(first posted 5/26/2016) Although they appeared within sixteen days of each other in April 1964, there were were several things that differentiated the Barracuda from the Mustang. We won’t go into all of them here, having covered the somewhat-sad Barracuda story here, but two of the more obscure ones were the fact that the Barracuda was technically a Valiant in its first year, and the that it was really a 1964 model year, unlike the Mustang, which was a 1965 model from day one.
Here’s the tell-tale that this is a ’64, with the Valiant script on the lower right side. That was dropped for 1965, and the Barracuda became its own distinct model. So would the Mustang have had a less successful start if it had been called the Falcon Mustang?
Well, Plymouth was just being truthful, as the Barracuda really wasn’t anything other than a Valiant Signet with a fastback roof. Which of course was the big problem. The Mustang may have had a lot of Falcon under the skin, but it was all rearranged, with a new body that was totally distinct.
This is actually almost exactly like the one I spent a few days in, exploring the rugged back country of Wyoming in May of 1972, inasmuch as it has the slant six and push-button automatic. I should have gotten more shots and replaced the shiny red one in my CC. But we were walking briskly (in Portland) and I didn’t want to hold up the party getting to lunch.
That probably explains why the shot from the front has soft focus, as I was feeling a bit rushed. There’s a world of difference between this mild-mannered Valiant in drag from the wild E-Body ‘Cuda from 1971, even if it was only six years.
On YouTube, there’s a Chevrolet dealer filmstrip comparing the Corvair to the Mustang, and the narrator often refers to it as the “Falcon Mustang,” which always elicits a laugh from me. 🙂
This is a nice original Barracuda, although I much prefer the second-generation.
For years I thought I wanted a first generation Mustang. My Father had a ’66 Barracuda Formula S model; I thought it inferior to a Mustang. The potent small block Mopar 273 4BBl V8 engine, more competent handling & stopping and a dashboard full of gauges did nothing to suppress my “Mustang Mania”.
Finally, I purchased a very clean, unmolested ’66 Mustang, in the early 1990’s. (Yes, I AM a patient man).
By the second time I drove it I realized that underneath the skin I was, once again, driving my Grandfather’s 1960 Falcon!
My ’66 Chevy Corvair Monza was a much better “driver’s car”.
The early dealer information on the Mustang referred to it as a “Special Falcon,” and that designation extended to the parts, as well, from what I’ve read.
In Canada the first-gen Barracuda was badged as a Valiant through 1966, in block letters even. I’m not even clear it was called a Barracuda rather than just a Valiant fastback coupe.
Anyway, 7-foot-long folding rear seat floors are more important than distinct sheetmetal 😉
Well there’s the problem. It needed an extra foot to fit 4×8 plywood.
😉
Minor correction. In ’66, it was separate from the Valiant. No more VALIANT on the rear deck.
That’s very likely an airbrush job on a photo of a U.S. car. It was still the Valiant Barracuda in ’66 – in fact Valiant was the marque for all A-bodies through ’66. The Dart was not available in Canada and Valiants were sold by both C-P and Dodge dealers.
Awesome article! I’ve always found this version of the Valiant/Barracuda to be quite attractive. I love the sloping rear window.
In 1964 my wife and I bought one of the first Barracudas to be on the streets of Houston, Tx. It was gold exterior/ gold interior, 273ci v8 with the push button auto transmission. Kept it five years and it always drew a small group of people when we were parked at the store. Loved that car.
One of the more lovable losers from Chrysler. They spent all that money developing that ginormous rear window, but left the doghouse virtually unchanged from the Valiant (with the exception of the grille and its quasi-foglight turn signals).
Imagine if Chrysler had went all-in like Ford and came up with a completely distinct ponycar (as in releasing what became the 1967 Barracuda much earlier), dropping all references to the Valiant, entirely. But I would imagine that Lynn Townsend didn’t feel like betting the entire company on the success of one model. In that regard, the Barracuda ended up being a distant second (then third after the Camaro and Firebird arrived in 1967). Still, technically, leaving the original Barracuda a Valiant was the pragmatic move for the time. No one yet knew how explosive the ponycar market would end up being.
