The first time I encountered Mats Bergh and his beautifully patinated 1969 Road Runner was in 2015. By then, he had owned his Plymouth for a year. The following year, 2016, it was time for a feature on the car for the Swedish magazine Gasoline Magazine. Picking up the camera again and writing another article on the car for DodgeGarage EU eight years later is nothing but a true pleasure for many reasons.

Bergh is the kind of nice person everyone wants as a friend. When I pull up to the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Sweden’s capital, Stockholm, in July 2016, I’m as stressed as a wildebeest with a pack of hungry lions on its heels. Bergh calmly looks at me and then slowly hands over a mug of really good coffee. That helps me unwind.

His sense of humor is also on point. “Oh, I probably haven’t fixed my hair,” Bergh says seriously a little later when it’s time for a portrait photo. The only thing is, Bergh has… the curliest hair in town. Self-deprecating humor.

Well, on to Bergh’s Road Runner. He first laid eyes on it in 2008. He was about to import a muscle car from the USA and got in touch with Ulf Witasp, the man behind the muscle car event Orsa Drag Fest. It was Witasp who imported the car to Sweden as early as 2004, and now it was up for sale.

“I actually wanted a 1968 or 1969 Dodge Charger. I was a bit of a novice when it came to muscle cars and Mopar_® at the time, and I was looking for something classic. Witasp said he had a Road Runner for sale because he owned a few too many cars. ‘Oh,’ I thought, and took a look at it. But nah. Plus, Witasp quickly changed his stance and said, ‘The Road Runner is not for a beginner like you.’ So instead, we started looking for a Charger in the USA,” Bergh says.

And a Dodge Charger it was. A ’68 with a tunnel ram intake manifold. “Damn cool and badass,” Bergh puts it. But the image of the Road Runner was firmly embedded in his memory. No matter how cool the Charger was, there was no escaping the fact that the Dodge was an old racecar, with everything that entailed, like a homemade instrument panel and other junk.

In the end, Bergh sold the Charger in 2012. Instead, he took over Björn “Nysse” Nyström’s Dodge Super Bee. For those who don’t know, Nysse was the guitarist for the bif Swedish artist Magnus Uggla for 20 years.

The Super Bee had previously caught fire and earned the name “Burning Bee.” So there was quite a bit to fix on the car.

“Nysse had started restoring it, and I bought it and took over to finish the work. Over time, I’ve realized that I’m a project person, even though I probably don’t want to be. So when the cars are finished, I sell them. The Super Bee was equipped with a 440 and six-pack. I owned it from 2012 to 2014,” Bergh explains.

Then it was time… The Road Runner was up for sale again… Bergh hadn’t forgotten about it. Not at all.

“The car is quite special, and probably doesn’t appeal to everyone. I had my eyes on the car, but it was overpriced and not particularly attractive to the average person. So I waited. Sure enough, the Road Runner didn’t sell. Eventually, the seller got tired of waiting and sold the car to me for a good price,” Bergh says.

The previous owner had broken the engine but afterward, he built and installed a massive 500-plus-cubic-inch V8 that made the car undrivable. The car sat under the previous owner’s care until the 500-cubic-inch engine was replaced with a standard 440. That’s the engine it had when Bergh bought the car.

“On the exterior, I chose to preserve the car in the condition it’s been in since the ’70s, with surface rust and paintwork. Not because it’s necessary, but I received strict instructions from Witasp back in 2008. ‘The buyer must sign a contract never to repaint it,’ Witasp said. No, you must never repaint this car. If you want a nice Plymouth Road Runner, you should buy a restored one,” Bergh points out.

Of course, any car enthusiast would wonder about the car’s history. The fact is, there’s a little story in itself about how Bergh found the builder who converted the car to a more race-oriented version in the U.S. in the late ’70s.

“My Road Runner is a real lens louse. So it pops up now and then in various contexts, not least on the internet. Some time ago, the car appeared on the Instagram account Ratty Muscle Cars, and a guy named Viktor Vestling from Umeå in northern Sweden commented on the photo with, ‘I know the owner,’ meaning me. A few comments down, another message popped up, ‘I know the guy who built the car.’ Suddenly, I had an email address, and later a phone number,” Bergh says.

