Since April 1964, Chrysler-Plymouth Division had been trying and mostly failing to compete with the popular Ford Mustang with two generations of the Plymouth Barracuda, a solidly engineered sporty coupe whose better-than-average driving manners didn’t make up for its unfashionable styling and too-obvious kinship with the workaday Plymouth Valiant. For 1970, Chrysler-Plymouth pulled out all the stops with an all-new third-generation Barracuda, with a muscular new look and the widest selection of powertrain options in the pony car segment. In February 1970, Car Life tested the new ‘Cuda 340 and found it a step backwards in everything but styling.
Before anyone gets too upset at me, I want to go on record as saying I like the Valiant-based first- and second-generation A-body Barracudas. I think the Corvairish second-generation hardtop is a really good-looking car, and I have a soft spot for the first-generation fastback Formula S, even though I can’t see one without recalling the contemporary critic who said it “looked not unlike a giant Easter egg.”
Look, I like this car, I really do, but it doesn’t NOT look like an Easter egg, that’s all I’m saying / Hot Rod
That remark came from one of the editors of Car Life, but the CL staff had been big fans of the second-generation Barracuda. Their road test of a 1968 Barracuda Formula S with the new 340 engine had called it “a real value in the field of high-performance automobiles,” and they had recently gotten some outstanding results with a warmed-up 1969 ‘Cuda 340. It was probably for that reason as much as anything else that the CL editors were so disappointed with the 1970 ‘Cuda 340.
They began with this candid assessment:
WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT that Plymouth Division, as straight a bunch of arrows as ever tried to sell a car on its mechanical virtues, could be lured from the tower onto the beaten path by a pretty face?
Not us. We have an eye for a pretty face, too, and greeted the first real Barracuda with great delight. Beautiful shape and now, we thought, freed from the shackles of building a Ponycar with Compact pieces, the sharp engineers at Plymouth can improve an already good car, include all the things they’ve learned during the three years the second-generation Barracuda was on the market.
Trouble is, engineering wasn’t the Barracuda’s problem. It offered things the other Ponycars didn’t, like the extra space behind the rear seat of the fastback coupes, and it was a bit bigger inside, for those buyers who worry about such matters. In 1968 and ’69, it had the 340-cid V-8, best of the mid-size performance engines. And a good, controllable chassis.
It didn’t sell. The car didn’t look as good as it was.
The outgoing A-body Barracuda had sold a grand total of 139,933 units in three model years. In later years, with a weaker market for compact coupes, that would have been fine, maybe even good, but during the late ’60s pony car boom, it was dismal. Aggregate A-body Barracuda production from 1964 to 1969 had totaled 266,001 units across two generations — still 11 percent less than the Ford Mustang had sold just in 1969, far from its best year. In 1969, the Barracuda had fallen behind the AMC Javelin to claim the title of worst-selling domestic pony car. In other words, none of the previous-generation Barracuda’s virtues had been successful at moving the metal, which is the quality automakers care most about. Obviously, something had to be done, but what?
Car Life surmised:
Now, Plymouth (and Chrysler Corp.) seldom innovates. Radical styling is not encouraged. Someone high in the tower must have looked at the figures and said that if the public wants to buy worthy Ponycars by the tens of thousands and long hoods/short decks by the hundreds of thousands, why, Plymouth had better build some long hoods and short decks.
So they did. If the new Barracuda looks very like its rivals, well, at least the stylists did a good job of it.
The photo caption for the engine photo above reads, “THE BEST PART of the test Barracuda was the 340-cid engine, our favorite Mopar powerplant. It’s moved back two inches, compared with the older Barracuda, but added sheetmetal makes weight distribution worse than it was.”
