1971 Plymouth Hemi Cuda Convertible 4-Speed

Only eleven Hemi ‘Cuda convertibles left Chrysler’s factory in 1971, and this is one of just two built with both the 426 Hemi and a 4-speed manual. Kevin Oeste and the V8TV crew tracked it down inside a private collection viewers call the “Hemi E-body kings.” One commenter even recalled a rumored 2.2 million dollar sale price, though nobody can confirm it. How does a car this rare end up missing a tachometer?

Chrysler workers built exactly eleven of these in 1971, and that number alone should stop you mid-scroll. It isn’t even the most remarkable part of this car’s story. V8TV’s Kevin Oeste tracked it down from a collection so deep in Hemi E-body metal that longtime viewers call its owners the kings of the breed. One detail buried in the build sheet narrows an already impossibly small pool down to just two cars in existence, and this is one of them. A rumor has followed this specific ‘Cuda for years about what it once sold for, and nobody in the comments seems totally sure it’s true.

V8TV, Kevin Oeste, and Episode 193

This 1971 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda convertible is the subject of episode 193 of V8TV’s Muscle Car of the Week series, produced by Kevin Oeste and the V8TV Productions team. Like the Galaxie featured elsewhere in this same series, the car comes from The Brothers Collection, a private stable that has become something of a recurring destination for V8TV’s cameras whenever they need access to genuinely significant, high-dollar Mopar iron. With just over 7,000 views, this particular episode hasn’t pulled the massive audience some other Muscle Car of the Week installments have drawn, but rarity like this doesn’t need volume to matter, it needs the right audience. Judging by the comment section, V8TV found exactly that audience: a group of viewers who immediately understood what they were looking at and why it commanded this level of attention from a production crew that doesn’t feature just any convertible.

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Eleven Built, and This Is One of Only Two

The number that anchors this entire video is eleven: that’s the total count of Hemi ‘Cuda convertibles Chrysler workers built for the 1971 model year, across every configuration and every market combined. Narrow that already microscopic production run down further by transmission choice, and the number gets almost absurd. This car is among a group so small that even Mopar registries can’t fully agree on its size – most sources put the number of 4-speed, US-delivered 1971 Hemi ‘Cuda convertibles somewhere between two and seven, but everyone agrees it’s a single-digit club, since the rest of that eleven-car run left the factory with automatics or were built for export markets outside the United States. That makes this specific combination, Hemi power and a manual gearbox in a drop-top E-body, one of the rarest driveline pairings in the entire muscle car era, rarer by a wide margin than even the more commonly cited Hemi ‘Cuda hardtop production numbers that collectors already treat as scarce.

The Hemi and the Stick: Why This Combination Mattered

Ordering the 426 Hemi in any 1971 ‘Cuda was already a statement, since Chrysler’s cross-ram, dual-quad street Hemi remained the most powerful and most expensive engine option in the entire lineup that year, the last year the Hemi was offered in the E-body before emissions regulations and rising insurance rates pushed it out of production. Pairing that engine with a 4-speed manual rather than the more common TorqueFlite automatic added a layer of driver commitment that most buyers, even ones willing to pay for the Hemi option, ultimately passed on. The manual gearbox meant no compromise between straight-line performance and driver engagement, which is exactly why 4-speed Hemi cars carry such a premium over their automatic counterparts across every Mopar model that offered the choice. In a convertible built in a production run of just eleven, adding the 4-speed on top of that narrows the field to almost nothing.

Convertible, Hemi, and the Last Year of the E-Body’s Golden Era

Convertibles were already the rarest body style across Chrysler’s E-body lineup, since most ‘Cuda and Challenger buyers opted for the hardtop, and folding-top production numbers dropped even further as the muscle car market began cooling heading into 1971. Combine that scarce body style with the equally scarce Hemi engine option, and you get a car that sits at the intersection of two entirely separate rarity stories at once. 1971 also marked a styling update for the ‘Cuda, adding quad headlights and a revised grille, changes that give 1971 cars a distinct one-year-only look before Plymouth dropped the Hemi option after this model year entirely. For collectors who specifically chase E-body Hemis, a convertible from this final year represents about as complete a combination of rarity, performance, and historical significance as the model line ever offered, which is exactly the kind of car that ends up in a collection like the one featured here.

The Hemi E-Body Kings

One commenter summed up The Brothers Collection bluntly, calling its owners the “Hemi E-body kings,” and estimating that the collection holds tens of millions of dollars worth of Hemi-powered Challengers and ‘Cudas across its holdings. That kind of reputation doesn’t get built by accident; it comes from years of tracking down exactly the kind of car featured in this video, one where production numbers are measured in single digits rather than hundreds. V8TV’s continued access to this collection is part of why the channel has become a reliable source for documentation on cars that rarely surface publicly at all, let alone get a detailed walkaround with an owner willing to discuss specifics. For viewers who follow the Mopar auction and collector scene closely, seeing a new Brothers Collection car featured on Muscle Car of the Week is treated as a genuine event, not just another video in a long-running series.

Did This Car Really Sell for 2.2 Million?

In the comments, one longtime viewer recalled, or claimed, that this exact car had sold for somewhere around 2.2 million dollars a couple of years prior to this video, though no authoritative source backs up that specific figure within the discussion itself. Treat that number as a data point from an engaged fan rather than a confirmed sale price, but it’s not an unreasonable ballpark for a car with this exact combination of attributes. Documented 1971 Hemi ‘Cuda convertibles, even automatic ones, have sold at public auction for seven figures on multiple occasions over the past decade, and a 4-speed example from a run of only a handful of known cars would command a substantial premium over even those results. Whether or not the 2.2 million figure is accurate, it captures how this specific niche of the Mopar market has behaved: values climbing steadily as fewer of these cars remain in private hands rather than museums or permanent collections.

No Tachometer? Who Orders a Car Like That?

Among the more pointed comments on this video is a simple, incredulous question: who orders a car like this without a tachometer? It’s a fair reaction, since a buyer willing to pay for the most expensive engine option Chrysler offered and specify a manual transmission on top of it seems like exactly the kind of customer who’d also want a gauge to match the engine’s redline. But factory build sheets from this era are full of exactly this kind of contradiction, where options got checked or skipped based on dealer stock, buyer indifference to certain features, or simple oversight rather than any consistent logic. That gap between what a car’s driveline suggests about its buyer and what its options sheet actually shows is part of what makes original documentation on cars like this so valuable to collectors, since it captures a real decision made by a real person rather than a theoretical ideal build.

The Ring Brothers Counterargument

Not every comment on this video is pure admiration. One viewer stated a preference for the Ring Brothers’ custom-built 1949 Cadillac over this numbers-matching Hemi ‘Cuda convertible, a comparison that captures a real and ongoing divide in the collector car world between preserving original, documented history and celebrating a builder’s modern reimagining of a classic shape. Both approaches have passionate followings, and the debate between originality and custom builds shows up constantly in comment sections across the muscle car content world, this video included. What makes this particular ‘Cuda hard to argue against on pure rarity grounds is that no amount of custom fabrication can recreate a genuine 1-of-2 factory build; Ring Brothers can build another stunning custom Cadillac, but Chrysler will never build another 1971 Hemi ‘Cuda convertible with a 4-speed. That distinction, between manufactured scarcity and inherited scarcity, is ultimately why cars like this one keep commanding the attention V8TV gave it here.

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