Let’s go ahead and complete our look at all three generations of the Barracuda. I can certainly see why Cohort poster William Rubano stopped when he saw the license plate of this one in a shop. Although it does rather seem like Hemi ‘Cudas have rather come to dominate the genre. Now if the plate had said “/6 Cuda”, it would really be a find.
1971 was the last year for the 426 hemi. And those that saw that these hemi ‘Cudas would some day be worth six figures bought them and took good care of them. Or they had fun with them, and eventually someone else picked up the pieces. Either way, it’s become an icon, and a rather over-exposed one. But finding one like this certainly counts as a genuine CC find, so let’s celebrate the hemi’s last outing. Now all we need is a video of that shaker hood when the hemi starts up.
Again, the styling of an early ’70s Mopar makes it a personal favorite. I love the bezels and trim around the taillights, the exhaust cutouts and the overall cohesiveness of the design. And OF COURSE the high revving seven liter Hemi! I would’ve easily chosen this over a Camaro or Mustang; perhaps during one of my local Chrysler-Plymouth dealers’ monthly fire sales!
Anyone else reminded of Phantasm when they see one of these?
I’m reminded of the brief TV show Viper. That was the first E body Barracuda I remember, it was a 71 in Plum Crazy(err In-Violet). Loved that car and color ever since.
I’m sure that for bang for the buck daily driver purposes, a 340 T/A Challenger/Similar ‘Cuda may have been the overall best ticket, but for sheer bragging rights (and to drive occasionally and store) the Hemi ‘Cuda was king o’ the hill !!
Love it. I always preferred the Quad headlights of the 71s(I know what a cliche) and always liked the fish references with the gills all over it this year. Plus 71 was the last year for the REALLY high impact colors, which this bodystyle absolutely begs for.
I’m surprised it doesn’t have billboards. Seems like every Hemi ‘Cuda has those weather they originally did or not.
I think it looks better without billboards.This is the Daddy of pony cars,the baddest badass and you don’t want to race against it.Hemis,real and fake go for mad money,I wonder how many original buyers thought how much they would be worth in years to come?
I think if I owned one I’d prefer them without too, but there’s something about the boldness I admire. In-Violet with white billboards and white interior is very tantalising.
Make mine Panther Pink or Sublime,black interior and a small block or slant 6 auto,no billboards,could you have a shaker hood with a small block or 6?If so I’ll take one please
Sigh. To think, I could have bought these things by the dozen for 600 bucks a pop around 1980 or so. It was nothing then but an overweight, fuel swilling Chrysler product (translated to electrical and carburetion nightmare) with split seams in the seats.
I agree that these are overexposed, and it pains me to say that they don’t really interest me much. The good news is that they have made for all kinds of Mopar parts availability for those of us who like the less popular stuff.
Wait, what? Less popular than what, JP? People prefer muscle cars to C-bodies? No accounting for taste, I guess. 😉
Luckily there are people who never paid any attention to them until recently (like me) for whom they are novel. I don’t see souped-up muscle when I see these-it’s never been my thing. I just see a fast, midsized Chrysler; something a lover of Mopars in general can appreciate.
As a kid, I had a picture of a red 71 Hemi Cuda on my bedroom wall, very much like this one. Today that picture hangs in my den. If I was insanely rich I would own one of these. 1971 is my favourite year Cuda.
A lot of folks won’t like this opinion but,
Hemi powered or no, these cars were junk. Fast junk, but these things were so poorly built that even a contemporary GM F-body looked solid by comparison. They were also something of a joke on the street as they were not much lighter than a Mopar intermediate but had such bad weight distribution you couldn’t put all that power down. I’ve long felt this generation of E body was a Chrysler deadly sin. Vast sums were spent developing a “me too” musclecar just in time to see the market for such cars crash and burn. Sales were mediocre for a year or 2 and then dealers could barely give them away. Chrysler got lucky with the afterthought Duster which kept the wolf from the door fro a few years, but these E bodies contributed much to the problems Chrysler faced later in the ’70s. You might say they put their money on the wrong horse, and when that horse didn’t come in they had nothing left to develop decent product later in the decade.
I understand the attraction these cars hold to collectors today, and this is a nice example. That’s the only nice thing I can say about these!
Well put. Everyone loves to pile on to hard plastics in car interiors, well here is the granddaddy of hard plastic interiors. Get into one, slam the door and listen to the awful sound as you watch the steering column shudder. This is mainly why these (and the post 1970 B bodies) never appealed to me much. Of course, once the Hamtramck Hummingbird starts to sing, much can be forgiven.
+1 on the reality check of the E-body Mopar, particularly those with the Hemi. They were expensive, bad cars when they were new, and that’s the reason they’re very rare today. The few people who did have the misfortune of spending the big-bucks for one found out, very quickly, what a mistake they had made, and the cars usually ended up parked somewhere in short order.
In hindsight, one has to wonder how much the Duster 340 contributed to the swift demise of the E-body. For around 2/3s the price of a big-block E-body, word quickly got around that you could get a nearly as fast, a lot more livable, yet still good-looking, fastback, compact A-body musclecar.