For the handful of readers who don’t already know this, the 1970 Plymouth Barracuda and closely related 1970 Dodge Challenger shared a new platform that Chrysler called the E-body. This was in some respects a cut-down version of the B-body intermediate platform used by the Plymouth Belvedere, Road Runner, and Satellite, sharing much of the bigger cars’ cowl structure and chassis hardware. Consequently, the E-body Barracuda was 5 inches wider than the 1969 A-body model, and had very different proportions:
[T]he body has moved forward on its wheels, like an early Funny Car in reverse. Overall length is cut 6 in., but what remains is farther forward. This is how they got the long hood and short deck. We made some non-standard measurements, comparing with the staff-owned ‘69. From front wheel centerline to front bumper, 36 inches for the old car, 41 for the new. The hood is definitely longer. From front wheels to the top of the steering wheel rim was 41 inches in 1969, 48 in 1970. So the driver has exactly one more foot of metal between him and the front bumper.
Widening the Barracuda made room for Chrysler’s biggest engines, the 440 and 426 Hemi, which had previously been a very tight squeeze in the narrower A-body engine bay. However, the bulkier structure and new side impact door beams (not yet mandatory, but to be required by federal safety standards later in the E-body’s expected run) made the 1970 Barracuda significantly heavier than the outgoing A-body model. According to the AMA specifications, the lightest six-cylinder Barracuda hardtop gained 245 lb of curb weight from 1969 to 1970.
The Car Life test car was a ‘Cuda, the performance-oriented trim series, with the relatively lightweight 340 engine (which had a dry weight within a few pounds of a Chevrolet small-block) and a modest list of options, including power steering and brakes, TorqueFlite, “performance axle group,” radio, E60-15 tires on Rallye wheels, Rallye instruments, and center console. However, it weighed in at a hefty 3,630 lb, and would have been heavier still with the 383 engine that was standard on the ‘Cuda. Car Life‘s 1968 Barracuda 340-S had weighed only 3,470 lb, and that was with air conditioning.
With the E-body platform, Chrysler had been able to shift the engine rearward by about 2 inches, but the longer nose meant weight distribution was still slightly worse than the previous generation. Compared to some big-engine Supercars of the time, a 56/44 split wasn’t disastrous, but it was a different story if a buyer ordered the 440 or 426 Hemi engines, which were much heavier than the 340.
Inevitably, the extra weight eroded performance somewhat:
The 1970 ’Cuda wasn’t quite as quick as the older 340s. It was the first 340 we’ve driven that wouldn’t break 15 sec. on the strip. A flat 15 sec. E.T. is no disgrace: still more than a match for most of the mid-size V-8s, but the added weight subtracted more acceleration than the 3.55:1 gears added. An academic point, surely. The difference between 15.0 and 14.93 cannot be felt, which is why we use clocks. But we had hoped for progress.
With the 3.55 axles and E60-15 tires, they recorded 0 to 60 mph in 7.5 seconds, 0 to 100 mph in 19.4 seconds, and the standing quarter mile in 15.0 seconds at 94 mph. Their listed top speed was 125.4 mph, although as usual, there was no indication whether that was an observed or calculated figure. Their test average fuel consumption was 13.9 mpg, which wasn’t bad for a pony car offering this kind of performance.
A curious point about the ‘Cuda was that the standard engine was actually the four-barrel 383, with a nominal 335 gross horsepower; the theoretically less powerful 340, which was advertised at 275 gross horsepower, was optional. It’s widely understood that the 340 was underrated from the factory (although the net ratings Chrysler published for 1971 still claimed that it was less powerful than the 383-4V), and its combination of high-winding power and modest weight made it one of the more desirable pony car engines. However, Car Life remarked:
For obscure reasons, Plymouth doesn’t like the 340, or at least doesn’t encourage its use. Last year we had the 340 ‘Cuda, the performance model priced to compete. The new performance car is still ’Cuda, hut the standard engine is the 383, fine in station wagons and sedans, but not the answer to Ponycar power. So you have to order a 340, or luck onto a dealer who listens to his customers rather than the factory.
My assumption is that the 340 was expensive to produce: It required special foundry techniques to allow the biggest bore and largest ports the LA-series V-8 block and heads could safely handle on the assembly line. Given that, it’s not surprising that Chrysler-Plymouth would rather people just ordered the 383.
