A dealer in Pennsylvania is selling a 1968 Barracuda fastback wearing a 340 V8 and Formula S badging it wasn’t born with. Only 3,917 real 340 Formula S cars ever left the factory — here’s how to tell a tribute from the genuine article.
This 1968 Plymouth Barracuda rolled off the assembly line wearing a modest 318 under its hood, no Formula S badge, no Commando engine, nothing to suggest it was anything more than a base fastback. Today it wears a 340ci V8, Formula S rocker stripes, and dog-dish hubcaps on period-correct 14-inch wheels, dressed as a tribute to the real thing. It just landed at Classic Auto Mall in Morgantown, Pennsylvania, on consignment, and the build raises a question every Mopar shopper eventually runs into: what actually made a Formula S special, and how do you tell a well-built tribute from the genuine article? The answer explains why Plymouth quietly built one of the sharpest pony cars of 1968, and why almost nobody noticed at the time.
A Dealer Walkaround That Doubles as a Formula S Education
The video comes from Classic Auto Mall, a consignment dealer whose eight-acre, climate-controlled facility sits an hour west of Philadelphia. Their walkaround covers this particular fastback panel by panel: newer two-stage Sable White paint with contrasting dark red rocker stripes, the second-generation Barracuda’s distinctive wide-set headlights in individual grille bezels, non-functional hood inserts (a common styling trick of the era), and the Barracuda script badge sitting over the Formula S fender plate. The car rides on 14-inch body-matched steel wheels with dog-dish caps, wrapped in period-appropriate 205/70R14 tires, and the trim continues around back where polished bright work frames the tail lights and ties into the side stripes.
Inside, red vinyl bucket seats and a matching bench look barely broken in, framed by a wood-rimmed three-spoke wheel and a gauge cluster with a central tachometer and 150-mph speedometer, flanked by an A/C panel and an AM radio, both correct for a well-optioned 1968 car. A tall Hurst shifter rises out of the transmission tunnel, a giveaway that this isn’t the automatic-only base car, and Barracuda-embroidered red carpet mats protect the loop carpet underneath. The dealer is upfront about the flaws too: uneven paint on the hood and other horizontal surfaces, some runs near the tail panel, and rough filler around the exhaust cutouts, the kind of honest condition notes that matter more than glossy marketing copy when you’re deciding whether to make the drive to see a car in person.
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How the Formula S Became Plymouth’s Answer to the Pony Car War
Plymouth introduced the Formula S package in 1965 as a way to give Barracuda buyers a genuinely sporting alternative to the six-cylinder base car, built around a 273-cubic-inch Commando V8. The second-generation Barracuda arrived for 1967 with a completely reworked body shared with almost no sheet metal from the original 1964-66 car, wider, lower, and finally its own design instead of a reskinned Valiant, and the Formula S package carried over as the performance option on that new platform.
By 1968, Plymouth had replaced the original small block with something considerably more serious: a 340-cubic-inch V8 rated at 275 horsepower at 5,000 rpm and 340 lb-ft of torque at 3,200 rpm, built with big-port heads, 2.02/1.60-inch valves, and a 10.5:1 compression ratio. Buyers who wanted even more could step up to a 383-cubic-inch big block instead. The Formula S package also bundled heavy-duty suspension, upgraded shocks, wider wheels, and E70-14 Red Streak tires, along with the fender badges and hood treatment this tribute car borrows.
The numbers explain why real Formula S cars are hard to find today. Plymouth built just 3,917 Formula S 340 cars for 1968 and only 1,270 with the 383, a fraction of total Barracuda production that year. A 340 fastback like this one carried a sticker price of roughly $2,900 when new, a real premium over the base car’s price, and it’s part of why so many buyers walked past the Formula S in period even though the performance was there for anyone paying attention. Period road tests put the 340 car in the low-to-mid six-second range to 60 mph, quick enough to embarrass plenty of bigger-displacement rivals that cost more to insure.
Under the hood, this particular car backs its 340 with an A833 four-speed manual transmission feeding an 8-3/4-inch rear end with 3.55 gears and Sure Grip, along with a newer water pump, fuel pump, and sending unit. That’s the correct period drivetrain combination for a real Formula S 340, which is exactly the point of a well-executed tribute: it drives the way the genuine article did, even without the matching-numbers paperwork.
What Separates a Tribute From the Real Thing, and Why It Matters
A “tribute” build like this one means the car wasn’t born with the drivetrain and trim it now wears. It started life as a 318-powered fastback and was later upgraded to Formula S specification, engine, suspension, badging, and all. That distinction matters enormously to collectors chasing numbers-matching cars, where a genuine 1968 Formula S 340 with its original engine and a clean broadcast sheet commands a real premium over a clone at auction. But for a driver who wants the Formula S experience, the four-speed shifter, the 340’s mid-range punch, the correct suspension geometry, without chasing an increasingly rare original, a well-documented tribute can be the more sensible buy, and often the more usable one, since nobody worries about mileage on a car built to be original.
The lesson carries beyond this one car. Anyone shopping second-generation Barracudas should always ask for a fender tag or broadcast sheet before assuming Formula S badging means a factory-built car, since the reproduction parts needed to replicate the look, stripes, badges, even correct wheels, have been available for decades. Dealers who disclose the tribute status upfront, as Classic Auto Mall does here, make that homework a lot easier, and a car with an honestly documented history is almost always a better long-term ownership experience than one with questions attached.
Watch the full walkaround above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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