In Torque We Trust – 1967 Plymouth Barracuda Formula S

Bob Gough grew up idolizing European sports cars after a few childhood years in France — until a 1967 Plymouth Barracuda Formula S changed his mind. Over more than twenty-three years of ownership, he’s swapped in a 340-cubic-inch V8, a Tremec five-speed, and nitrogen shocks, building a car with enough torque to ‘leave Porsches behind’ on the straights. Watch to see why one habit still catches him out in the corners.

Bob Gough spent part of his childhood in France, surrounded by European sports cars, quietly convinced that everything worth admiring about a car came from across the Atlantic. He came home with the opposite conviction. What changed his mind wasn’t a supercar or a racetrack epiphany — it was a 1967 Plymouth Barracuda Formula S that he’s now owned for more than two decades, modified just enough to do something period Porsches genuinely didn’t expect: keep up, and sometimes pull away, in corners the ‘Cuda was never really built to dominate.

A Kid Who Grew Up Looking Down on American Muscle

Bob’s family relocated to France for a few years when he was thirteen, an age when a lot of car opinions get permanently set, and by his own account he came back home looking down on American muscle in favor of the European sports cars he’d grown up around. That bias didn’t survive contact with the 1967 Plymouth Barracuda Formula S, a car built specifically to answer the kind of criticism European car fans leveled at American performance cars of the era: that they went fast in a straight line and did little else.

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The Formula S in Context: Plymouth’s Answer to the Pony Car Wars

The Formula S arrived at a moment when Plymouth was competing directly against the Mustang and Camaro for buyers who wanted genuine performance rather than just a sporty-looking coupe, and the package represented Plymouth’s attempt to differentiate the Barracuda through actual handling credentials rather than horsepower alone. That positioning matters for understanding why Bob’s car works as well as it does today — the Formula S wasn’t a marketing trim level bolted onto a soft platform, it was a legitimate engineering effort that gave later owners like Bob a genuinely capable starting point to build from.

What the Formula S Package Actually Changed

Plymouth built the Formula S package as an in-house answer to that exact complaint, upgrading the Barracuda’s suspension and brakes specifically to give it composure in corners rather than just off the line. It wasn’t a full transformation into a European-style sports car, but it was a genuine attempt to close the gap, and it’s precisely the kind of factory package that gives a car like this one room to be improved further by an owner who understands what the original engineers were trying to accomplish.

Twenty-Three Years, One Owner, Steady Upgrades

Bob has owned this particular Barracuda for more than twenty-three years, which puts his relationship with the car well past the point of a simple restoration project — this is a car he’s lived with, driven, and gradually reshaped over more than two decades of ownership. That kind of long-term stewardship shows in the details, because the modifications on this car aren’t the result of one big build; they’re the accumulated decisions of someone who kept refining the same car instead of moving on to the next one.

Why Long-Term Single Ownership Changes How a Car Gets Built

Cars that pass through several owners over the decades often end up with a patchwork of modifications reflecting different priorities and different budgets, but a car like Bob’s benefits from the opposite: one owner’s evolving understanding of what the car needed, applied consistently over more than twenty years. That’s part of why the Barracuda’s upgrades read as coherent rather than random — the engine swap, the transmission, the wheels, and the shocks all serve the same underlying goal of making the Formula S drive the way Bob always believed it could.

Swapping In a 340 and a Five-Speed

The biggest mechanical change is under the hood, where Bob replaced the original 273-cubic-inch V8 with a 340-cubic-inch engine, a swap that meaningfully increases the power and torque available without straying outside the Mopar family of engines the car was born with. He paired that with a Tremec five-speed manual transmission in place of the factory gearbox, giving the Barracuda a modern shifting feel and better gear spacing for the kind of spirited backroad driving the Formula S package was originally designed to support.

New Wheels and the One Suspension Change That Mattered Most

Bob also moved away from the original 14-inch wheels in favor of custom 15-inch steelies, a change that opened up tire options and improved the car’s overall footprint and grip. The only suspension change beyond what came in the Formula S package was swapping in nitrogen shocks, which Bob says dramatically improved the handling — a relatively simple upgrade, but one that speaks to how much difference shock quality alone can make on a chassis that was already engineered with cornering in mind.

The One Corner Habit That Will Bite You

All of that adds up to a Barracuda genuinely capable of surprising sports car owners on a drive, with enough torque that Bob says it can ‘leave Porsches behind’ once the road straightens out. But the car isn’t without its quirks — the Formula S is prone to rear wheel lock-up if you brake too late going into a corner, which means the driving style that gets the most out of this car requires braking earlier than instinct might suggest for a car with this much straight-line urgency.

Docile Until You Ask It Not to Be

Despite everything Bob has done to sharpen the car’s cornering manners, he describes it as actually docile to drive day to day — his own words being ‘but who drives a car like that?’ when asked about pushing it to its limits. That contrast between a car capable of embarrassing European sports cars and one that’s genuinely pleasant for ordinary driving is exactly the kind of duality that makes a well-sorted muscle car special, and it’s a big part of why this particular Formula S has resonated with viewers well outside the traditional Mopar audience.

Why European Enthusiasts Keep Falling for This Car

The comments on this video reflect that crossover appeal directly, with one self-identified European viewer noting that the car ‘looks very American in a very good way,’ a compliment that lands especially well given Bob’s own backstory of growing up dismissive of exactly this kind of car. Petrolicious built its reputation on telling stories like this one — not just showing a car, but explaining the person behind it and why their relationship with that specific machine matters, which is exactly the approach that turned a kid who once looked down on American muscle into one of its most credible defenders.

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