The captions of the photos at the top of the above page read, “WlDE-SWEEP tach reads to 8000 rpm, but the useful portion is a narrow band. All the instruments needed for performance driving are provided,” and “SHAPELY seats pleased no one. Steering wheel, seats and people are all lower.”
The Rallye instrument cluster (seen here in a different 1970 ‘Cuda) included a 150 mph speedometer, an 8,000 rpm tachometer, full instruments, and a clock / Bring a Trailer
The CL test car had the three-speed TorqueFlite automatic with a new type of console shifter that Chrysler called the Slap-Stick. Car Life explained:
It’s called the “slick shifter” and it is. Upshifts are as safe as church. Leave it in drive, and it goes up and down like any other automatic. Haul back into first, and it will shift into second when pushed forward. Shove as hard as you like: second is as far as it will go, so there’s no risk, and no need to baby it. From second, though, it takes a bit of re-think, mental preparation. Before it will move on to third, the gearshift must be allowed to rock back and reindex itself. Takes some doing. With every fiber of the driver’s soul urging the car forward, the right hand must relax and set back. But one run is enough. With the reflex prepared, it works very well. And drivers who never use anything except drive will never notice. You can even do the mountain road routine, going from third to second on the tight sections, without any re-think at all. Just snap the lever back and forth.
The shifter is the most noticeable mechanical improvement, in fact the only one that comes to mind.
They groused that the 340 engine’s new exhaust system, revised to enable the Barracuda to meet new California drive-by noise restrictions, had seemed to contribute to the new car’s “lack of speed” compared to the 1969 ‘Cuda 340 they had tested in November 1968. That might have been so, although the 1970 car’s extra 160 lb and taller axle ratio (the 1969 car had a four-speed manual transmission with a 3.91 axle) undoubtedly contributed. Still, the CL editors complained:
We can hardly complain about a car being built to pass laws, especially when the original Formula S was notorious for getting owners into discussions over whether that big square stack out the back really was supplied by the factory. But the 1970 car was much quieter than the 1969, and we anarchists wish it wasn’t so.
The captions of the photos at the top of the page read, “EVEN KIDS were cramped in the back, where space was sacrificed for long hood,” and, “SMALLEST TRUNK in the industry, says Plymouth. No doubt it is.”
Interior room, which had previously been a Barracuda strong point, was dismal in the E-body ‘Cuda:
Climb into the new Barracuda, and you see what long hood and short deck do to interior design. Armed with the tape measure again, we find that brake pedal to seatback distance is three inches less. Front leg room for the driver is adequate, as it was before. The trunk is much smaller, and the rear seat becomes impossible, except for young children. A handy 10-year old was pressed into service, pun intended. He could sit in the older ’Cuda with room to spare. In the new car, his knees hit the front seat. And he wasn’t an especially big 10-year-old, either. The Barracuda has less room than the Challenger, which makes it not much worse than the Mustang or the current (pre-1970) Camaro. This may be a minor point, and many people buy Ponycars and never carry a person in the back, but once again a Barracuda selling point, one that might have allowed somebody to have a nimbler car than the Compact or Intermediate he’d have to buy otherwise, is sacrificed.
I can see where the editors were coming from here, but Plymouth had tried to stress utility with the Barracuda since mid-1964, and it had gotten them exactly nowhere. Given the dismal sales of the first two generations, I think Chrysler-Plymouth Division can be forgiven for not making passenger and cargo room a big priority when the third generation was designed in 1967–1968, even though it obviously limited the practicality of these cars.
The ‘Cuda scored no better in ergonomics than it did in outright space:
The seats, semi-buckets in the test car, are new. Nobody liked them. Thin, and not shaped to suit the variety of human forms around here. The lightweights were especially vocal. The cushion is flat, with a bulged border, presumably to keep large people in place. The testers must be thinner than average, and the lump caught them at mid leg. Nor is there any lateral support for hard cornering. Lash yourself in with the belts, or brace yourself against the door. And—you aren’t going to believe this—should you use the door as a brace, and have a Barracuda with electric windows, your knee probably will be braced against the switch. Distinctly odd feeling, to be zooming around a corner and notice that the window is going up and/or down.
