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Only one automaker ever sold a factory street car wearing two different tire sizes front to rear, and it was not a styling decision. Plymouth needed 2,724 examples built in a five-week sprint to satisfy a racing rulebook, and Dan Gurney’s fingerprints are all over the result. This Alpine White AAR ‘Cuda carries a 340 topped with three two-barrel carburetors and a fiberglass hood. Read on for the rulebook that shaped every strange choice on it.
Dropping a 440-cubic-inch big block into a Barracuda meant giving up power steering and power brakes entirely, because there was simply nowhere left to put them. Plymouth did it anyway, and the result was one of the most single-minded muscle cars Detroit ever sold. Here is why the engine barely fit, how few were actually built, what the weight distribution did to the way it drives, and why a well-sorted 440 Cuda still stops a car show cold.