Ironically, Townsend essentially ‘did’ bet nearly the entire company on the development of the 1970 E-body. Although it was based on the intermediate B-body, the only really shared part was the firewall (specifically done so that a big-block engine would easily fit into the engine bay). If not for its attractive appearance, I still contend that the E-body belongs as one of Chrysler’s Deadly Sins. Thanks to abysmal sales from the onset, they never even came close to recouping development costs and I suspect the money lost had been so dear, it went a long way to holding up developing/refining other, much more critical, mainstream models that competed directly with Ford and GM.
I think another problem with the E-body’s lack of success was timing. Mopar, IMO, tried to catch a wave that in retrospect was already at its peak – which was going to get hit with high insurance premiums for high performance pony cars.
The E Body was about 3 years too late, and probably about 10% too big to really have made the difference it needed to. If Chrysler had put the development dollars into engineering an “E Body” based on the existing A Body platform, developing a car similar in size to the Mustang/Camaro/Firebird with unique sheetmetal and greenhouse, they would have been a real contender at the height of the pony wars. As it was, the E Body came just 2 years before the muscle car era started caving in due to insurance and fuel pricing issues. In 1970 the ponycars from Ford and GM were moving onto their second generations already, and all the thunder in the market was stolen by them. Chrysler was already an also-ran by then. They would have needed to hit the market around ’67 or ’68 with something sized and powered like what the others were offering in order to really hit the ground running in the segment.
Oops. Silverkris beat me to it.^^
I also realize that the Barracuda did ultimately end up with its own unique sheetmetal prior to the advent of the E-Body, but let’s face it, the effort was a little half-hearted, and the result was a car that came across more like a well-optioned Chevy II/Nova than anything that was really going to lure in a Mustang or Camaro buyer.
One thing I’ve found studying the E-body structure is there are far greater similarities between it and the 71+ B body than there was to the 70 Bs, as they were truly identical from the firewall forward, and I’m pretty sure they even share windshields too. Analogous to the 67 F-Body platform serving as the basis of the 68 Nova. Therefore I have to imagine a chunk of the development were used for the next years B bodies, I won’t contend them being a deadly sin, but I do wonder to just what extent. The 71 and up B bodies didn’t do spectacularly either, especially as the 70s further unraveled.
Good research. Even a few major parts of the E-body that were shared with the 71+ B-body cars would, indeed, seem to mitigate somewhat the big R&D money Chrysler spent on the E.
As stated, the new B-body wasn’t exactly a sales success, either, but at least they didn’t have to start from scratch. Still, the great ‘what if’ will always be if Chrysler had just skipped the E-body completely. At the very least, the new intermediate would have gotten to market at least a year sooner to do battle with the new Ford Torino and Chevy Malibu.
These have always appealed to me a lot. It is true that they lacked much of the differentiation that Mustang had from the Falcon, but it was a lot closer to the ponycar market than whatever Chevy was peddling then. It is easy from our vantage point to say that Chrysler should have given the car all new sheetmetal, but nobody foresaw how explosive the Mustang would be. Chrysler should get credit for not just being in that market, but for being there even before Ford.
Nobody had a better feel for the market in that period than Ford. Given what we know about Chrysler’s “follow the leader” ways then, it is a minor miracle that Barracudas were in showrooms at all.
I was in Portland on Saturday and I swear I saw that same car in SE just off Belmont!
The hack job Chrysler did in making a Valiant into a Barracuda and the quite similar exercise that AMC did to make a Rebel into a Marlin, all concurrent with the stunning Ford Mustang, made it quite clear to this then teenage car nut that Chrysler and AMC were just also rans in the competition for baby boomer dollars and that the Ford dealer was the place where I would be looking for my future cars.
The bullet Birds of a few years prior had me thinking Ford; the Mustang pushed me over the edge. Chrysler/AMC had cemented themselves into the “never consider” category with their feeble Valiant/Rebel attempts to compete.
That mid-60s Ford magic worked on me then and has for decades. There are two 2015 model year Fords in the garage; one is a Mustang.
Constellation: Marlin wasn’t based on the Rebel, but the 65 Classic. Which had been proposed for the Rambler American chassis as the Tarpon.
The Ambassador for 67 provided the base for the 67 Marlin and could have been a decent offering in the personal luxury market.
Hair splitting, yes, because the Ambassador/Rebel were on the same platform, but the Rebel didn’t come out until 1967.