CL also complained:
Getting in and out isn’t much fun. Those massive doors, bulging with impact beams. They’re big, seven inches longer than the earlier cars, and heavy. Sisyphus, the mythical bad king sentenced to spend eternity rolling boulders uphill, would feel right at home opening the door when the car is tipped to one side.
As the editors had noted earlier in the text, some of the latter problem was due to the new side guard door beams:
But last year General Motors dropped impact bars on the industry, and Chrysler Corp, decided it would be good to have some. They were added to the Barracuda/Challenger body. The bars alone aren’t heavy, but the doors and framing around the door must be strengthened, read made heavier, if the bars are to do anything. Each door and surrounding structure weighs about 75 lb. more as a result, accounting for most of the weight.
Front disc brakes were optional on the Barracuda, but not often specified. (According to Automotive Industries, only 13.2 percent of 1970 Barracuda production had discs.) The CL tester had power drums:
The brakes on the test car weren’t the best offered, but the big drums will do fine for routine driving, and even when used hard. Avoid the power booster, though. You get too much help, and there’s too much braking when pushed.
There’s no mention of the troublesome axle hop that other contemporary E-body road tests noted during hard braking. This was a side effect of Chrysler’s habit of positioning the rear axle at about one-third the length of the rear leaf springs (which made the front section of the spring stiffer and the rear section effectively softer), although its severity seemed to depend on the stiffness of the rear springs. Motor Trend found that the only E-body variants that were mostly immune were ones with the extra-stiff suspension used on Hemi cars, which had an extra leaf on each rear spring.
Handling had been one of the strong points of the A-body Barracuda, at least with the firmer Formula S suspension package. The E-body ‘Cuda suspension was just as stiff, but CL found the new car sorely lacking in agility:
Handling has been left to the last, in the vain hope that the cavalry would arrive, and make things right, somehow.
Over the hill comes the faint sound of a bugle, but that’s all. Not until the test was underway did we discover that there has been a production problem. The promised rear anti-roll bar intended to negate the front-end weight without undue ride harshness wasn’t on the car. Production should begin about the time you read this. ’Cuda 340s built from introduction until whenever the bar is ready have stiffer springs in back, which is no solution. A bit bumpy for comfort, and it’s not enough for handling.
Just driving along, the Barracuda understeers, like a Valiant six or an Imperial or any humdrum car in between. Pushed, the test car pushed back, with the front wheels going straight like arrows for the outside of the turn. Terminal understeer: all the roll stiffness is in front, so the back wheels stay planted and the fronts slide. The testers spent the day fishing tricks from the bag, to no avail. Plow was all it would do. This is not a dangerous trait, rather the reverse. But it is not a sporting trait. Even high cornering power can’t make up for the total refusal of the car to be controlled. Just as a genius who can only talk about electron microscopes is a dull dinner companion, so is an unresponsive Ponycar a dull car.
The front tires showed signs of a bad camber change, too. The massive understeer may disappear with the arrival of the rear anti-roll bar. The weight imbalance and the front suspension geometry aren’t as easy to fix.
Good luck, Dan.
This last remark was referring to Dan Gurney, whose All American Racers ran two ‘Cudas in the SCCA Trans-Am series in 1970, driven by Gurney and Swede Savage. They did poorly, not helped by Chrysler’s decision to cut their budget early in the season. The AAR cars didn’t win a single race and had six DNF (Did Not Finish) results out of 10 starts, managing only a dismal fifth place on points.
