1971 Plymouth hemicuda Convertible

A private collection lends V8TV one of only eleven 1971 Plymouth Hemi Cuda convertibles ever built, and host Kevin finally gets the drive commenters say he has been owed for a while. Between a documented 3.5 million dollar auction result for a sibling car and a sharp-eyed viewer spotting real rust in the tailpipe, this episode of Muscle Car Of The Week turns a routine drive into something closer to an event. What does it actually feel like to finally get behind the wheel of the car everyone calls the top fish?

Kevin has apparently been waiting for this one. That much is obvious from the comment section alone, where viewers keep saying it is long overdue and asking, half-joking, if it is his birthday. What finally got him behind the wheel is a 1971 Plymouth from a private collection that most owners would never let anyone drive at all, let alone throw sideways on camera. One commenter puts it plainly: even the Mustangs and Camaros of this era have a hero, and this is it. So what does it actually take to earn a turn in the car everyone else only gets to watch?

The Fish Every Other Muscle Car Answers To

Muscle Car Of The Week built its 245th episode around a single sentence in its own description: this is the top dog, or as the write-up jokingly corrects itself, the top fish, of the entire muscle car world. That is not a small claim in a genre full of big claims, and V8TV does not spend much time arguing for it verbally. Instead the episode leans on the car itself, borrowed from a private collection identified only as The Brothers Collection, and lets host Kevin take it out for a drive that the comment section makes clear has been requested, and delayed, for some time. The description states the numbers plainly, 425 horsepower and 490 pound-feet of torque, and calls the car 100 percent superbad without qualification, treating a spec sheet as a formality next to the reputation the car already carries among the channel’s regulars.

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1971: The Last and Wildest Year of the E-Body

Plymouth built the Barracuda on Chrysler’s E-body platform for three model years, 1970 through 1974, but 1971 stands apart as the only year the car wore quad headlights, a revised loop-style front bumper, and gill-style fender vents cut into the front fenders, styling changes made specifically to differentiate that single model year from 1970 and the cars that followed. It was also the last year Plymouth offered the 426 Hemi in the Barracuda at all, a combination Chrysler discontinued after 1971 as insurance surcharges and tightening emissions rules made the highest-output engine option increasingly unsellable. That timing is exactly why a 1971 Hemi Cuda occupies a different tier than its 1970 sibling in collector circles: it is not just rare, it is the final word on the platform’s most extreme factory configuration before Chrysler walked away from it entirely.

425 Horsepower on Paper, Something Else in Person

Chrysler’s factory rating of 425 horsepower at 5,000 rpm and 490 lb-ft of torque at 4,000 rpm was already understood at the time to be conservative, a gross figure quoted partly to manage insurance underwriters rather than to fully advertise what the dual-carbureted 426 could actually produce on a dyno. Fed by two Carter AFB four-barrel carburetors atop a cross-ram or in-line intake depending on option, the Hemi’s hemispherical combustion chambers allowed larger valves and more complete burn than the wedge-head big-blocks Ford and GM were racing against it. None of that shows up as a number on the video’s description, but it explains the tone in the comments, where longtime viewers do not talk about the horsepower rating so much as they talk about the sound and the way the car moves once Kevin gets into the throttle, treating the factory figure as a starting point rather than the whole story.

Why Only a Handful Were Ever Built This Way

What makes this specific car remarkable is not just that it is a Hemi Cuda, but that it is a convertible, a combination Plymouth built in genuinely tiny numbers for 1971. Industry-documented production records put the total at just eleven 1971 Hemi Cuda convertibles built for the entire model year, and of those eleven, only three left the factory with the desirable four-speed manual — the rest were automatics — a split repeated so often in collector circles it has become the defining fact anyone mentions about the car. Declining convertible sales industry-wide, combined with the vanishing Hemi option itself, meant Plymouth had almost no market incentive to build more, making this configuration a one-year, ultra-low-volume anomaly even within a nameplate already known for scarce, high-performance variants.

What a Real Hemicuda Convertible Actually Costs Now

That scarcity is not an abstract collector talking point, it is a documented auction result. A 1971 Hemi Cuda convertible, one of that same handful of eleven, sold at a Mecum auction in Seattle in 2014 for 3.5 million dollars, a figure that remains one of the highest prices ever paid for an American muscle car at public auction. Hardtop 1971 Hemi Cudas, built in larger but still limited numbers, routinely clear six figures when properly documented with numbers-matching drivetrains. Against that backdrop, a museum-quality example sitting in a private collection, brought out specifically for a YouTube episode rather than a public sale, represents an access opportunity most enthusiasts will never get anywhere near, which is precisely why the comment section treats the drive itself as an event rather than routine content.

V8TV and the Weekly Hunt for the Real Thing

V8TV built its Muscle Car Of The Week series around exactly this kind of access, working with private collectors and the V8 Speed and Resto Shop network to put real drive time behind cars that usually only appear static at auctions or shows. Episode 245 fits the format precisely: a brief description, a well-known nickname for the car’s status within the hobby, and then footage that lets the machine do the talking rather than a scripted pitch. That approach has built a specific kind of trust with the channel’s audience, evident in how comments respond less like typical car-review viewers and more like a community that recognizes Kevin personally and has opinions about which cars he has, and has not yet, been allowed to drive.

The Rust in the Tailpipe Nobody Can Fake

One of the sharper-eyed comments on the video points out something the polished presentation does not draw attention to: visible rust coming out of the left tailpipe during a burnout, along with wear on the underside of the resonator caught in an undercarriage shot. On a car valued in the high six or seven figures, a detail like that matters, because it is a small, honest crack in an otherwise pristine presentation, evidence of a genuinely old, genuinely used exhaust system rather than a cosmetically perfect restoration built purely for display. For a car this rare, that kind of imperfection is oddly reassuring: it suggests The Brothers Collection is willing to actually drive a car this valuable hard enough to reveal wear, rather than trailering it exclusively between climate-controlled storage and auction stages.

A Car the Comments Section Still Argues Over

More than one commenter simply calls this their favorite muscle car, full stop, without qualifying it against a specific engine option or model year, a rare kind of consensus in a hobby usually defined by fierce brand loyalty and endless spec-sheet arguments. Another jokes that they wish Chrysler would bring the Hemicuda back the right way, explicitly rejecting the idea of a modern turbocharged four-cylinder revival, a pointed reminder that part of this car’s appeal is inseparable from the exact 426 cubic inches and dual carburetors under its hood. Fifty-plus years after Plymouth built just eleven of these convertibles and then discontinued the combination entirely, the car still generates the kind of reaction that makes an experienced host wait, apparently a long time, for his own turn behind the wheel.

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