The Tarpon was the car that AMC should have built. But then hindsight is 20\20. The ’67 Marlin looked hideous to me. The Ambassador went through several metamorphosis in the late ’50’s to the ’70’s. Up till ’58 it had it’s own platfom, ’58-61 a Rambler with longer sheet metal forward of the cowl, ’62-64 same car as the Classic just a different trim level. ’65-66 went back to being a classic with longer sheet metal forward of the cowl. Finally ’67-74 back to it’s own platform. A model in search of an identity and I am a Rambler fan.
AMC didn’t build the Tarpon because, at that time, the Engineering Department claimed that the company’s existing V-8s would not fit the American’s engine bay.
The American didn’t get a V-8 until the 1966 model year, when the 290 V-8 debuted. AMC management believed that V-8 availability was crucial to the sales potential of any fastback.
I thought that the 1967 Marlin, with the restyled Ambassador front and the longer Ambassador wheelbase, wasn’t a bad-looking car.
“AMC management believed that V-8 availability was crucial to the sales potential of any fastback.”
They called it right, too. Although I’m sure AMC would have loved to have gotten into the sporty ponycar game sooner, even a much better looking effort than the Tarpon (as in what would later be the Javelin) would have died on the vine with just a six in the V8-crazy sixties. This lesson was learn by the ’53-’55 Corvette, whose sales didn’t become at least acceptable until the a V8 became available in the admittedly much more attractive 1956 version. There’s not much question that the Corvette would have been cancelled if not for the faith and perseverance of Ed Cole.
Repeat: Would a 1963-64 Dart front clip fit?
Yep. All ’63-’66 A-body front clips fit all ’63-’66 A-bodies.
Love that Dartacuda!! Seriously; that is much better than the real thing. But then I’ve always lover the ’63 Dart front end. The mini-Turbine car.
That is Doug Dutra’s Dacuda (one of them, anyhow; he’s made several over the years). I agree with you, the simpler horizontality of the ’64 Dart’s face really declutters that area of this car, the downsloped hood complements the slope of the backglass, and overall this works better than the released ’64-’66 Barracuda. Maybe even a skoshe better if one were to use a grille from a ’63-’64 Argentinian Valiant III, same as ’64 Dart but minus the “D O D G E” callout letters.
(’63 Dart front end is same as this ’64 except for grille. On the one hand, not as much horizontality to ’63 grille. On the other, concavity creates a fishmouth theme that oughtta be right at home on a Baccaruda…!)
Yes, it does look good and the turbine car link is clear.
That really looks nice. So much better.
Beautiful, I should have known someone thought to try it.
Seriously?!?! That’s 10X better than the real thing. With a little bit of creative blackout treatment and some stylish reshaping of the bumper… a real contender. How far is the Dartacuda from the Mustang, really? All it’d be missing would be a little flash on the dash, and voila!
That certainly looks a lot better. But still not nearly as good as the Mustang or Camaro IMO. Needs a foot or so taken off the back.
And that’s why my ’65 Dart wagon is actually a Valiant from the doors back! 🙂
Of the three offerings by M.Y. 1965 my choices would have been 1,Corvair Monza 2, Plymouth Barracuda 3,Ford Mustang. The ‘stang did have a unique body and the “option it out anyway you like” marketing success, But IMHO the Chevy and Plymouth were better cars…….runs for cover….
I basically own all three (if you replace the Barracuda with a Dart, which is the same thing). It all depends on the options. A Mustang with handling package and a decent set of tires isn’t the wallower some think it is. The Corvair is fun but slow. The Dart would be nice with quicker steering and a V8, but I don’t think it (or the Barracuda) look anywhere near as good as the Corvair or the Mustang.
As far as which one I prefer, it depends on the day.
Aaron: never liked the kicked in the a** look of the Mustang or the crude angles of the front end. The Valiant and especially the Corvair had it all over the Mustang in the looks dept.
But that chunky, chopped and hacked Mustang was still cute and you could make it uniquely yours with the options list. Brilliant marketing and I wouldn’t kick one out of the driveway. Especially a 64 & 1/2 notchback with a six and manual transmission
Indeed.
Ford was the premier marketing company, they could sell the sizzle better than anyone. That much is clear.
Chrysler built the better engineered cars but with a few exceptions the inferior Ford products sold their flash so much better.
GM was somewhere in the middle, not so well engineered as Chrysler but with some absolutely brilliantly styled cars in the 1960’s that had they been marketed as well as Fords would have sold even better than they did.
That said, Ford misfired badly w/ the 1971-73 Mustang, a monument to poor design in virtually all respects. Ford came back w/ the Pintostang which was another marketing tour de force and sales blowout success but is now regarded by most as an abomination.