Dan Gurney behind the wheel of an AAR ‘Cuda at Laguna Seca, April 19, 1970; he dropped out after 21 laps due to transmission trouble
The Barracuda didn’t do much better in the sales race. Total production for 1970 was 55,499 cars, up from a grim 31,987 in 1969, but still close to the back of the pack: The new Barracuda outsold the soon-to-be-replaced AMC Javelin and AMX, but was far behind its new Dodge Challenger sibling and the Pontiac Firebird, much less the still class-leading Mustang.
As Car Life said at the outset, the 1970 E-bodies were first and foremost about style. They still look great, with an appealingly muscular stance, and Mopar powertrains need few apologies, even if your allegiances lie elsewhere. Where the E-body Barracuda fell short was in, well, most other ways. It wasn’t very comfortable, it felt cumbersome, its ergonomics were iffy, and its built quality was notoriously hit and miss. The most desirable variant was the ‘Cuda, but all of its powertrain options were becoming brutally expensive to insure. (I think by this stage, even the 340 was likely to make insurance agents curl their lips in a judgmental and expensive way.) If you could afford the big engines and punitive insurance surcharges, you might just as well order a Road Runner or a GTX, which was only a little heavier.
Despite all the attention modern collectors give the hotter models, 49 percent of 1970 Barracuda production was the base model, and it was there that the E-body was weakest. If you wanted a sporty-looking car with a basic V-8 — and many pony car buyers still did — the much cheaper new Plymouth Duster coupe now made a lot more sense. Even the ‘Cuda 340 had a strong rival in the new Duster 340. I’ll present CL‘s take on that car in an upcoming post.
Related Reading
Car Show Classic: 1970 Plymouth Barracuda Gran Coupe – The Broughamiest ‘cuda Around (by Tom Klockau)
CC Capsule: 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda Convertible – Fancy Some Bubbly? (by Tatra87)
Curbside Classic: 1970 & 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda – Woulda And Shoulda (by Tatra87)
Plymouth’s Rapid Transit System Circa 1970: Which One Will You Order Up? (by Paul N)
Vintage CL Road Test: 1968 Plymouth Barracuda 340-S – “Best Yet Of The Barracuda Brigade” (by me)
Curbside Classic: 1968 Plymouth Barracuda Formula 340 – The Worst Selling But Best Pony Car Of 1968 (by Paul N)
Vintage CL Road Test: 1969 Plymouth ‘Cuda 440 – “A Disturbing Automobile” (by Paul N)
Why Does Everyone Think That The 1967-1969 Barracuda Coupe And The 1965-1969 Corvair Coupe Have Such Long Tails? They’re Actually Shorter Than Typical (by Paul N)
I remember as a little kid, being more than slightly surprised, how many sporty Chrysler cars were beginning to look like dead ringers for General Motors products. ’68 Charger, the ’70 E-Bodies, ’75 Cordoba. They each had strong popular and commercial-appearances, with styling cues that related well to current GM design trends. Such a departure, from my usual impression of Chrysler being a style follower, with many stodgy, conservatively-styled cars.
Yeah, ‘Barracuda’ was disappearing in 1968-1969 and Camaro-clone was there by 1970…
’68 Charger was actually kinda a large expensive heavy car… more beautiful cruiser than strip terror… unless put a fortune into the engine… but then that moved you up a race class…
It could be interesting to see what the guys of Road Test, Car & Driver, Motor Trend and Road & Track think of the E-body Cuda and Challenger if they have similar verdicts to Car Life.
does anyone remember the dick orkin barracuda commercials? they were all a hoot but the best is “ba ba ra ra cu cu da da”.
I like that The Barracudas used one of those commercials as the intro for their hit song “Summer Fun”. Discovery of that song was my first exposure to both the Dick Orkin commercial and this band.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4dBjjGeAWA&pp=ygUVYmFycmFjdWRhcyBzdW1tZXIgZnVu
Dennis, I remember that. There was a series of record albums called Cousin’ with DJs recreating their shows. Cousin’ 1966 (Pat O’Day KJR Seattle) had that commercial on the album. I actually heard a Dick Origin radio commercial this morning even though he died in 2017. It was for First American Bank. They are still running it.
