My 1974 Plymouth Cuda Project Car

This is my current project car.  I have been working on it now for about 2 years.  I purchased the car from a guy in northern Florida.  It had been sitting for years in his side yard and he was moving and had to get rid of it.  This is a 1974 Plymouth Barracuda.  It is an original, numbers matching 318 cubic inch V-8 with approximately 58,000 miles on it.  It has a Florida title.  For those who pay attention to a little trivia, 1974 was the last year Plymouth built Barracudas.  The oil embargo of 1973 left the country turning away from muscle cars.  Chrysler ended production of both the Plymouth Barracuda and the Dodge Challenger (E bodies) in March of 1974.  They produced only 6,745 Barracudas, 4,989 Cudas, and 16,437 Challengers that year, making them the rarest of series.  The base sticker price for the Barracuda was $3067.  Yup.  $3067 for a brand new car.

This car was in very rough shape body wise, because of the production method used by the Chrysler Corporation at the time.  Once you drill out the spot welds and take the sheet metal pieces apart, you find that they used no paint or primer to prevent rusting.  In those days cars came with a one year, 12,000 mile warranty, and they expected you to run it for three or four years (the length of a typical loan at the time), then buy a new one.  They didn’t care if the car lasted much beyond that.  Fortunately for we muscle car enthusiasts, some of them did.

This is a Barracuda hardtop, BH code.  It came with a black vinyl top and painted Lucerne Blue Metallic.   When I disassembled the car I found two broadcast sheets for the assembly line.  One was in pieces, but the other was whole.  It has the original drive train, and the numbers on the vin, cowl, radiator support, engine, and transmission match.

That’s the good news.  The bad new is that the driver’s side fender was not on the car, and as a consequence of being outside in the humid Florida weather for more than a decade, the driver’s side frame was severely rusted, as was the cowl, firewall, and side supports.  I will upload pictures to show you what was left of the sheet metal and what I had to replace.

The good thing is that there are a number of people out there who supply original parts, and there are many others that supply after market reproduction parts.  I tend to be a purist and prefer to work with used, original equipment parts.  I was able to purchase a good used frame rail and a firewall from a guy up in Georgia.  I was able to repair the cowl (it really helps to know how to weld!) to save the original I.D. number punched into it on the driver’s side.

The picture here shows the car at the beginning of the Memorial Day weekend.  As of Monday afternoon the cowl is welded back on and is currently primed.  I also completely replaced the floor.  I was able to get a pretty good one from a guy in northern Florida.  It only needed a patch on the drivers side foot area.  I used an aftermarket patch to repair it.

So far I have replaced the floor front to back, I have replaced the driver’s side frame rail, I have replaced the firewall, and have repaired the cowl to save the i.d. number.  When I finished the tear down, you could stand about where your feet would be in the front seat.  There was nothing forward, except the passenger side frame rail.  This has been an extensive restoration, but there are so few of these cars left, I feel they all should be saved.

 

I need to get moving on completing this project as I have two more waiting in the wings.  I have accumulated all the parts for the other two cars.   It will be like putting a ‘kit’ car together.