This promotional “card” is misleading, as the Playboy Playmate of the Year for 1966 did not get a Barracuda. So why was this being promoted as the Plymouth Playmate Barracuda?
These are important questions that need answers…
Apparently this lovely shade of pink was available as an option (Code 99, IIRC). And apparently some Bay Area Plymouth dealers ordered up a batch and used the Playmate connection—tenuous as it was—to sell these. There’s still some around, and their owners seem to be convinced that the ’66 Barracuda was what the ’66 Playmate Of The Year (POTY) drove.
If they had read CC’s coverage of that annual event, they would have known that Allison Parks scored in 1966, with a big, burly new Dodge Charger. She had kids (was that a first?) so she wanted something big enough to haul them in, just not a pink Country Squire.
Maybe the confusion stems from the fact that in 1967, Lisa Baker did get a new ’67 Barracuda, the only Plymouth ever given to a Bunny. Did those Plymouth dealers in California have some advance knowledge of this?
Studie did it properly twice in a row. First in ’63, Miss Dominion received a Lark convertible.
lol…POTY gets a Barracuda, and Miss Canada gets a Studebaker. It’s just so…right.
She was still Miss Dominion in ’64, so she received another Lark convertible!
I see that the barracuda seems to have that odd low restriction single exhaust featuring a large rectangular outlet and a big ass resonator. In the late 80s i test drove a 1965 barracuda formula S . It also had that as well as the “unsilenced air cleaner” I remember appreciating both for their sound..but puzzling over the exhaust. It was definitely on the 65 and 66 S versions but I think that was it. Given that “nobody ” upgrades their v8 with a sexy single pipe it had to have been a painful compromise to a car designer right? Wondered if any of ye knew more?
The ’66 has dual exhausts and a ratty camshaft sound from the Hyper 273″ V8…
I’ll have to correct you here Randolph, ’66 still had single exhaust with that rectangular outlet on the resonator on the Formula S model. However, they went with a quieter muffler on the ’66 than that of the ’65 which had a ‘straight-through’ muffler and was therefore quite loud.
How do I know this? Because I was a mechanic at a Dodge dealer who sold the Dodge Dart with the same high performance 273 engine.
I had bought my ’64 Dart with the 273 early in ’64 and had upgraded the engine with the 10.5:1 pistons as in the HP ’65 engine, but with a Racer Brown camshaft. I also bought the entire exhaust system and installed it on my Dart. And the sound was anything but RATTY!
You may get to read more about this car, and others, IF I ever get around to writing my own COAL.
There seem to be a handful of these out there – the consensus seems to be that a handful of them were special ordered (with a special order paint code of 999 which could be for any custom color). One forum says that ten of them came out of a California assembly plant. Could a group of California Plymouth dealers wanted something to special to sell? Trying to make some money off of the Playboy mystique to juice the sales of the tepid-selling Barracuda?
I thought I remembered a little advertising insert from 1966 featuring the “Plymouth Playmates” – a sporty and fun version of each model in the lineup. But I have looked and can find no evidence of it online, so maybe my memory is starting to go.
you know… just when I’ve convinced myself that the world is a far weirder place today than it was in my yoot’… I read something like this report & realize it’s always been… pretty weird. 😉
I wonder how much influence these sixties 999 pink Mopars had on Chrysler actually offering a factory ‘High Impact’ FM3 Moulin Rouge (Plymouth) and Panther Pink (Dodge) for 1970 A-, B-, and E-body cars. They didn’t go over well and, IIRC, only lasted for half of the model year.
A factory FM3 car is now rather rare but I’m doubtful it does all that much for the value.
FM3 was also called Penta Magenta. There’s a whole, entire FAQ on the subject of that paint colour (on a whole, entire website about it) here. Note the sole C-body!
Good link with some really interesting stuff on a famous, but short-lived, factory color. I particularly like the 1971 listing of the name ‘Penta Magenta’, even though it wasn’t technically offered under that name as an RPO on any Chrysler product.
Maybe they kept the color in the 1971 palette as a special order just in case it caught on in 1970. Or maybe they had an excess supply of the stuff that they were hoping they could sell before they had to just throw it away.
The codes are a little puzzling, too. 1970 shows two letters and a number (FM3), but 1971 just lists a letter and number (M3). Odd, because I always remember Mopar codes as the latter, with one of the most famous being B5 Blue, which is sometimes incorrectly known as ‘Petty Blue’, a name Chrysler never assigned to it because they didn’t want to pay Petty royalties. On top of that, the Petty color is really closer to the lighter B3 Blue.
The first letter is the model year of first use in Chrysler’s letter-letter-number paint codes, starting in ’69-’70. The 1970 models were Chrysler Corp’s “F” series cars (A = ’65, B = ’66, etc), and FM3 was first offered in the middle of the 1970 model year, so FM3. If they had changed to a different paint colour/formula in (say) 1973, that would’ve been JM3.
“B5 blue” gets discussed a lot, but you need a model year to specify which of various blues you mean.
