Toodles Walden is the top salesman at J.D. Ward Automobiles, but dreams of racing their new high-speed motorcars. Even higher up on his list of wishes is marrying Ward's beautiful daughter, Dorothy, despite her father's objections. Disguising himself, Toodles steals one of the roadsters and enters the Santa Monica Road Race. To everyone's surprise, the amateur speedster wins first prize. Impressed, Ward asks Toodles to try breaking the world speed record, but the young man quits when the tycoon sends Dorothy to live in New York. Refusing to let the girl of his dreams get away, Toodles races to catch her train -- and just might break that speed record after all!
The Roaring Road is one of the few surviving features starring matinee idol Wallace Reid. The actor shot to stardom after appearing in D.W. Griffith's classics The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). But Reid's true success came from starring in action-packed racecar films, precursors to the type of movie Steve McQueen would make popular decades later. A few months after filming The Roaring Road, Reid was badly injured. With his contract to Paramount considered top priority, doctors prescribed the actor morphine so he could continue to work. Tragically, Reid became hopelessly addicted to the drug, and with no rehabilitation programs available at the time, he died in 1923 at the age of 31. Before his death, he would again play Toodles Walden in a sequel to The Roaring Road, Excuse My Dust (1920). Director James Cruze would go on to make classics such as The Covered Wagon (1923), The Great Gabbo (1929) and I Cover the Waterfront (1933).