Original plans for the route had the section of bypass west of St James Interchange as an all-purpose dual carriageway. The motorway was to have continued to the south west (via a large flyover) towards Linwood. These plans were changed during the construction phase, and the proposed all-purpose section was built to motorway standard. Revised Roads Orders allowing for this change were published and construction proceeded with the addition of hard shoulders. The Linclive Link Road and Linwood Bypass were downgraded to standard dual carriageway.

The reasons for this late reconfiguration are not entirely clear, however, lobbying from local politicians, such as Sir Dr James MacFarlane, for a motorway to Port Glasgow was probably a contributing factor.

Construction commenced in 1965 and involved a remarkably small disturbance to property and severance of land. Demolition of properties was confined to an inn, three prefabricated houses, two small farm steadings and a temporary fire station.

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The eastern terminus of the Renfrew Bypass was the A8 trunk road at Hillington. It remained disconnected from the Glasgow Inner Ring Road for over 8 years until the Renfrew Motorway was completed in Autumn 1976.

In the west the motorway terminated on the A8 at Bishopton. This remained the case until Stage 1 of the Bishopton Bypass was completed in late 1970, though the junction with the A8 remained in use until November 1975. It reopened in December 2019 as junction 29a. The new junction was funded by BAE Systems as part of their redevelopment of the Bishopton Ordnance Site. Design work was by Dougall Baillie Associates with construction by Morgan Sindall.