EB5, first used on the E-series cars in ’69 and also used in ’70, was PPG № 2019. “Bright Blue Poly” on a Dodge or “Blue Fire Poly” on a Plymouth.
GB5, introduced on the G-series cars in ’71 and used through ’73, was PPG № 2306. “True Blue Poly” on a Plymouth; “Brite Blue Poly” or “Bright Blue Poly” on a Dodge
KB5, on the 1974 K-series cars and also used on the ’75s, was PPG № 2627. “Lucerne Blue Poly” on a Dodge, Plymouth, or Chrysler.
MB5, for the 1976 M-series cars, was PPG № 2851. “Jamaican Blue Poly” (here’s where it starts to get a little iffy whether the model year letter codes were continued)
The 1977 B5 was PPG № 2936, “French Racing Blue”. Not metallic, and much lighter than previous B5s.
I have no memory of these being sold or mentioned in the car magazines, so all of this new to me! Random newspapering turns up POY 1969 getting a Datsun pickup (painted pink), and then Towne Ford (San Mateo CA) offering up these exclusive Mustangs, July 1966:
“Any other dealer this side of Hawaii”, except for Dick Wilson Ford in Redondo Beach that also sold pink Mustangs.
Weird .
I remember lots of oddball colors from Chryco in the 1960’s & 1970’s .
-Nate
Sixties Chrysler colors weren’t all that goofy, although there was a ‘Mauve Poly’ (code 66-1) from ’65-’67 that wasn’t all that far from pink. Sort of a pinkish-rose hue.
The wild stuff didn’t really start until 1970.
Further back than that, to “Dusty Rose Poly” (PPG № 21966) in 1962, and “Rose Mist Poly” (PPG № 71147) in ’61.
The Mauve Poly you mention appeared for ’66 (PPG № 50702), then was changed and offered again in ’67 (PPG № 50731).
Thanks for the correction. I thought it might have been known as some sort of rose in an earlier version.
I’m with Daniel here .
I do remember some strange colors like ‘Plum Crazy’ that were *very* popular on the E-Bodies, what was the fluorescent green that a drug dealer bought on his Hemi powered …? Charger? (I forget and yes, I _do_ know there’s a world of difference between Challenger and Charger) .
One of my high school buddies was a Mechanic and Hot Rodder and just *had* to have a Plum Crazy Challenger, he changed most everything about the car except that purple paint =8-) .
At one time I had a 1950’s car that was Salmon, pretty close to pink, ~ I like pastels .
-Nate
The ‘toxic green’ High Impact color was mainly known as FJ5 Sublime (Dodge) and Limelight (Plymouth).
Weirdly, there was another, nearly identical, slightly darker green known as FJ6 Green Go (Dodge) and Sassy Grass (Plymouth).
FJ5 and FJ6 look a whole lot closer to “nearly identical” on the half-century-old paint chip chart than on a vehicle in real life.
There was a similar Slurpee-green color briefly offered on the Neon. Seen them only in pictures.
The Neon’s light green color was known as Nitro Yellow Green (code PF2).
I knew of a Dodge general manager who ordered five new Neons in that shade. Two years later, all five were still on the lot. Even heavily discounted, they couldn’t get rid of them, but the general manager was gone.
I very likely would’ve specified Nitro Yellow Green if I’d gone buying a Neon. But (again), my tastes are off the bell curve. And that said, I like Sassy Grass better.
There are a ‘lot’ of internet images of Sublime/Limlight cars that seem to be be mis-identified as Green Go/Sassy Grass. Another possibility is that the paint on the latter, originally darker shade has faded and lightened over time.
There are a few pics with the correct color/name, and those definitely show a difference between the two colors. A good way to describe the difference is that Sublime/Limelight is a light, unnatural, fluorescent color, with Green Go/Sassy Grass actually looking like the darker, natural color of grass.
It’s kind of like Go-Mango (Dodge) / Vitamin C (Plymouth) and Hemi Orange (Dodge) / Tor-Red (Plymouth). Tor-Red is a much redder shade and not really ‘orange’. Thus, Go-Mango and Vitamin C are often confused with the redder Hemi Orange.
Looks very well equipped. I’m glad they didn’t make the Playmate Barracuda a stripper…
Gee, you think they did a focus group of women to determine if there was an advertising angle using Playboy playmates to bring in more sales to the ladies? Or just a bunch of lonely single guys coming up with a way to meet hot chicks at work?
Sex sells unless it’s trucks.
Then chrome sells.
Sex sells everything but tires. Oh wait, it sells tires too!
Firestone wants in on the action too…
Sugar Ray Robinson ordered one in 1951 or 1952.
Much as I bemoan the lack of colors in today’s cars, this is just, just too too. We had one of these in dark green metalic and it looked a lot better. Fun car and not a Mustang like everybody else.
1968 Playboy Playmate of The Year, Victoria Vetri recorded as part of her prize package, a Playmate Pink 1968 AMC. All AMXs from 1968 thru 1970 had a plaque on the dash with the build sequence number, except this one, it’s number was her measurements, 36-24-35.