covers and give the interior a fresh appearance. One item that is missing is the center console. I suspect that this might have been removed when the transmission conversion occurred, so the buyer might want to think about sourcing a replacement if the interior is to match the information on the Build Sheet.
This 1968 Plymouth GTX is a stunning car, and it’s easy to see why there are a few people who are watching the listing. It is a classic muscle car that would seem to need nothing, and I know plenty of enthusiasts who would happily park it in their garage. It is a shame that someone has swapped the transmission and rear end because that will impact its potential value. Given the market fluctuations over the past year, it is almost impossible to estimate how significant that impact will be. Regardless of that fact, you can’t help wondering whether those 70 people aren’t just watching the car but are watching each other to see who will blink first and submit a bid. Are you tempted to take that number to 71, or would you like to submit a bid to get the ball rolling?
It would appear that the reserve is $65K.
Bothers me not in the least that that automatic is history, but man, that looks like a long reach to that shifter…
This car will make someone very happy, because to most of us, it’s about the experience, NOT the investment.
If it’s a factory Hurst shifter the reach looks longer than it actually is. I had a 68 Road Runner with what appears to be the same shifter, there was no problem. Both the factory and Hurst were great at designing shifters that felt natural, it was later on in a cars life when owners that were performing swaps or who tried to save a few dollars by mixing and matching components was where you ran into problems.
Steve R
Number of people watching means very little. People like myself watch a lot of auctions with no intention to bid.
Skorzeny,
It is a long reach for the shifter. I drove a 68 Hemi Road Runner in the mid 1970’s. Worse than that, if you have the ashtray pulled out you hit it with your knuckles when you got to third gear. No comment on Mopar Engineering.
The solution was, if you smoked you put the shifter handle in a vise and bent it toward the driver. The one I drove had this done, so when I backed it out of the driveway I put it where first gear should have been, and the thing lugged like it didn’t want to run.
Dad said “You got third gear” so I pulled the shifter close to my right leg and found low gear. Holy crap, that was impressive.
I have to chuckle, the word “Hemi” today gets a lot of hoopla, it’s plastered on every Dod,,oops, I mean, RAM pickup. Even my neighbor has one, who actually thinks it’s something special, I don’t have the heart to say, nah, it’s a reciprocating V8 like any other. No real magic. Today at auction, every car like this HAS to have a hemi, even though, back in ’68, we never saw them. They were a hefty option, $714 bucks, ( $5,600 today!) almost 1/3 the cost of the car, if you could even get one. The “hemi” was all fluff, and I believe a 440, 6 pack could beat it. I read for example, of the 44,000 1968 RoadRunners, only 1,700 were hemis. I’d imagine even less GTX’s, which was more of a higher class car, had a hemi. The engine is clearly the selling point here, as they were pretty lackluster cars, certainly nothing I’d spend 5 figures on, hemi or not.
440-6 driver’s only chance to beat a Hemi was to hope that its driver didn’t know how to drive it. Boil the hides and the Hemi was done.
Howard, I have to agree . . .
I was in senior year of high school and bought a year old ’68 GTX, 727 Torqueflite w/MoPaR manual shift kit & the 440 six pack. Did a lot of track racing, finally needed to rebuild the motor, so we stuck a fully rebuilt 426 hemi into the car, it came out of another GTX that was totally wrecked The hemi never performed like the 440, a big disappointment during races, but boy did it bring people out to see it, when parked with the hood open.
Replaced the hemi with the original 440/6pack, and track numbers came back down again. [Same guy did the rebuilds on both motors, to same quality & specs.] Sold the hemi for a few hundred bucks [!].
Always had a problem with the 440 setup cracking the windshield during a race, stopped replacing the windshields after a while. Another body problem was the front edge of the left rear fender [where it meets the top edge of the door, from the 1/4 window out to the bend to form the side of the panel, the panel would crack all the way out to the end, We welded it back together, it split the metal next to the weld. stopped welding it. All this happened before 1972.
Finally got rid of the car due to the tin worm, nothing left of the bottom 6″ of the body/frame. A victim of the road salt in winter, and the rain/humidity the other months.
