Bouchard grew up immersed in New England motorsport. His brother Ken Bouchard won the 1988 NASCAR Winston Cup Rookie of the Year award, while his father-in-law Ed Flemke and brother-in-law Ed Flemke Jr. were accomplished NASCAR Modified racers. Ron Bouchard married Paula Flemke in June 1983, bringing two prominent New England racing families together.
Bouchard's racing career began at Brookline Speedway in 1963 when he substituted for an ill driver in his father's car. After high school he took over the car himself, quickly advancing to late models at Seekonk Speedway, where he claimed five consecutive track championships from 1967 to 1971.
His modified career gained momentum at Stafford Speedway, where car owner Bob Johnson placed him in a modified after noticing his talent. Bouchard won his first of 35 career victories at Stafford in April 1972 and added track modified championships there in 1973 and 1979. He drove for several car owners, accumulating victories at Stafford, Thompson Speedway, Seekonk Speedway, Waterford Speedbowl, and Westboro Speedway. One of his biggest modified wins came in the Thompson 300 in 1980. His rivalry with fellow New Englander Geoff Bodine was particularly intense during this period, with each driver beating the other at various events.
Bouchard made his NASCAR Cup debut in 1981 in the No. 47 Jim Stacy Buick for owner Jack Beebe's Race Hill Farm team. He competed in 22 of 31 scheduled events, posting twelve top-ten finishes. His lone Cup victory came at the Talladega 500 at Talladega Superspeedway and is widely regarded as one of the biggest upsets in the history of the sport.
Running third behind Darrell Waltrip and Terry Labonte on the final lap, Bouchard swept under both of them as they battled side by side off the final turn. All three cars crossed the finish line nearly simultaneously in a photo finish, with Bouchard winning. Waltrip, who had been focused on Labonte and had not seen Bouchard approaching from behind, reportedly asked afterwards, "Where the hell did he come from?" Waltrip later acknowledged that part of the reason he lost was that he had not tried to block Bouchard, believing him to be a lap down. The victory all but secured Bouchard's Rookie of the Year title.
In 1982, Bouchard finished a career-high eighth in the final Cup standings with fifteen top-ten finishes in thirty races. He ran full-time in 1983, 1984, and 1985, finishing between eleventh and sixteenth in points each year. He came close to winning again at Martinsville in 1984, finishing second to Bodine, and at Rockingham in 1985, where he again finished second — this time to Waltrip, in something of a role reversal from Talladega.
In 1986, Bouchard moved to the No. 98 Valvoline Pontiac for Mike Curb's operation, generally finishing in the top twenty when finishing at all but recording nine DNFs in seventeen starts. He made five more appearances in 1987 in the No. 1 Bull's Eye Barbecue Sauce Chevrolet for Hoss Ellington, then stepped away from Cup competition.
Bouchard was inducted into the New England Auto Racers Hall of Fame in 1998 as part of its inaugural class. His Talladega upset remains one of the defining moments in NASCAR history — a virtually unknown New England short-tracker sweeping past two championship-caliber veterans in the final corner of a superspeedway race.
After his racing career, Bouchard returned to Fitchburg, Massachusetts and built Ron Bouchard's Auto Stores into a multi-brand dealership group representing Honda, Acura, Stellantis, Kia, and Nissan. In September 2015 he opened a museum at his Stellantis dealership celebrating his motorsport history. Three months later, on December 10, 2015, he died of cancer. The New England Auto Racers Hall of Fame subsequently established the Ron Bouchard Award for lifetime service to motorsport in the region.