Aaron, you should try a ‘Vair with a 140 and a handling package. Sorry, a little off topic.
Yeah, mine’s just a 95 4-speed…I didn’t think Corvairs had a handling package available (outside of a Yenko Stinger or something). Mine does handle great for being on 13-inch tires.
There was always a optional special handling package for Corvairs, except perhaps 1960 and maybe the last year or two.
In the 1961-1963 Corvairs, that included some key components to mitigate the tricky “tuck-under” tendencies of the swing axle rear suspension. It included stiffer springs, lower ride height, the front anti sway bar, and rear axle limiter straps, which were crude fabric straps from the body to the axle shafts to stop downward suspension travel.
These were not needed in 1964, because of the camber compensating spring, but the other parts were still included.
Starting in 1965, the sports handling package was called Z-71, and included different steering arms to make the steering super-quick, with a 16-1 ratio. The suspension was also given the usual GM handling package treatment: firmer springs and shocks. Possibly stiffer front sway bar.
I don’t know what the take rate on the Z-71 was, but undoubtedly it probably wasn’t ordered with the stock 95 hp engine! 🙂
I forgot what the package code was, But finding it ordered with the base 95hp engine would be, I’m betting, rare indeed!
I just did a little poking around corvaircenter.com, and there isn’t too much about the handling package, but what I did find is that it was labeled Z17 until 1966, when it was apparently broken into an F41 package for the suspension and an N44 package for the quick steering.
I did a quick look at a brochure and I didn’t find these options listed, but it was 6:15 this morning. 🙂 ***Addendum: It is listed in the 1966 brochure, but not with any option numbers.***
I think the fact that the special suspension package does not seem to be all that well known among Corvair owners speaks volumes about how well the basic suspension works (for the time period). And I’d agree that few ordered the special suspension with the 95-horse engine, but then again, my car originally had a 110, so who knows? 🙂
Wait, I do…the steering is pretty slow.
Agree, James Slick! My order of preferences also.
I’ve on-again/off-again wondered what a targa version might’ve looked like. Please excuse the crudity of my photochoppery.
That would make a cute ute with an open bed.
All it needs is the Dart front clip and a Breezeway rear window to make it complete. Hmm, “Merdacuda” probably wouldn’t do too well in Quebec.
“Mercudart”, pronounced “murKOOdart”…?
Stretched pillarless Ford Anglia.
Two door hardtop Consul Classic.
Even better !
“More Valiant Than ‘Cuda…”
So what? I’ll take one if you don’t want it!
I have always had a soft spot for these.
To me, the roof is just a little too tall to be proportional. and I couldn’t believe that the fuel filler tube was clearly visible through that big backlight
One has to wonder if that high roof is a direct result of the huge rear window. IOW, maybe the Barracuda would have done better with a more conventional fastback (and lower roof).
Whatever else concerns about this car, that rear window is still something else.
Like it a lot!
As the basic car chassis was a well designed and good driving unit , I don’t see why ChryCo. should have changed the whole thing to create the ‘ new ‘ Barracuda .
Of course , I like the first generation front end better , my rose colored glasses because I’ve driven so many A Body MoPars back when they were young .
-Nate
I had a friend who had a ’65 when I was in college, around 1970. I borrowed it to go to a funeral one state away. It had a 225 with a floor shift torqueflite. Acquitted itself quite well. With its long stroke, that bigger slant 6 had lots of twist.
That Darcuda is quite a transformation… looks longer and lower than its stubby forebear.
Having driven both a 66 Dart GT, 273 V8, 4 bbl and a 66 Mustang, 289, 4 bbl, both with 4 speed transmissions and drum brakes, the Dart was better. The torsion bar suspension really worked well. Neither could stop worth a damn.
The featured car has the AP6 front that Chrysler OZ put on all its Valiants for that 64/5 model, They didnt give us the fastback bodystyle however making these cars very rare out this way, its much better looking than the Marlin, the guy who does my WOF inspections has two of those, both V8 4 speeds and Ive had a good look at them.
No, sir, it does not. It has the US ’64-’65 Barracuda front end. Same fenders (guards), hood (bonnet), and headlight rings, but different grille, indicators, and bumper bar. Attached is an AP6; see more of them here, and compare ’64-’65 Barracuda here, and the plainer ’65 Valiant version here.