The contact information led to a Pierre Rawoens in Oklahoma, USA, who rebuilt the Road Runner for street racing in the late 1970s. It’s a genuine Road Runner that rolled off the line with a 383 cui, a four-speed manual transmission, a front bench seat and an 8 3/4 rear axle. Rawoens tossed out the bench and installed bucket seats, swapped the rear axle for a Dana 60 with a 5.38:1 gear ratio. Then he modified the 383 cui with a tunnel ram intake manifold, a performance camshaft and high-compression pistons. A Hurst shifter was, of course, installed.

“I received a whole list of different fun modifications and solutions that Rawoens used back in the day. Among other things, he installed a coffee can filled with ice, a ‘cool can,’ to cool the fuel when it was time to street race. The door handles were shaved, and Rawoens installed zoomie pipes, four on each side in front of the rear tires.” Bergh says.

He has done quite a bit with the Road Runner since buying it, including restoring some of the original paintwork, such as repaint of the washed-away bird on the left front fender and the text on the trunk lid.

“Rawoens is a big fan of the Oakland Raiders, hence the color scheme of black and silver, just like the American football team uses. A friend of Rawoens, a sign painter, painted the car. I hired Von Sven, a skilled artist here in Sweden, to restore the bird and the text. According to Von Sven, Rawoens’ friend was a trained sign painter. You can tell that from the text on the B-pillars,” Bergh explains.

The text on the trunk lid is entertaining since the Road Runner is a bird, but also because “You’ve just been given the bird” loosely translates to getting the middle finger, a “f*ck off” right in the face. Rawoens had to eat those words more than a few times in the USA during the ’80s. Many angry people read it and got upset…

Bergh mentions that he’s always dreamed of a supercharged V8. So when the Road Runner was finally acquired, he got to work. The 440 engine was modified for supercharging, and Bergh and his friend Nalle Wärlind in Rejmyre managed to get around 600-700 horsepower when they were done. Bergh says the goal at that time wasn’t maximum power. Rather, the Road Runner should run decently and look badass.

That vision remains eight years later now that it’s 2024.

“Yes, I still feel the same way today. It should look badass. Preserve the worn appearance, but everything under the hood should work perfectly. And that’s also why I’m replacing the engine. The 440 is being replaced by an all-aluminum HEMI^®. A HEMI has always been a childhood dream, and every grown man’s dream too, for everyone I know,” Bergh says.

The supercharged V8 eventually became quite unruly. Even though five liters of gasoline per ten kilometers is annoying, it wasn’t the biggest problem. The main issue was the engine temperature, which relentlessly climbed in traffic jams. Since Bergh drives his Road Runner 1,500 to 2,000 kilometers a year, traffic jams do happen.

“I was looking for a more manageable engine, and I got one. Although the HEMI is larger than the 440 at 572 cubic inches, it provides a bit more power,” Bergh says.

Today, Bergh has owned his car for ten years. During the 2016 interview, he mentioned that he is a project person, whether he likes it or not. When a car is finished, you sell it and move on. So, is the Road Runner for sale? By now, he should be done with it.

“So… how do I think now, you mean? Well, I’m still a project person. I’ve bought another project, a 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda. Yes, that’s to avoid selling the Road Runner while still having a project to focus on,” Bergh explains.

He says it will probably take two to three years before the ‘Cuda is ready. And he’s oscillating quite a bit when it comes to style and appearance. At first, he was considering a version of a Sox & Martin Pro Stock ‘Cuda, with big rear tires. Then Per Sundberg showed up with his 1970 Dodge Challenger, and that idea was put to rest.

“This Plymouth had a fairly unique gold color from the factory, so I’m leaning towards that idea. Lowering it a bit in the rear compared to Sundberg’s Challenger. I’ve also purchased a 540-cubic-inch V8 with Hilborn fuel injection, so that part is sorted. With that, a flat hood instead of the ‘Cuda hood that came with the purchase. The flat hood works better for cutting holes for the eight-stack fuel injection. It will be fully managed by a Holley Dominator EFI system; I’m pretty good with computers and IT, so I should be able to handle it,” Bergh says.

Whether it will be custom paint job, flake, lace or something nicely painted by the artist Von Sven, that’s undecided. But the drivetrain is ready, a race-prepped 727 transmission and a shortened Dana 60 rear axle.

But once Bergh makes up his mind, that’s how it’s going to be. Like considering open cutouts when boarding a ferry between Sweden and Finland, a thunderous and joyful idea. Yes, I’m riding shotgun in the Road Runner at the time…