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Plymouth built only about 115 genuine Hemi ‘Cudas in 1971, each rated at 425 horsepower. This restomod trades that legendary but comparatively modest engine for a modern 572-cubic-inch Hemi crate motor pushing past 800, wrapped around a one-off grille and a five-time Detroit Autorama award-winning interior. Here’s how a crate engine nearly doubled the original’s output, and what that does to a ‘Cuda’s value.
By 1973, the Hemi and the 440 were both gone from the ‘Cuda’s order sheet, casualties of emissions rules and insurance surcharges that had already reshaped Chrysler’s engine lineup. What remained was the 340 in its final season, rated 240 net horsepower, in a car that had one model year left before the E-body disappeared entirely. A first start on one of these is a smaller event than a Hemi car’s, and a more interesting one.
Plymouth built 2,724 AAR ‘Cudas inside a five-week window in spring 1970, purely to homologate the Trans-Am cars Dan Gurney’s team was campaigning. Each got a 340 Six Barrel with three Holley two-barrels, a functional fiberglass hood, side-exit exhaust ahead of the rear wheels, and staggered tire sizes that were an American production first. This one wears the high-impact Moulin Rouge paint. Read on for why it only lasted one year.
This Plymouth ‘Cuda’s quarter-mile run at a 2012 test-and-tune session ends in a rollover that shocked everyone watching, including the person holding the camera. The driver walked away, a testament to both track safety infrastructure and old-fashioned luck. See what this dramatic footage reveals about the real risks of running a vintage muscle car at full speed on a sanctioned strip.
Plymouth gave the 1971 ‘Cuda a face it wore for exactly one model year: four headlights and a set of non-functional gills stamped into the front fenders. Behind that one-year-only sheet metal sat an engine list running from a 340 small-block to the 426 HEMI in its final season, and production numbers so small that some combinations can be counted on two hands. It was also the last year Plymouth offered any of it. Read on to find out why 1971 became the most collectible year in the car’s history.
A 1973 Plymouth Barracuda could never have left the factory with a 426 Hemi under the hood, because Chrysler had already killed the engine two years earlier. That makes this performance-built tribute car something other than a fake, and Mopar collectors have long treated cars like it as legitimate in their own right. Behind the Hemi sits a 727 TorqueFlite, a Dana 60 with 4.11 gears, and Wilwood discs. Read on to find out why the combination works.
A Plymouth Cuda and a Chevy S10 pickup should not belong in the same drag racing conversation, but both of these builds run genuine 10-second quarter miles at Palm Beach International Raceway. One is a muscle car icon pushed well past factory spec, the other is an unglamorous compact truck turned sleeper. Watch two completely different paths to the same performance number collide on the same night.
A twenty-year-old bought this 1972 Plymouth Cuda from his parents in 1980 and began restoring it himself, then died in an accident in 1986, leaving the car partially stripped in a barn for the next 25 years. The buyer who eventually finished the job rebuilt its numbers-matching 340 V8 and restored its Hemi Orange paint down to the correct stripe pattern. Vanguard Motor Sales lays out the full story and documentation behind this Cuda’s unusual path back to the road.
A Plum Crazy 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda with a Shaker hood, billboard stripes, and three two-barrel carburetors feeding a 440 is about as loud as Mopar ever got. Plymouth quoted 385 horsepower, a figure even people close to the factory considered conservative. What is genuinely surprising is how few buyers ordered it that year: just 254 cars. Read on to find out what happened to make one of Plymouth’s best engines disappear almost overnight.
This 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda carries the model’s only four-headlight styling and arrived in the final season Plymouth offered the 426 Hemi — a combination that made fewer than 120 Hemi ‘Cudas among the rarest muscle cars Plymouth ever built. Read on to find out what was happening in the market that made Plymouth’s most powerful car also its rarest.
Mopar’s Crate HEMI Engine Kits let owners of any 1975-or-earlier Mopar bolt in genuine modern HEMI power — 383 horsepower from the 5.7-liter kit or 485 horsepower from the 6.4-liter version — without chasing down custom wiring or tuning. Each kit ships with an unlocked, pre-calibrated PCM that sidesteps the usual factory security headaches of a late-model engine swap. Debuted on two complete builds at the 2016 SEMA Show, the kits have owners of everything from Dusters to Aspens asking if their own project qualifies. Watch the full rundown of what’s included.
Plymouth built exactly five 1971 ‘Cuda 440 Six Barrel convertibles with a four-speed. Not five hundred, five. That number is the result of a perfect storm: a top-tier engine option, the rarest body style, the least popular transmission choice, and a model year in which the entire muscle car market collapsed underneath it. Read on for how a car this specific ever got built and why 1971 is the most consequential year in E-body history.
Plymouth built somewhere around 550 ‘Cuda convertibles for 1970, and only 262 of them carried the 340 four-barrel. Narrow that by transmission and paint code and the surviving population gets very small very quickly. This EB5 Blue Fire Metallic car sits at the intersection of all of it — and the engine that made it rare at the time is the one enthusiasts now argue was the best choice in the catalog.
The 1974 Plymouth ‘Cuda was the last of the E-bodies, built in a year when the biggest engine on the order form made 245 net horsepower. This one no longer carries what the factory installed: the 360 has been bored and stroked to 408 cubic inches and fitted with three two-barrel carburetors. Read on for what Plymouth actually offered that final year and why builders keep reaching for this combination.
Rust does not ask permission before it spreads, and by the time it appears on a 1971 Plymouth Cuda’s rocker panels there is a good chance it has already consumed metal you cannot see. On a unibody E-body the rockers are structure, not trim, which means getting the repair wrong can turn a straightforward job into a car that never closes its doors properly again. Read on for what a correct rocker replacement actually involves.