More’s the pity, IMO; the new-for-’65 AP6 front treatment was a nicer job than the US ’65 Valiant arrangement. And that goes double for the Australian ’63-’64 AP5 front treatment versus the US ’63 Valiant. And the AP5-AP6-VC roofline, C-pillar, backglass, quarter panel, deck lid, and rear lights were all quite a lot nicer than the US renditions.
I’m glad this came up because the resemblance struck me as well. The AP6 looks like something they could have done as a facelift for the Barracuda/Valiant. I do like the more streamlined original though.
I’ve always likes the first generation Barracudas. But those photos with a Dart front clip look even better!
One of the magazines did a writeup on the Barracuda back when they were new. To demonstrate the cargo space they had one of their reporters drop the back seat down and he crawled in back and had his picture taken from the outside, through the huge back window. The caption under the picture was “Peasant Under Glass.” Funny stuff.
If you click the link to my ’65 Barracuda CC at the end of the post, you’ll read about my experiences in the back of a Barracuda. I didn’t just lay there. 🙂
The Chrysler version of Nash seats.
I have to go back an d read that , but I hope no one got dinged in the process by the chrome plated fuel line poking through….
My own version of 64/65 Barracuda revisions–I always wanted to stick a 1963 Valiant front clip (grille, fenders wth the more swooping ‘hairpin’, ), revised wersions of the 1963 Valiant taillanps, and the fully-opened rear wheel cutouts off the Valiant/Dart wagon on the Barracuda body. Kinda a “what if?” phantom 1963 (or a more Virgil Exner-esque styling cues edition of the Barracuda).
I’ve always found that “hairpin” to be a strange, unsettlling styling element, especially the earlier more spread-out version. It tarnishes an otherwise clean design.
That was one of Virgil Exner’s final touches on the 1963 Valiant (even though he had been let go by Chrysler by the time the 1963 Valiant was produced).
Not all of your shopping list is catered for on this car, but the big items are.
Yeah-the 1963 Valiant grille needs to be blacked out. Looking at the 1966 Barracuda used as the base for that conversion, I think a 1966 Dart nose would be perfect for the 1966 Barracuda (the squared-off lines at the rear make it compatible). Reshuffle some trim and try to disguise the tail lamps and it would be a great “head scratcher” (my term for something that registers as ‘Hey wait-something isn’t quite right here…”)
Australian AP5-AP6 (’63-’64) Valiant taillamps would be just the thing: easy to make look at home, almost recognisable, but not quite:
It probably felt like a sauna bath on a hot humid summer day if this car didn`t have air conditioning. I`ll pass.
The Barracuda didn’t become attractive on the level of the Mustang until the second generation, where it then had to contend with the Camaro and Firebird and an even more attractive(IMO) Mustang. The original just looks way too much like the Valiant it is with a fastback roofline that is effectively invisible.
‘Cuda wasn’t a unique, true, Pony Car until 1967. First gen was just a Valiant trim level.
Well, I could argue the same for the ’67-’69. They were still essentially just a Variant of the Valiant body; a Valiant front clip would fit, undoubtedly. They had the same basic proportions, high cowl, etc. The external sheetmetal was a bit different, but then there was no Valiant hardtop in ’67. They were not “unique”.
Meanwhile, the Mustang and Camaro had totally unique bodies, with low, long hoods, lower cowls, set-back passenger compartments, etc.
G’nope! The ’67-’69 Baccaruda sheetmetal is unique; the Dart/Valiant front clips don’t interchange. The body lines don’t match up and the leading edge of the front door has different longitudinal curvature. Which is a shame, because with a ’67-’69 Baccaruda front clip on a ’67-’68 Australian VE-model Valiant sedan or wagon, one could make a mindbendingly convincing Baccaruda 4- or 5-door.
All other ’67-’76 A-body front clips fit and line up with all ther ’67-’76 A-bodies, though the ’73 line makes some challenges to cross on account of the 5mph front bumper.
I’m not surprised I was wrong about the front clip. But my point is still essentially the same: The ’67-’69 Barracuda body shared hard points with the A Bodies, despite the external sheet metal differences. The key thing that really differentiates a shared body from a non-shared body: the position of the cowl, which is one of the key (and most expensive) parts of a body, especially a unibody. That gave the Barracuda its short and high hood, and long body (and trunk, on the coupe and convertible).
This looks like a Valiant Signet coupe, not a Mustang or Camaro competitor (styling-wise). And its sales proved that point all too well.