The only thing that saves the E-body (and, really, any bad ponycar) from being on the worst car lists is the styling.
I like the Dart/Demon /Duster more too,even today an A body can be had for a lot less than an E body.Ford made sure the Falcon and Maverick weren’t a Mustang fighter,the last thing a car maker needs is 2 of it’s own cars slugging it out in the showroom.A Panther Pink/Moulin Rouge A body has been on my wish list since I saw a picture of a Duster in a magazine in early 1970.
“The only thing that saves the E-body (and, really, any bad ponycar) from being on the worst car lists is the styling.”
And the determination of baby boomers to see their youth thru VERY rose-colored glasses.
So, you guys are saying that the subject car is depicted in its natural habitat? 😉
Im a Mopar nut and if I never saw another red 71 Hemi Cuda (authentic or otherwise) Id be OK with that
Once again, I must invoke my experiences with my ’70 and ’73 Challengers. (266,000 miles total) The steering column never shook when I closed either door (perhaps I didn’t slam it hard enough) and though overall build quality left something to be desired, it was probably one of the most solidly built cars out there. The Camaro and Firebirds were quite willowy by comparison. If you had inspected their respective front ends there is no doubt which car you would want to be in if you were involved in a head-on collision.
None of these pony cars had good weight distribution with the large block engine option, albiet it would not surprise me if the Hemi was the worst. However, the people who bought them probably cared little about handling.
A friend of mine bought a mint condition ’73 340 Challenger in 1980. It had about 10K miles on it and it looked showroom new. It was a very solid and trouble free car. Sadly, in about 3 years, he had destroyed the interior, as he always did, and still does, with every vehicle he has owned. I have no idea why, or even how he does it, but the first thing that he tears up is the headliner, and then the driver’s seat and soon the steering wheel is trashed. I wanted to buy it when he finally got rid of it, it was dinged up in a couple of places and I didn’t have the $600 he got for it. He wouldn’t wait a week until I got paid! The replacement car was a ’78 Z28, in almost as nice shape as the Challenger was. In a couple of years, it was all torn up inside, too. His crowning achievement in trashing an interior came with his 2005 F150. How he destroyed it in two years is a total mystery. A friend has a bunch of 150s of the same era as work trucks and they are holding up very well while being totally abused. He’s got a 2011 Camaro now, and my friend who lives near him hasn’t seen it in a while, so maybe he wrecked it, he’s a terrible driver who is infamous for parking lot hit and runs.
Rather than resorting to a pissing contest, this is my favorite ‘Cuda, cliche or not. Regardless of whether the Mustang, Camaro, Firebird, or Challenger is a bigger POS, this thing is purty and probably pretty fast.
Factory or not, that’s one dorky spoiler though…and it would have to go.
I believe that is a factory spoiler. I would keep it. I would also add the billboard graphics, probably in black on this colour. Some people like their Brougham-mobiles to be extra tacky. I guess I like muscle cars that are extra tacky. 🙂
I once read an amusing anecdote in some Mopar rag, supposedly attributed to none other than the designer who came up with the one-year-only, 1971 ‘Cuda billboard graphics. Evidently, the guy was fresh out of design school when he got hired by Chrysler. His first assignment was the Plymouth design chief told him to “go put a stripe on that car”. Nothing infuriated automotive designers that had spent years in design school as the stripes that the marketing guys would put on cars the had designed (the bumble-bee stripes are an example), and this guy was no exception. He was so incensed by this directive, that he was determined to come up with the absolute worst stripe he could for the 1971 ‘Cuda.
Unfortunately, when he showed what he had come up with to the design chief, rather than the expected chastising for a poor effort, the design chief actually thought the billboard stripe was great! And, thus, the billboard stripe was born.
But a primary reason it only lasted one year was production hated them. Evidently, it was quite a challenge for assembly line workers to put that huge stripe on the Barracuda’s flanks. It was all too easy for them not to line up properly on the first try and, when that happened, all they could do was pull the entire stripe off and start over. It was so bad that production specifically instructed design to never use a stripe like that, again.
Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be the same issue with applying large tape stripes on hoods, the likes of which have continued unabated. One of the biggest was the hood patch used on the E-body Challenger R/T.
Ironically, there’s even now the new, large ‘shaker’ hood stripe available on the 2014 Challenger which starts around the scoop and continues over the roof. Although not quite the expanse of the billboard, it still covers a lot of sheetmetal.
I never heard that before, but it seems plausible, and a good story nonetheless.
I seem to remember reading that in Collectible Automobile in an article by Jeff Godshall (who worked for Chrysler in the ’60s and ’70s). The designer kept submitting stripes and his boss kept sending them back, saying, “too small.” So he got ticked off, and drew the biggest stripe he could. And that is what became the Billboard stripe!
It looks like the owner may actually DRIVE it! The biggest sin is a trailer queen Hemi or any other Muscle Car.
A”tribute” car is a pretty big sin in my book,up there with trailer queens.
+1 I hate fakes.
I’ve been aware of the various quality issues, weight, noseheaviness and problems these caused for Chrysler but I just don’t care. I’d still rather own one than anything else available on the globe in 70/71, hell even today if one were obtainable for a reasonable price.