A minor correction to the CL text: the ratcheting shifter was not marketed as the ‘slick shifter’ but was, instead, called the ‘Slap-Stick’. And after the short, one-year-only, solid metal shaft of the initial 1970 version was replaced by a rather cheap, plastic T-handle, when ‘slapped’, they didn’t last very long. It was not uncommon to see those plastic Slap-Stick handles broken and duct-taped together on used E-bodies so-equipped.
As to the failure of the E-body’s design, it should be noted that it was a direct response to the success of the 1967 GM f-body ponycar, specifically the ease with which GM was able to fit their big-blocks (Chevy 396 and Pontiac 400).
Unfortunately, this was before the insurance companies got wise to the inherent danger of overpowered musclecars with poor chassis dynamics and began charging cost-prohibitive surcharges. While not the last, it was one of the first and biggest nails in the musclecar sales coffin. In effect, the E-body was doomed even before the first ones hit the showroom floors.
So, yeah, as the article states, the E-bodies, while very attractive, simply didn’t have much else going for them in the early seventies. It didn’t help that the rush to production meant they weren’t particularly well-built or engineered, either.
The E-body did have one of the best ‘rallye’ gauge packages, with the positioning conducive to performance, i.e., the tach was directly in front of the driver and oriented in such a way that the needle would point in the most vertical (and easily seen) shift point. It’s actually something of a variation on the A-body’s similar rallye gauge cluster orientation which, sadly, went away after 1971.
Thanks for the reminder about the automatic shift — I had meant to make a note of the shifter’s correct marketing name, but it must have slipped my mind in editing. I added that to the text preceding the quote. From the context, I think the “slick shifter” characterization was something Chrysler-Plymouth said at the pre-launch press introduction; it may have been something CL garbled, but it’s also not unlikely that certain marketing points hadn’t been finalized at the time, which would have been the summer of 1969.
I vividly remember test driving a ’71 Dodge Challenger 340 when I turned 18 in the mid Seventies. It was fast and the handling was outright dangerous. The power steering was very light and quick. If you made a sudden adjustment, like avoiding a pothole, the front wheels would dart in the proper direction. The rear wheels would literally hop to get themselves in line with the front wheels. Even stupid 18-year-old me knew this could get me killed one day, especially on wet roads.
Having owned a 340 Cuda and currently have a 383 Challenger, I can verify that the Car Life article checks out. They are great looking cars and are great on the drag strip with a big block, but the brakes, even the 11″ power discs are barely adequate, the turning radius is terrible, the understeer is comparable to a tractor, and the steering is just numb. Plus they are bigger than the Mustang and Camaro/Firebird (or at least feel that way) but the interior and trunk aren’t any bigger. Couple that with terrible build quality these cars are notorious for-saggy doors, dash rattles and typical 70s Chrysler electrical issues-and it’s easy to see why the E bodys only lasted one generation.
Practically speaking, Road Runners and Dusters were much better cars, and it hurts to say this as a Mopar fan but the GM F bodys were much better
cars as well. However, it’s hard to find a brutally fast musclecar that looks better than a Cuda or Challenger.
I had a 70 Challenger and a 73 Challenger, both bought new, 318s, disc brakes and heavy duty suspensions. Both sold with 130,000 miles on each. Build quality and seats improved somewhat on the 73, but even the 70 was adequate. No serious problems with either. I liked to take fast corners and noted no deficiencies in that area. Unlike the competition, these were very solidly built cars that would last a long time. Much later, I bought a used 73 Duster. A good car, more utilitarian but the driving qualities were definitely lacking compared with the Challenger’s.
I can see how Chrysler talked themselves into the logic of moving the Barracuda (and Challenger) to the b-Body platform and imitating the Camaro’s styling, but it sure didn’t work out well, especially when the new ’70 Camaro and Firebird showed up, showing the way forward. These suddenly looked very out of date, stuck in the late ’60s in a new decade. Chrysler really missed the pony car boat ride, short as it was.
