1970 Plymouth Cuda Convertible in Lemon Twist & 440 Engine Sound

Tom Lembeck’s 1970 Plymouth Cuda Convertible has been part of his Chicago-area Mopar collection since 2007, wrapped in a Lemon Twist yellow finish and hiding a rare 440 Six Barrel engine under the hood. It is one of the harder combinations to find today: a numbers-matching convertible with the drivetrain enthusiasts specifically chase. Lou Costabile sat down with Tom to hear the full story behind the car. Watch to find out what makes this particular Cuda stand out even in a collection full of Mopar muscle.

Some muscle cars get bought, driven hard for a summer, and flipped for a quick profit. Others land with someone who understands exactly what they are holding onto, and simply never let go. This 1970 Plymouth Cuda Convertible found the second kind of owner back in 2007, and in the years since it has become one of the standout pieces in a Chicago-area collection built almost entirely around Mopar muscle. Finished in a color most casual fans could not correctly name on sight, and hiding one of the rarest engine and transmission combinations Plymouth ever offered, this Cuda is not just another drop-top. It is a lesson in what “highly optioned” actually means.

A Paint Color Built to Get Noticed

The Cuda’s Lemon Twist yellow was part of Chrysler’s “High Impact” color palette introduced right as the muscle car wars hit their loudest, most colorful peak. Where earlier performance cars leaned on conservative reds and blues, Chrysler’s marketing team in 1970 wanted showroom colors that stopped teenagers mid-stride on the sidewalk. Lemon Twist did exactly that, and on a convertible with the top down, it made the car look every bit as aggressive as its drivetrain suggested. Decades later, the color remains one of the fastest ways to identify a genuine early-70s Mopar at a glance, and cars wearing it command real attention at shows precisely because so few builders would risk anything so bold today.

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The 440-6 Sitting Under That Hood

Popping the hood reveals the real story: a 440 cubic inch V8 wearing Chrysler’s Six Barrel setup, three two-barrel carburetors stacked across an aluminum intake. Plymouth rated the combination conservatively at 390 horsepower, but the real appeal was the way it delivered power, a smooth idle from the center carburetor alone until the throttle opened the outer two and the engine transformed completely. It was one of the most feared street configurations of the entire muscle car era, offered for only a handful of years before emissions rules made triple-carb setups impossible to certify. Finding one still under a Cuda’s hood, let alone a convertible’s, is genuinely uncommon.

Why the Convertible Version Is the Harder Find

Hardtop Cudas from 1970 survive in reasonable numbers, but convertibles were a different story from day one. Ragtops cost more, weakened the platform’s rigidity, and appealed to a narrower slice of buyers who wanted a muscle car and a cruiser in the same package. Production numbers reflect that gap clearly, and the decades since have not been kind to the survivors either, since plenty were later cut up, re-topped, or lost to rust before the collector market caught up to their value. A numbers-matching 440-6 convertible in original color, like this one, sits at the intersection of two rarity factors most Mopar buyers only get one of.

One Piece of a Bigger Mopar Story

According to the video, this Cuda belongs to Tom Lembeck, a collector known within the Chicago car community for assembling a stable built specifically around Chrysler’s muscle car era rather than chasing whatever brand happens to be trending. That kind of focus matters in this hobby. Collections built around a single manufacturer’s specific golden years tend to tell a more complete story than a scattered garage of one-off trophies, and it shows in how the car is presented, discussed, and clearly enjoyed rather than simply stored.

The ‘My Car Story’ Approach

Lou Costabile’s channel has built a loyal following by doing something simple that a lot of car content skips entirely: letting the owner talk. Rather than a scripted walkaround reciting spec sheets, the format puts the microphone in front of people like Tom and lets the personal history, the how-I-found-it and why-I-kept-it details, carry the video. It is a format that rewards patience, and it consistently surfaces details, like exactly when and where a car was bought, that spec-focused content never bothers to ask about.

What Six-Pack Cudas Bring at Auction

Numbers-matching 440-6 Cuda convertibles have become six-figure cars at major auction houses over the last decade, with clean, documented examples routinely outperforming hardtop counterparts by a wide margin. Color and originality both move the number substantially, and a Lemon Twist example with its original drivetrain sits firmly in the segment collectors specifically hunt for rather than settle for. It is part of why cars like this one rarely change hands quietly.

A Community That Still Shows Up

Viewer reaction to the video backs up how respected this particular car and owner are within the hobby, with commenters calling it a “masterpiece by Plymouth” and praising Tom’s generosity in sharing a collection this significant on camera rather than keeping it locked away. That willingness to show the car, tell its story, and let strangers on the internet appreciate it is its own kind of preservation, one that keeps cars like this Cuda part of the ongoing muscle car conversation instead of a private trophy nobody outside the garage ever sees.

A Hidden Gem Hiding in Plain Sight

At just over six thousand views, this video is a fraction of the audience that some flashier Mopar content pulls in, yet the car itself would headline almost any collector show in the country. That gap between modest view count and genuine significance is common across niche corners of the classic car world, where a numbers-matching, highly optioned survivor can sit one search query away from most fans without ever going viral. For anyone willing to click past the bigger, louder thumbnails, this Cuda is exactly the kind of overlooked find that makes digging through smaller channels worthwhile.

Why Lemon Twist Still Inspires Builders Today

Modern Mopar has leaned back into its own history in recent years, reviving several of its original High Impact shades on limited-run performance models aimed squarely at buyers who grew up admiring cars exactly like this one. That renewed interest keeps period-correct paint codes like Lemon Twist relevant well beyond the restoration crowd, feeding demand among builders who want a modern car to visually echo an original like Tom’s Cuda. It is a rare case of a fifty-plus-year-old paint chip still shaping what rolls off an assembly line today, and it is part of why a color this bold has never really gone out of style.

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