Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda 1970 Convertible 4-Speed Lemon Twist

Plymouth’s Lemon Twist paint code paired with a 426 Hemi and a four-speed manual makes for one of the rarest combinations in the entire muscle car world — a car so scarce that most Mopar fans will never see one in person. Read on to find out just how few of these actually left the factory, and why that number keeps shrinking the more you dig.

It’s no secret that the 426-powered 1970 ‘Cuda is a pinnacle Muscle Car, especially when we’re talking about one of the 5 equipped with a 4-speed manual box. This car features all that and a crazy color called Lemon Twist, one of the High Impact colors for 1970.

Muscle car folks love to argue about which factory color was the boldest of the era, but there’s really no contest once Lemon Twist enters the conversation. Plymouth’s engineers weren’t shy about slapping outrageous High Impact paint codes on cars that already had a 426 cubic inch Hemi under the hood, and this particular combination pushes that idea about as far as it can go. Add a four-speed manual and a folding top to the mix, and you’ve got a car so rare that most Mopar guys will go their whole lives without seeing one in person. The production numbers on this build are almost too small to believe. So just how few of these actually left the factory, and why does that number keep shrinking the more you dig into it?

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A Rarity Even Among Rarities

Sources differ slightly on the exact count, which tells you something about how thin the paper trail gets at this level of rarity — most put total 1970 Hemi ‘Cuda convertible production at just 14 cars, with roughly nine of those getting the automatic. That leaves a mere handful, often cited as five, built with the 4-speed manual like this one. Whatever the precise number, this combination sits at the very top of the Hemi ‘Cuda pyramid, and cars carrying this spec sheet have sold at auction for well over two million dollars in recent years.

426 Hemi Muscle Under a Screaming Yellow Skin

Underneath that unmistakable Lemon Twist paint sits the 426 Street Hemi, factory-rated at 425 horsepower and 490 lb-ft of torque, though anyone who’s spun the tach on one of these knows the real number was likely higher. Plymouth built the High Impact color palette specifically to make sure nobody could miss a Hemi ‘Cuda coming or going, and Lemon Twist did exactly that — it’s about as far from a subtle color as Detroit ever produced, and paired with the drop top and stick shift, this car was built to be seen and heard in equal measure.

The High Impact Palette

Lemon Twist wasn’t a one-off — it was part of Plymouth’s larger High Impact lineup that also included shades like In-Violet, Vitamin C, and Moulin Rouge, all designed to grab attention on the street and in showrooms during a period when muscle car marketing leaned hard into shock value. Few of those colors survived long on the order sheet, and fewer still ended up wrapped around a numbers-matching Hemi convertible, which is exactly why finding one today feels like stumbling across a unicorn with a four-speed.

Why a Hemi ‘Cuda Convertible Barely Existed at All

Plymouth built the Hemi ‘Cuda convertible for only two model years, 1970 and 1971, and production dropped even further in 1971 — meaning the entire population of factory Hemi ‘Cuda convertibles across both years numbers in the dozens, not hundreds, which is part of why any surviving example, regardless of transmission, draws serious attention whenever one changes hands.

The Six-Barrel Alternative Nobody Talks About Enough

Buyers who wanted serious performance without stepping up to the 426 Hemi could order the 440 Six-Barrel, rated at 390 horsepower and considerably more affordable and easier to live with day-to-day than the finicky, high-maintenance Hemi — a combination that actually outsold the Hemi ‘Cuda by a wide margin in 1970 and remains a more attainable entry point into factory Mopar performance today.

What Made the Hemi Genuinely Different to Drive

The 426 Street Hemi’s dual four-barrel carburetors and cross-ram intake manifold gave it a completely different power delivery than Chrysler’s wedge-head big-blocks, pulling hard and consistently through the entire rev range rather than tapering off, which is why period road testers consistently described driving a Hemi car as a fundamentally different experience from any other muscle car on the market, Mopar or otherwise.

Why Auction Prices for This Combination Keep Climbing

Documented Hemi ‘Cuda convertibles with rare High Impact colors and manual transmissions have become some of the single most valuable American production cars sold at auction, regularly exceeding the two-million-dollar mark and occasionally climbing well beyond it — pricing driven by the intersection of three separate scarcities: the Hemi engine itself, the convertible body style, and the specific color combination, all converging on one car.

The Restoration Challenge Unique to Cars Like This

Because so few of these cars exist, restoring one correctly means working from period photographs, broadcast sheets, and surviving parts-book documentation rather than simply ordering reproduction parts off a shelf the way a more common muscle car restoration might — a process that can take years and demands a level of documentation most restorers never have to think about on a more mainstream build.

How to Tell a Genuine Lemon Twist Car from a Repaint

Because Lemon Twist has become such a desirable color long after the fact, verifying that a car was actually built that color from the factory means checking the fender tag’s paint code against Chrysler’s original production broadcast sheet, since a repainted ‘Cuda in a formerly common color can be made to look identical to a genuine High Impact car without real documentation to back it up — a distinction that can mean a difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction. Because Plymouth built the High Impact palette to be loud by design, period buyers who ordered a Hemi in one of these colors were making an unmistakable statement about wanting to be seen, not just to go fast — a combination of visual boldness and genuine performance that helps explain why cars like this one continue to set records at major collector auctions decades after Plymouth stopped building them.

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