I’m a bit surprised how badly this one understeered, but then it lacked the rear roll bar.
Being behind GM in styling didn’t help but it was pretty par for the course of Chrysler being a cycle behind, I give that aspect a pass since they were most certainly the second best looking of the ponycars. The Mustang was still king in ponycar sales even through the 71-73 years despite having much of the same conceptual flaws as the E bodies and having subjectively worse styling than both of them (albiet more tailorable to the PLC minded Grande buyer)
I think it in 1970 the primary sales killer was primarily the Duster. Plymouth struggled with selling a Valiant fastback all through the 60s and deciding to make an actual Valiant fastback without any ponycar pretense they hit a homerun. The Duster essentially combined the fundamental goodness of the original Barracuda with the cheap and cheerful attitude of the Roadrunner, with the performance potential of the big block ‘Cudas in the 340 package. All that left for the 70 Barracuda that same fishy nameplate trying way too hard to be cool. By 71s the E bodies reputation for “quality” would have been well known sealing its fate
I’d say Plymouth specifically missed the boat. The Charger wasn’t a ponycar but it was essentially in that same affordable youthful sporty coupe with bespoke styling pool, specifically in 68-69 where they found a healthy niche with it. Then the 70 Challenger arrived and although its sales didn’t meet projections, it still sold respectable enough numbers, better than the Pontiac Firebird and Mercury Cougar. Had it outright replaced the Charger it probably would have pulled much of the numbers it had sold in 70(which was substantially down from 69) but as it as they essentially cannibalized each other. With the E body’s quality reputation well known by 71, plus the fresh new 71 Charger, plus the Demon the Challenger’s hopes were pretty much buried.
The first 2 generations of Barracuda were decent cars, but the styling was not as sporty as the competition. The first generation is easily dismissed as being merely a Plymouth Valiant Fastback. During the first months of production it was actually sold as the “Valiant Barracuda” with Valiant badges on the car. Following the introduction of the Mustang, Plymouth pivoted and started marketing the Barracuda as a Mustang competitor. The second generation Barracuda featured unique styling and sheet metal but was still, arguably, not a sporty as the competition.
The styling of the third generation Barracuda seems to have been heavily influenced by the ’67 Camaro, although with somewhat different proportions, especially the extra width. I’ve always heard that Chrysler’s mid-sized E-body platform was closely related to the compact A-body. Sometimes the E-gody is referred to as being merely a larger version of the platform and other times as being an evolution of it. I wouldn’t have thought that changing platforms would have made that big of a difference or have added all that much weight, but apparently it did.
Following the reintroduction of the Dodge Challenger in 2008 there were rumors of a mildly restyled version to be sold as the Chrysler ‘Cuda, but the Great Recession put the kibosh on that.
It would have been cool to see if there was some photoshopped pictures of the 2008 Challenger turned into a ‘Cuda just like how a guy named Kevin Morgan photoshopped pictures of the then Camaro turned into Firebird/Trans-Am back in 2006. https://web.archive.org/web/20060427001617/http://www.transamcountry.com/what_if.htm
I was thinking that maybe an aftermarket company might modify a Challenger by installing dual headlamps (instead of the quads on the Challenger), a Barracuda-like grille and Barracuda-style tail lamps, and then replacing the Dodge and Challenger nameplates and trademarks with those lableled Chrysler and Barracuda.
Sort of like those companies Trans Am Depot and Trans Am Worldwide that built Firebird, Trans Am, GTO and Chevelle knock-offs based on the last generation Camaro.
My father worked at Chrysler in this Era and the trade papers had the Challenger and Barracuda at the bottom of the sales charts.
