1971 Plymouth Cuda in Sassy Grass Green Paint & 440 Engine

A restorer who wouldn’t hand his own ‘Cuda over to anyone else, a paint color pulled straight from Chrysler’s loudest era, and a 440 that one viewer called “a monster” before the walkaround even finished. Lou Costabile caught up with Tom Benson on the Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale floor to find out how a self-restored 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda ended up looking factory-fresh in Sassy Grass Green. The comments reveal an even wilder history hiding behind that color code. What was it actually like to own one of these new?

Some cars get restored so they can sit under museum lighting, admired from behind a velvet rope, never touched again. This 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda did not come back from restoration to retire. Lou Costabile caught up with its owner on the Barrett-Jackson floor in Scottsdale, and within seconds it’s clear this isn’t a car some shop finished for a blank-check client. The Sassy Grass Green paint alone stops people mid-stride. But the real story is buried under that finish, and it starts with a name most Mopar people in this crowd already recognize.

The Restorer Who Wouldn’t Let Someone Else Touch It

The owner is Tom Benson, and unlike plenty of cars that cross the Barrett-Jackson auction block in Scottsdale, this ‘Cuda wasn’t handed off to a nameless restoration shop and picked up years later with an invoice attached. Benson restored the car himself, running the process through his own operation, Rant “N” Rave Auto LLC, which he’s built a reputation on well beyond this one build. Lou Costabile’s camera lingers on panel gaps, paint depth, and trim fitment that most viewers assume came from a big-name restoration house, and Benson’s answer catches people off guard every time: he did the bodywork, the paint, and the reassembly under his own roof. That hands-on control is why the car reads as brand new rather than “freshened up.” It’s also why comment sections under this video fill with people asking for his shop’s contact information rather than just admiring the finish from a distance.

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Why Sassy Grass Green Still Stops Traffic

Sassy Grass Green belongs to Chrysler’s High Impact color program, the factory’s answer to a Mopar buyer base that wanted paint as loud as the engines under the hood. One viewer ranked it among their personal top three High Impact shades ever offered, and it’s easy to see why standing next to Benson’s car: the green reads yellow-lime in direct sun and shifts darker in shade, exactly the kind of color-shifting quality that made these paints legendary among Mopar collectors decades later. By 1971, Plymouth was leaning hard into color as a selling point for the ‘Cuda lineup, offering names like Moulin Rouge, Tor-Red, and Curious Yellow alongside Sassy Grass Green. Benson’s choice to restore the car back to its factory shade, rather than repainting it into a more common color, is part of what makes this build resonate with the die-hards watching Lou Costabile’s channel.

The 440 Under the Hood, and That Sound

The 440 sitting under this ‘Cuda’s hood is the reason the car has presence beyond its paint. One commenter summed up the walkaround moment best, calling the engine and exhaust start-up “a monster,” the kind of reaction that’s hard to fake in a comment section. Lou Costabile makes a point of capturing the cold start in full, letting the big-block idle rough for a few seconds before it settles, exactly the moment that gets replayed and shared. The 440 was Plymouth’s workhorse big-block through the muscle car era, offered across the B-body and E-body lineups, and by 1971 it remained the beefiest non-Hemi option available in the ‘Cuda. Paired with Benson’s restoration-grade exhaust work, the car doesn’t just look period-correct, it sounds it too, which matters enormously to viewers who watch these walkarounds specifically for the audio.

The Front End Fans Can’t Stop Arguing About

Ask Mopar people to rank ‘Cuda model years by styling and the 1971 facelift always sparks a fight, but this video’s comment section leans hard in its favor. One viewer flatly stated the ’71 ‘Cuda might have the best front end of any muscle car ever built, full stop. The 1971 restyle swapped the ’70 model’s dual headlights for a quad-headlight face split by chrome bezels, paired with a wider loop-style front bumper that gave the car a lower, more aggressive stance than its predecessor. It was the only year Plymouth ran that specific quad-headlight arrangement before the E-body was discontinued after 1974, giving 1971 cars like Benson’s a one-year-only visual signature. Combined with the Sassy Grass Green paint, the front clip on this particular car is what stops people scrolling through Lou Costabile’s video library and actually clicking play.

Scottsdale, January 2017, and Lou Costabile’s Camera

This walkaround was filmed on January 13, 2017, on the auction floor at Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale, one of the largest collector car events in the country and a regular hunting ground for Lou Costabile’s My Car Story channel. Costabile has built his channel around exactly this format: find the owner standing next to the car, let them tell the story in their own words, and get the engine running on camera before the segment ends. It’s a simple formula, but it’s why the channel has become a go-to source for muscle car documentation rather than just auction hype. With Benson’s ‘Cuda, that format pays off, because Benson is both the owner and the restorer, giving Costabile a subject who can speak to paint codes and driveline specs with the same authority as someone who bought the car finished. The Scottsdale setting also means this ‘Cuda was surrounded by hundreds of other significant cars, yet it still pulled a crowd.

The 340 ‘Cuda That Got Away

Not every comment on this video is about Benson’s car directly, and one of the best is a personal history lesson from a viewer whose father bought a new 1971 ‘Cuda off the lot with the 340 engine and a three-speed manual, finished in purple over a black interior. The options sheet on that car reads like a checklist of what a knowledgeable 1971 buyer would actually order: a rally dash, E60x15 tires mounted on 15×7 Rallye wheels, quick-ratio manual steering, power front disc brakes, the Hemi-spec dual-breaker distributor, a black vinyl roof, and dealer-installed air conditioning. That car was eventually traded in during 1976, a common fate for muscle cars once gas prices and insurance rates turned them from status symbols into liabilities. Stories like this are why Benson’s surviving, restored example matters so much: for every ‘Cuda still around today, there’s a nearly identical one that didn’t make it past the mid-1970s.

A Sassy Grass Green Duster and a Lot of Street Challenges

Another commenter added a different angle on the same paint code, recalling a 1971 Plymouth Duster finished in that identical Sassy Grass Green, though built with a far more modest 198 slant-six engine, manual drum brakes, and manual steering. According to the story, the color alone was enough to get the car challenged to races constantly on the street, regardless of what was actually sitting under the hood. It’s a detail that says as much about High Impact colors as it does about early-1970s street culture: paint became a proxy for performance, and drivers of factory hot rods and economy compacts alike found themselves defending reputations they hadn’t necessarily earned. Benson’s 440-powered ‘Cuda, by contrast, has the drivetrain to back up every challenge that green paint invites, which is presumably part of the appeal of building the real thing rather than a look-alike.

Kowalski, Vanishing Point, and Why This Color Still Sells

More than one viewer couldn’t resist connecting Benson’s car to Vanishing Point, the 1971 cult film that turned a white Dodge Challenger and its driver, Kowalski, into a symbol of open-road defiance for an entire generation of Mopar fans. One commenter admitted they just wanted to drive Benson’s ‘Cuda the way Kowalski drove his Challenger, flat out and indifferent to consequences. That the sentiment attaches itself so easily to a ‘Cuda instead of the film’s actual Challenger says something about how thoroughly Chrysler’s early-1970s E-body lineup has merged into a single cultural shorthand for American muscle rebellion. It also explains why cars like this one, finished to this standard in a color this loud, keep pulling strong attention on the auction circuit and on channels like Lou Costabile’s, decades after the film and the era it captured have both passed into legend.

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