Photo: YouTube/The story behind the car
“When I got married, I always told my wife, 'No matter where we are in life, if there's a Hemi 'Cuda Convertible for sale, I'll buy it,' and she said, 'Uh, okay, we'll see.' So it mysteriously showed up at our house.” She convinced me with a 'We'll see,' I'm telling you.
Gentle-gearhead, if you are not yet married, make sure your future wife gives you the benefit of the option for all future cars. Who knows, maybe one day you will come across a hemicuda convertible, real or clone, and you will need that all-important implicit support.
I dropped the spoiler: this car appeared in Tom Gallaher's video in this episode of The story behind the car happens to be a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda convertible with a 426 cubic inch engine tucked between the front fenders. At this point, Mopar fanatics will lean back and whistle in half-admiration, half-disappointment.
Photo: YouTube/The story behind the car
The car we see here is a true Mopar icon, even though it started life as a run-of-the-mill 318 with a three-speed Torqueflite automatic. Of the nearly 49,000 first-year E-body Barracudas assembled, the 318-cubic-inch small-block V8 was the popular choice by a wide margin, with nearly 22,000 units.
The key to this “timeline” is the production run of just 1,387 convertibles. Add the 1,114 Gran Coupes and Cuda ragtops to the tally, and we still have a cute (and rather rare) body style. How lucky for Tom the-classics-vlogger to meet a childhood friend who owns one of those rare fish.
Sure, this example is no longer a three-eighteen, but a full-fledged four-two-six Hemi. Some might cry “blasphemi” (written without the “y” at the end, yes), but everyone has their own tastes. After all, it is a very cool looking car, dressed in its In-Violet livery (the original color was a much more sober and everyday Yellow Gold, a shade of cream).
Photo: YouTube/The story behind the car
The Hurst Pistol Grip Shifter is also a clone detail, with the original equipment being a three-speed automatic (one of 863 built for the 1970 model year with the base V8 engine and no metal roof). However, that is all part of the car's past life, which now lives as a seven-liter, 425-hp, 490-lb-ft (431 PS, 664 Nm) “hemicuda,” as the correct Shaker hood scoop proudly boasts.
The owner recently bought it from a dealership in California, and he didn't even have time to turn on the smile generator in the car. What do you mean, “What is a smile generator?” It's when you finally buy the car of your teenage dreams and bury your right foot in the gas pedal.
Darryl (the custodian of this Mopar splendor) hasn't even done a burnout – yet! – in his beloved gem, but the promise is there. And the car lives up to it (play the second video at 12:04 to see this car paint parallel black tire marks on the pavement while still at the dealership in California).
Photo: YouTube/The story behind the car
This clone is by no means an original, exorbitantly unobtainable, real convertible migraine (name it; it's still the same seven-figure daydream). It wouldn't flinch if the driver gave it carte blanche, though. The 3.54 Dana 60 nine-and-three-quarters rear end isn't the most appropriate equipment for getting to the end of a 1,320-foot straightaway ahead of the other guy, but it can easily turn chevrons into smiles.
Darryl says he will never sell this car, after all he fell in love with a Hemicuda when he was the critical age of 16. He happened to help a neighbor fix one and as punishment he got to drive it. He was hooked then and there and the bug has been dormant in his system for over two decades. He had been looking for a 1970 Hemi Barracuda for a while when he came across this beautiful, drivable tribute.
The owner isn’t the kind of car enthusiast who puts cars in a secluded storage area and leaves them there, but he prefers to drive his classic, so the Wilwood front disc brakes make all the sense for a car that’s 54 years old. Not that it would make much of a difference in our case, but the odometer reads just over 1,300 miles (2,092 kilometers). That’s probably how far it’s been driven since the rebuild was completed a few years ago.
As for actual Plymouth Barracuda Hemi convertibles, only nine were built in 1970, and each one is easier to find at the end of a rainbow than available for sale to the public. As some of the rarest and most expensive automobiles of the muscle car era, ragtop Hemis are about as high as you can get in terms of desirability, collectibility, investment value, purchase value, and cool factor.