My dad leased two Mopars each year and for 1970 we leased a 318 equipped Challenger for my mom. Light blue with vinyl roof. Worst leased car we ever got. Yes, worse than the mid 70’s Aspen Volaries we later got. Rear seat leg room is terrible. Car does have two glove compartments, one in front of the passenger seat and the other behind the rear window where the spare tire is kept along with the bags of sand to mitigate the front happy weight distribution. After the Challenger experience we got Dusters. Valiant and the like to satisfy the second car needs. These were much better vehicles for the family second car.
I had a ’70 Barracuda Gran Coupe with a 383, and would agree with the article and the comments here. It was a great looking car, quality was adequate but not as good as pre-’71 B-bodies. It drove nice but didn’t handle as well as my ’70 Charger (which I really liked). I was under the very mistaken impression that the 70 1/2 GM F-bodies would drive about like E-bodies until I got behind the wheel of a first year Z-28. Wow.
It says something about these that not only were they not directly replaced but Chrysler only returned to the sporty coupe segment with the Omni 024/Horizon TC3 five years later – and they had some of the best space utilization of any coupe ever, barely worse than the 4 door hatchback L- bodies.
And let’s not forget the others sporty coupes they got from Mitsubishi where Dodge revived the Challenger nameplate while Plymouth used Sapporo as a monicker.
And years later, the E-body served of source of inspiration to create the Venom concept car in 1994 who did the cover on the March 1994 issue of Car & Driver.
The Mitsubishi-sourced Challenger was a great car.
Wtf IS with that tach? The ratio of RPM/needle sweep varies all over the place. Never seen anything like that
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, I mostly felt pity for the Chrysler Corporation. It seemed like they could only rarely line up the 3 puzzle pieces of engineering, design, and money. They could generally only muster 1 or 2 of those at any given moment. Bits and pieces, sure, but never the whole thing.
The slant 6 engine was brilliant (and still is). The Torqueflite was the best early 3-speed auto in the low-priced field, However, they often found themselves fitted into cars with boring-to-ugly designs, and poor build quality. In their day, and even to this day, there are very few Chrysler Corporation vehicles that were absolute home runs. This Barracuda was not one of them.
I am continually amazed at the reverence displayed to these cars today. I guess that when it comes to collector cars, a pretty face wins every time. E bodies and early 60s Impalas rule at shows. Only some of us with gray hair remember how compromised they were to drive.
They’re sort of like muscle cars developed by toy designers: bright colors, lots of dress-up options to add (louvers, spoilers, decals), sound effects. For collectors, low production makes every vaguely desirable feature combination “Ultra-rare X of Y!!!” and if it’s a collectible rather than a daily driver, you can put it back in the garage as soon as it stops being fun to play with.
Also, the shape works well enough that it can withstand a lot of indulgences, whereas some cars really look terrible if you stray beyond a specific range of colors and add-ons.
As muscle cars go, the E-Bodies may be over-hyped today, but they were very rare on the street through the ’70’s, ’80’s, and ’90’s. As many were already, driven into the ground.
As the ’70’s era Camaros, were overexposed enough on the street, at shows, on TV and in movies, to last a lifetime. The overexposure, never really ended. 🙂
I don’t think E bodies had any shortage of TV/Movie exposure, in fact I’m actually thinking they were more overrepresented than the Camaro. 77-81 Trans Ams were the movie star of the second generation, but when I think of second gen Camaros prominently featured I can only think of Fast times at ridgemont high and transformers
I’d also strongly contend that none of these cars were the paragons of quality or longevity. Camaros benefit from the ubiquitous and immortal small block V8 but in terms of corrosion resistance? Don’t throw rocks from glass houses! The quality isn’t stellar either, panel gaps water leaks and cheap materials plague F bodies.
I had a kind-of “shirttail friend” who wanted to sell me his 2 year old ’73 Challenger. It was Metallic Bronze, white interior and vinyl top, 318 Torqueflite. He was moving out of the country and was essentially giving the car away. I sat in it and took in the cheap interior and low uncomfortable seating position. Drove it around the block and told him “No Thanks”.
Sometimes I look at the prices these cars command and want to kick myself. I apparently did not have a crystal ball.