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Plymouth beat Ford to showrooms by two weeks with the 1964 Barracuda, then spent a decade playing catch-up anyway. See how a Valiant-based fastback with the biggest curved rear window ever installed on a production car turned into the Hemi ‘Cuda — a car so rare that one convertible sold at auction for $3.5 million.
Plymouth’s Barracuda beat the Mustang to market by two weeks in April 1964 — and then spent a decade figuring out how to actually compete with it. This rundown traces the nameplate from its Valiant-based debut through the 1970 E-body reinvention, the Hemi ‘Cuda and AAR ‘Cuda, and the four-headlight 1971 restyle, ending with Barracuda production’s quiet close in 1974. Watch to see how a footnote became one of the most valuable muscle cars ever built.
James sold his 1970 AAR ‘Cuda for five hundred dollars decades ago — a genuine SCCA Trans-Am homologation special that Plymouth built only 2,724 of. Under the hood sat a 340 Six Pack officially rated at 290 horsepower but widely believed to make considerably more. Read on to find out what the car is worth today, and why that sale still stings.