Poor old Chrysler just couldn’t catch a break in the ponycar wars. They managed to beat the Mustang to market, but the Valiant’s plebeian doghouse doomed the 1st gen Barracuda to a fraction of the Mustang’s sales. Then, they tried to mimic the nice-looking 2nd gen Corvair Monza hardtop and that didn’t exactly pan out, either. Ironically, the 2nd gen Valiant Signet hardtop and convertible were actually better looking cars than the 2nd gen Barracudas that replaced them.
The final nail was the attractive (but wretched in every other department) 1970 E-body clones of the ’67-’69 Camaro. If only they’d have gotten the E-body to market a year sooner, as well as the ’71 B-body in 1970. Maybe the bargain-basement Duster wouldn’t have taken such a bite out of the more profitable models.
I love Mopar’s, but i find it hard to like these. I like some of the details, the grille is nice with the extra lights, the trim below the rear window, the tailights etc.
Those wheelcovers are nice too, but they would look nicer hanging on the garage wall.
What these cars really need is a nice set of period correct alloy wheels.
Chrysler was a bit slow in providing nice wheels on A bodies, even the gorgeous 2nd gen. models did without I think. The competition had it all over them on this.
Its the combination of the reverse slanting pillars and the rear glass that look wrong to me. I’d prefer the 2 door sedan body with the Cuda front clip. probably have a tighter structure too.
Edit,,, my ideal version of the “2 door sedan Barracuda” would have the Australian or wagon rear wheel cutouts as well.
Hey it looks good in my imagination anyway
As a car-crazy tween and then teen in those years, my memories of the 1st gen Barracuda are that it was distinctive, but ultimately there was no hiding it was a Valiant fastback. When the Mustang added a fastback and then the Shelby derivative, anything remotely cool about the Barracuda had faded away. But the ’67-69 was worse … because now there was the Camaro to compare with. Sure, by today’s standards the styling is clean, but that was boring in 1967. The final E Bodies looked like blatant 1st gen Camaro copies, but by then GM had moved on to a stunning new shape. I think the most memorable things about those last generation E Bodies were the optional Hemi and the handling-oriented version that included larger rear tires than front (wouldn’t want that dreaded oversteer).
It just does not add up, and for me it was a missed opportunity of epic proportions. A dedicated, sportier front end could not have been THAT expensive to engineer (I’m only talking about different wings/hood/grill, not moving the cowl), plus they also missed out on having one of the first sports hatchbacks ever – how can you NOT have a hatch on that back? It’s not as if the concept did not exist already (Jaguar E-Type coupe, Aston Martin DB 2/4). It may not have sold as well as the Mustang did, but with those relatively simple changes it would not have been the also ran it was.
… or an even a better “what might have been” (from the photoshop thread on the HAMB here: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/the-photoshop-thread-to-end-all-photoshop-threads.300531/page-439#post-9481836). Just imagine this in 1960.
Wow! That looks strangely cool! It probably wouldn’t have sold but it looks like something Exner would have loved to build.
One of my least favourite styling features, that happened to be quite popular in the 1960s, was the smaller rear wheel arch. As popularized on the Barracuda, the Rover 2000TC, and various Jaguars. As exterior design examples that appeared too conservative, and dated, to my eyes. Aided significantly by those reduced scale rear wheel arches.
Fastback fetishism was sort of a thing then, wasn’t it?
I was only a (car-loving) child in ’64, but pictures of racy fastbacks were making me drool. Lots of talk about them on TV, but I remember being impatient about seeing a real, full-on fastback in the metal.
Sigh – then this (and the Marlin) showed up and man, I was disappointed. Yuck, what rush jobs! (Time moves so slowly to a kid – in months the Mustang 2+2 was out and made fastbacks look easy; soon they were nothing special.)
Still, in ’64 I’ll bet a lot of people wanted to have the first fastback on the block. Probably felt disappointed like us nosy kids, too.
> Fastback fetishism was sort of a thing then, wasn’t it?
yes – see below which I meant as a reply to you. I shouldn’t attempt anything before 8am…
Haha – perfect, thanks!
> Fastback fetishism was sort of a thing then, wasn’t it?
Yes, as brilliantly lampooned in this mid-’60s Volkswagen ad:
The Barracuda was one of those cars that looked best in photographs not so good in person.
Don’t forget the radio commercial for the Baccaruda!