1970 Plymouth 426 Hemi ‘Cuda #1

This 1970 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda convertible isn’t just rare — it’s the very first of only fourteen ever built, wearing Rallye Red paint, a black top, and the Shaker hood scoop that came standard on every Hemi ‘Cuda. Underneath sits the legendary 426 Hemi V8, rated at 425 horsepower and fed by dual four-barrel carburetors. Decades later, it remains one of the most sought-after Mopars in existence. See what makes serial number one worth more than the other thirteen.

Fourteen. That’s how many convertible buyers in all of 1970 walked into a Plymouth dealership, checked the box for the 426 Hemi, and then asked for the roof to come off too. Most of them probably had no idea they were ordering into automotive history. The car in this video isn’t just one of those fourteen — it’s the very first one built, and it wears its rarity the way only a factory hot rod from Highland Park ever could. Painted a shade of red that seems almost aggressive in direct sunlight, it raises one obvious question: what does it actually take to build the rarest muscle car most people have never seen in person?

One Of Fourteen, And Serial Number One

The ‘Cuda in this video carries a distinction that even most Mopar collectors never get to claim: it’s serial number one of the fourteen Hemi ‘Cuda convertibles Plymouth built for the 1970 model year. That number alone places it above nearly every other muscle car built in that era for pure scarcity, since far more Hemi ‘Cuda hardtops left the factory than drop-tops ever did. The car now lives in The Brothers Collection, a stable of cars that has become known for holding onto the kind of Mopar rarities that rarely surface at public auction, let alone on video. Being first off the line also removes any ambiguity about the car’s place in Plymouth’s own production records, a detail serious collectors treat as its own form of provenance. Documentation on cars like this typically includes broadcast sheets, fender tags, and dealer invoice paperwork, and collectors treat a clean, unbroken paper trail as being nearly as valuable as the car’s mechanical originality — a car missing that chain of ownership records, even a genuine Hemi convertible, sells for meaningfully less than one that can be verified on paper as well as in person.

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425 Horsepower, Straight From Highland Park

Under that Shaker hood scoop sits the 426 cubic-inch Hemi V8, factory-rated at 425 horsepower and backed by dual Carter four-barrel carburetors feeding fuel to a pair of massive intake ports. It’s the same basic architecture that powered Chrysler’s NASCAR and Top Fuel efforts, detuned only slightly for street use, and it remains one of the most recognizable engines in American performance history. Mash the throttle and both carburetors open in sequence, dumping fuel into an engine built to rev harder and breathe better than almost anything else on a factory showroom floor in 1970. Chrysler built the 426 Hemi as a homologation engine first and a street engine second, which is part of why it remained in production only a few years before emissions regulations made an engine this large and this thirsty increasingly difficult to justify on a factory options sheet.

Rallye Red, Black Top, And A Scoop That Wasn’t Optional

This particular car wears Rallye Red paint with a matching red interior and a black convertible top, a combination that draws attention even parked. The Shaker hood scoop — the vibrating, engine-mounted scoop that pokes through the hood and shakes visibly with the motor — wasn’t actually an option on the Hemi ‘Cuda the way it was on the Hemi Challenger. As longtime Mopar owners pointed out after this video went up, Plymouth made the Shaker standard equipment on any ‘Cuda ordered with the 426 Hemi, meaning every one of those fourteen convertibles left the factory with it already in place.

Why Convertibles Were The Rarer Choice

Ordering a Hemi in a convertible body in 1970 meant accepting real tradeoffs: less chassis rigidity than a hardtop, added weight from the folding top mechanism, and a higher price tag on an already expensive option. Most performance buyers of the era wanted the stiffer, lighter hardtop for exactly those reasons, which is precisely why so few Hemi ‘Cuda buyers checked the convertible box at all. That combination of rarity and impracticality is what makes surviving examples like this one — let alone the very first one built — objects of near-mythical status among Mopar collectors decades later.

What Fourteen Hemi Convertibles Are Worth Today

Values for numbers-matching Hemi ‘Cuda convertibles have climbed into the millions at major collector auctions, driven almost entirely by how few genuinely survive with their original drivetrains intact. Being the first of the fourteen built adds another layer of documented provenance that serious buyers pay a premium for, since it removes any ambiguity about a car’s place in the production run. Cars like this one rarely change hands in public sales at all; they tend to move quietly between major collections, and when one does surface for a video like this, it’s treated as an event in its own right among people who follow the Mopar market closely. That reputation extends beyond the cars themselves — collectors and appraisers alike treat an appearance in The Brothers Collection as a form of vetting in its own right, since the collection has a long track record of avoiding cars with murky histories or undocumented modifications.

The Brothers Collection’s Reputation

The Brothers Collection has built a reputation among Mopar enthusiasts for housing cars that check every box collectors care about: low production numbers, documented history, and originality over restoration shortcuts. Muscle Car Of The Week, the video series behind this look at the car, has spent dozens of episodes profiling exactly this kind of survivor-grade rarity, giving viewers access to cars that would otherwise only be seen behind velvet ropes at a concours event or glimpsed briefly crossing an auction block.

A Convertible That Still Turns Heads Fifty Years Later

Half a century after it rolled off the line, this ‘Cuda still does exactly what it was built to do: turn heads. Its rarity, matched with the sheer theater of a Shaker scoop shaking atop a 426 Hemi, has made it one of the most requested cars in the Muscle Car Of The Week archive. For a car built in a run of just fourteen, being the very first one made is the kind of detail that turns an already rare Mopar into something closer to a museum piece — one that, in this case, still gets driven with the top down.

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