Road Runners have been in Bethany Crick’s blood since a very young age. We first heard about the Madisonville, Kentucky resident and her quick Bird in an article done by Laurie Silvey at Drag Racing Scene. Bethany says, “I’ve seen this very car go down the race track since I was very young and since then have always loved a clean-looking 1968-1969 Road Runner.”

Bethany is also a massive fan of drag racing. When she started thinking of cars to build a drag car out of, the Road Runner quickly came back into her mind. “My dad Mike, being a Mopar guy, made my selections pretty small as far as a choice for cars that were in race-ready status and are four-second [1/8 mile] capable,” she says in an article published recently in Drag Racing Scene.

Bethany decided to call the owner of the Road Runner to see if he would be interested in selling it; to her luck he was. “After making him an offer and him accepting, I had to come up with some way to pay for it. The solution was to sell my daily driver, a 2012 Mitsubishi Eclipse, and ride to work with my dad for six months until I could afford another regular car,” remembers Bethany.

As soon as the Road Runner came home, it was sent straight to Freddie Horn Race Cars for some upgrades to the cage and interior so she could compete in the Top Sportsman class. However, things didn’t go quite as planned. “Even though the car previously went 4.50s, the chassis was not up to par,” she says. Freddie went to work, more or less building the car from the ground up. He discarded everything on the car except the body for a clean slate. The entire build took around eight months total.

Bethany says, “Freddie touched every piece and part on the car with his own hands. He has a skill that not many possess, and it shows in his finished product. Freddie is the most humble man you will meet, but there’s no discounting his work. He is very precise with every task on the car, big or small.” Thanks to Freddie’s hard work, Bethany’s Road Runner is now better than ever, featuring a state-of-the-art funny car cage, Tinnin front suspension and 4-link suspension with coil-over shocks. It runs Weld V-Series front wheels and Delta-1 deadlock rear wheels on Hoosier drag tires.

On the exterior, the fiberglass front end, doors, deck lid, and bumper have been cleaned and freshened up and feature an airbrushed black vinyl top. The paint work was done by R&R Auto Body in Cleveland, Ohio. The interior is heavily carbon fiber based and a Racepak data recorder and gauges were added. Being as Mike and Bethany build their own engines, they built a killer 655 cubic-inch powerplant topped with two Dominator carbs for the ‘Bird. The engine is backed by an Abruzzi Powerglide transmission and converter with an aluminum Inland Empire driveshaft.

Bethany competes with the Road Runner in Top Sportsman competition all around their area. She even won the Best Appearing Car award at the Lucas Oil Division 3 event in Bowling Green, Kentucky; it’s debut even in August 2015! She has gone on to also win the Best Appearing Car award at the 25K Showdown in Memphis in April 2016. Way to go Bethany and Mike!