The fact is I’m not a Chrysler exec who has to worry about how this effected the company, nor am I a customer getting burned by bad assembly when new, and in my parts there’s far more opportunity to enjoy the big block power than there is to see how badly it plows through turns. These are automotive candy today and most any issue that plagued these can easily be remedied through reproduction parts and restoration.
Ive had a Cuda and a couple of Challengers over the years and I now have a 78 Trans Am. I really don’t think the fit and finish is any better or worse on the Mopars than the F-Bodies; sometimes you got a really good one or a really bad one. The GM F-Bodies are far superior in handling though, and I think an overall better designed car, the steering is much more responsive and the cars just feel less clumsy.
LT Dan, is your car a WS6? Just curious. I’ve never had a WS6 car but heard they handled quite a bit better than even the good-handling WS4 cars.
JB, its a W72 car but does not have the WS6 package.
FWIW, while I suspect that the feature car is not actually the ‘last’ Hemi-Cuda, for anyone desiring to see what is quite likely the ‘first’ Hemi-Cuda, the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg museum in Auburn, IN, used to have what probably qualifies.
Although it’s been years since I’ve been there, in the ‘auxiliary’ National Automotive and Truck Museum (NATMUS) behind the main one (what used to be the factory), there was a plain, white 1970 Barracuda mixed in with everything else. However, it turns out that this particular car was given to the Chrysler service department to determine how much time should be spent for specific warranty jobs in the Flat Rate manual. In effect, they took the car apart, then reassembled it, one job at a time.
It’s quite easy to miss because there’s virtually none of the usual loud, external, accoutrements proclaiming high-performance that is normally associated with late sixties/early seventies musclecars. The only giveaway is the shaker hood-scoop. Frankly, it looks like a base 318 car to which someone has added the shaker. But it’s one of the first (if not ‘the’ first) actual, pre-production Hemi-Cudas.
I’m sure Paul wasn’t implying that the featured car was the last one off the assembly line, but 1971 was the last year that the 426 Hemi was offered for sale.
It’s still there.
What I like about this 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda, besides the King Kong Hemi, is the combination of red exterior and white interior. White interiors seem to have been unavailable for quite some time. Also like the old B-5 blue Mopars with a white interior.
+1 Me too.
I agree that Hemi Cuda are special cars, but just off the assembly line. But these 6 figure cars at auctions are true trailer queens. Look but don’t touch or rack on any mileage!
E bodies were way out of step in the market. I remember at the 1971 Chicago Auto Show, the Plymouth/Dodge displays were still “Swinging 60’s” with go-go dancers singing ‘Get your self a Cuda!’. Also, were pushing the swoopy new bodied Charger and Satellite. But, buyers looking for sporty cars moved on to smaller size, like Datsun 240-Z, or good handling as the Trans Ams.
I would LOVE an E-body! But what guy who loves cars wouldn’t? Before I was born, my grandfather had bought my grandmother an orange over black ’71 Cuda…no Hemi, just a 340 and automatic. Still, nothing to be taken lightly. She had owned 2 Corvairs, a VW type 3 fastback…what was grampop thinking?!?! My dad quickly took it over only to trade it a few years later when I was born on a Coronet wagon.
I hear the complaints on build quality, and my dad (who is a Ford guy, no less) had always raved about what a great car the Cuda was. I had a buddy who owned essentially the same car but in Challenger form after Id graduated high school. 340/auto with bigger tires out back, a mild cam, and a shift kit in the tranny. No one, I mean NO ONE, not even a notorious 454 Chevelle could touch that car on the street! When he got tired of it, I should’ve bought it from him, but at the time, I was interested in nothing but Jeep CJs. Good times!
I’ve spent a lot of time the last 25 years in my Brother in laws ’71 383 Cuda and its a real love hate thing. The styling is outragous but the execution is horrible. Seeing your heater box hanging under the floor and the squeaky plasitc interior that gets more brittle every year gets old. Chrysler spent a lot of money on the 2 E bodys -many don’t realize the Challenger has a longer wheel base–that could have been spent on a sporty A body with really upgraded interior. Of course someone from above decreed Mopar pony cars had to have factory hemi’s, even though only hundreds were ordered that way. By the way most hemi E bodies came with poverty hub caps, upgraded wheels were for the aftermarket
I don’t know what you have there but a blue poly bare bones is listed in the Chrysler registry as the highest known serial number Hemi Cuda in existence. Known as the last Hemi Cuda built. Look it up.
I bought wife #3 a 1970 Barracuda with a 383 4 barrel engine and torqueflite. She wanted a fastback Mustang, but she was married to a MOPAR guy so that wasn’t going to happen. She liked the Barracuda, so there was no problem, but when the gas shortage came along. The 7 MPG the Barracuda got was too much to handle.
I swapped the 383 out for a 225 Slant 6 with a 904 ‘lock-up’ torqueflite. Now the Cuda gained 10 MPG and it drove just as well. Sure, it wasn’t a tire smoker, but for commuting it was fine. It stayed around until she left, with the car. I got some good buck$ for the 383 and the 727. I was glad to see the car go, not so much her.