My all time favorite Mopar and I have owned a 63 Savoy, 68 Satellite in B5, and a 70 Road Runner in FE5. Miss them all. I would kill to own this, but just spend $20,000 to do the kitchen for the wife. A friend locally has a 68 Hemi Road Runner in B5, 4 speed, he drives it all the time. His brother bought it new. Surprised there are no bids. Rust free 68 anything Plymouths are very hard to find. And for those of you who think AMD metal fits like factory, HA HA.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen “dog dish” hubcaps on a GTX. Usually reserved for the “taxi cab” spec’d Road Runners.
Had similar caps on my
’70 GTX, 6bbl, 4spd. 4:10
Ordered with AM radio,
as well. Was laughed at
many times at stoplights,
which I never understood.
No ‘Air Grabber’, either,
so she looked quite plain.
You would think that Magnum 500s would have been part of the GTX trim package.
I was thinking the same thing . Would you order the top of the line B body , Hemi, Automatic ,stripes ,bucket seats, 8 track radio, and then skimp on the hubcaps ? it really detracts from what a GTX is IMHO
It’s amazing this car hasn’t garnered a bid. It sure looks worth it. If the name was “Roadrunner” I bet it would have.
Also, if the name was “Charger” it would get twice as much as the starting bid!
In 1974, during the gas crisis I was in the Army stationed in Washington State and needed a car. A sergeant I was working for told me a mechanic he knew had a car he needed to sell on a mechanic’s lien for $650. I didn’t know anything about cars back then but I needed a car so I went with him to look at it and it was a dented old 1968 Hemi GTX 4 speed and I bought it on the spot.
At that time gas lines at gas stations were common, and this car was a hog, but I had to have it. So I bought the car and drove it around for about a year before the transmission gave up the ghost.
A guy I had met offered me a low mileage, running 56 Savoy and a couple hundred bucks for it and I needed a car, so I sold it to him. He yanked the engine out of the car, threw it in a nasty speedboat he had and he scrapped the rest of the car.
Today, this is the car I regret letting get away, but as a 18 year old kid stationed on the other side of the country from my roots, I know today it would never have come home with me anyways. Seeing prices of period hemis today, I wonder if at a minimum the engine still lives, or is it at the bottom of American Lake…
I wonder how much action this Hemi’fied GTX actually saw. Sure is clean and the transmission swap will please many here. The 4.10 gear is a compromise for street/strip duty,, for serious drag duty I’d think an even lower ratio…its not like the 426 Hemi was a low revving station wagon engine with a warm cam and a few hop ups but a high winding race mill that made a statement at 6000 rpm and beyond. A real one too, arguably the best race engine from back then…ever.
But I look at this blue “stocker” and have to wonder, is it some sort of Saturday night sleeper? It doesn’t speak to me the way that white Cobra jet Mustang with the skinny front tires did from yesterday at all. I like it but I’m not head over heels in love.
This car was originally a cruiser with 3.23 gears, automatic transmission and console. Who knows when the changes were made to the driveline. Those changes are what is holding down the cars value.
Steve R
No one bid on it so it’s been relisted for the same price. And the definition of insanity is…?
Steve R is correct. All the drive line changes are keeping Hemi fanatics from bidding. With these gears, a 4 cyl Honda would blow by you on the interstate. The gas mileage horrendous and plenty of beautiful noise a Bose stereo could never make. 15 years ago, this car would have been sold for six figures. Again, my favorite Plymouth ever. A girl at Penn State had a dark blue 68 GTX hardtop with white vinyl top. I left numerous notes on that car where she parked it at her apartment to try and buy it. Didn t happen. This was 1978. I knew they would be worth money.
Well you will all be pleased to hear, the car has sold twice since this advert, It now lives in New Zealand, PS, it came factory with the dogdish hubcaps, police HD brakes and Suspension, Govier authenticated, build sheet etc etc. It will get its console and might even go back to auto. It sits beside my other 68 GTX Hemi J code car which is auto and 8 3/4 diff which is also HD brake and suspension car with dogdish caps. Cheers