1971 Plymouth Barracuda 'Cuda from North America - Comments

Thanks! At least some of us still have a heart beat. I would've put this comment ahead of the Duster drag racer but your comment wasn't posted yet.

Your car sounds like fun. Have you had a big block to comapare on the highway. Pretty much all the literature that I've read on Cuda's, Barracuda's, and Challengers states that small block cars have the edge on the highway. Because the cars and the engines themselves are getting more expensive, I will be hard pressed to formulate my own opinion on this. Of course I could always just buy a crate 360 or something.

I so want to build a racer out of an E-body, but at the same time it would ruin the streetable experience for someone else. I had a chance to buy a challenger that was already tubbed out a few years back, and I've been kicking myself for not buying it ever since. The price was $2500

for the rolling body. No rust!

It's nice that some of us still have fun working on and driving these cars. Most people now would walk right past them without even taking a second look, stopping at the next import that catches their eye.

Sometimes I wonder how many are still out there. I've only ever found 1 other exactly the same model as mine for sale. It was half way across the country and they wanted almost double what I paid, and guess what, the engine and tranny were gone so basically I'd get a body and what was left of the interior after it was pilfered down. Not going to happen he says!

In any condition it seems owners can just name their price these days.

It pains me to know that many of these cars met their demise in a car crusher.

My '71 is the "Knee Shaking Performance" review, although it wasn't much of a review.

Honestly, I absolutely love that idea of the instrument cluster bulbs under the dashboard where you can reach them! I wrote more description of my car as the first comment on the "Hot Wheels" review of another '71 Barracuda. Like I said there, back when I first got the car, when I was 19-20 (22 years ago!), I was a bit harder on it and topped it out probably around 150 on lonely country straightaways, but doggone it, there was nobody to race when I wanted to at that age! My friend had a '67 Camaro with a 350, and he disappeared in my rear view mirror pretty quickly. It was fun to just have the two cars sitting together, though, in 1991. But then as I got older, I realized that it's an old, relatively rare and valuable car that to me would be irreplaceable, and I wasn't going to waste my time racing every kid that thought a fart-can muffler on his '87 Honda Civic added 5,000 horsepower. So now, it's the 45 mph backroad cruising car, just fun to listen to the engine burble. Well, once in a while I still blow the stale gas out of the back barrels...

It always makes me laugh when I see a 6 inch tail piece with 1.5 inch exhaust tubing the rest of the way from the front. This one time I was at a stop light on the highway and this prelude pulled up, the driver believing that it was in the upper echelon of performance machines. He was reving his car as I pointed at the police officer in the other lane. He (the Prelude guy) started rubbing fake tears out of his eyes thinking that I was afraid. The police man saw the entire thing and gave me the nod with his facial expression being, teach Prelude boy some manners. When we got the green, I let him get ahead of me 2 lengths and then walked on it shifting gears at 6 grand, blowing past the Honda in a nanosecond. I could see in the rearview the arm out of the police cruiser with a thumb sticking straight up in the air. Of course as soon as I passed the guy, he let off on the gas and took the next turn off leaving me to shift into drive and purr away down the open highway.

I'm glad I don't have to fill one of those dual supercharged big block racing boats that use $750 worth of gas everyday. Once I finish the resto I probably won't even put on 500 miles per year.

Have you done any car shows? I'd like to once my resto is done which wont be for at least 2 years or so.

Ah, hearing that 383 crank at 6,000 rpms would be sweet, indeed! I once had a 383 in a Newport and loved the sound of it running right off the Y pipe when the muffler fell off once. That had great low-end torque, though I never did anything more than a few burnouts -- it was just my daily beater.

Actually, the one and only real race I ever managed to get in, I was just coming back from the store with some grillin' steaks, and this guy in a kind of beat up looking '80s Firebird really started messing with me just going down the street. He'd pop the clutch, rev it up next to me, swerve back and forth in front of me. Really asking for it. Not sure what he had, but something with headers in it, so it wasn't stock.

We got out of town and the speed limit went up, so we started easing up from the 30 we'd been doing. I figured that I'd get the noses even and see what he wanted to do. Well, he figured he needed a little head start, so when my front bumper was still about two feet from being even with his back bumper, he kicked it down. I dropped it down into second, and then first briefly to get the RPM up, then back up into second. I wasn't sure how things were going to go at first, but I started sliding up past him and just eased on by, probably doing close to 90 in second. I was watching the tach more than the speedometer. I gave him a little wave, and when I came even with his front, popped it up into third and kept going. He must have had enough, because he did the famous "quick right turn" onto a side street. Actually, for as adrenaline pulsing as that was, I guess I didn't really care to repeat it again. Also, it made me realize that my car wasn't as fast as I thought it was, because I imagined that I should have rocketed by the guy faster than I did, but then who knows what he had. Maybe he was surprised as hell that anybody beat him by two car lengths. Well, that was way back in the early or mid '90s and nothing like that ever happened again, which is okay by me.

No, I've never had the Barracuda to a car show. It's still in unrestored condition since I bought it in '87. It's not bad for its age, but certainly not in show condition. After all this time, I suppose it could be argued whether it's in 20-foot condition. That was always going to be my priority, but I ended up putting resources into other things, and I don't get to drive the Barracuda much, anyway. That is a shame, because I like driving the old cars, and probably always will.

On the other hand, the car that always was my beater, a '73 Charger, made me appreciate what a good car it was and I ended up restoring that. It's still my daily driver, with a 318 2-barrel. I did take that one to a car show the first summer after the body shop, but they don't stay new forever. I just like driving them too much to let them sit in a shed. Maybe that's the advantage of driving the base models that will never be worth the big money. You can get them nice for not 10s of thousands, and still enjoy driving them.

Newport hay. I'd have to go back through my books but it is conceivable that my engine could have been factory installed in a Newport, but if my memory serves me correctly it is most likely out of a 66 Windsor convertable. You know what? I doubt that I would even trade this engine for the 318 that came out of the car, unless it was sitting in a core pile for the last 25 years gettin no miles on it, and it had good compression/oil pressure.

Muscle car shows usually have judges who are fanatics of the exact car that you drive in, whatever it may be, making some of them very hard to please. I've personally gone to shows and had close looks at some of the cars that win. They are spotless, Not a bolt or a screw out of place and they don't even get 100 Pt's from the most strict of judges. I've seen 1 100 pt resto job that was on a 69 charger R/T.

The car was flawless and buddy who owned it probably needs a separate trailer to haul all his shiny hardware. It wins almost every show it goes in and it doesn't drive that far to do it. Maybe some day the organizers of all the events that he wins will have spent an equivalent amount on the trophies as the guy spent on his Charger.

Ah yes, the boys and their toys. I hear what your saying about funds being allocated to other things leaving out the fun of the project car.

I didn't mean to scare you away. I'm pretty sure its still safe to talk over the net.