1969 Plymouth Barracuda: The Year 'Cuda Became a Name

Car Life's November 1968 road test opens at a drag strip with a challenge. Another magazine had brought one of Europe's new big-engined sedans, a car the writers called a "SuperGerman," to the track on the same day Car Life was there with a 1969 'Cuda 340. Car Life's staff asked whether the visitors would care to step over to the starting line. They would. The 'Cuda won three runs out of three, gaining a few feet off the line and pulling away once both cars were in high gear. Car Life admitted the import was geared for cruising and loaded with luxury equipment, but noted it cost something like $10,000 more.¹

The magazine's headline called the car "Plymouth's Pocket Road Runner," and the comparison was exact. For 1969, Car Life explained, the familiar abbreviation 'cuda became a model name. The 'Cuda came with a spartan interior and bench seat, but with the 340 V8, a four-speed manual, stiffer springs, bigger shock absorbers, wide steel wheels, oversize tires, decorative hood scoops and special paint on the hood and lower body. Like the Road Runner, it put money into the engine and the chassis and not into trim. It was built only as a hardtop or fastback; the convertible was already more expensive, the magazine said, so there was no 'Cuda convertible.¹

That left Plymouth with three ways to buy a fast Barracuda in the last year of the A-body car. Car Life called it "a little confusing." A buyer could start with a plain Barracuda and add the good parts; order the top-of-the-line Formula S, which came with the bigger engines, a handling package, more interior trim and semi-bucket seats; or order a 'Cuda and dress it up as far as he liked. Plymouth's marketing people gave the magazine the business case: building 10,000 'Cudas to sell off dealers' floors would be cheaper for the factory and the dealers than handling 10,000 special orders for plain Barracudas with big engines.^1,2

The shipment tables in Paul Zazarine's Barracuda history suggest the 10,000 never came close. Read through Google Books snippets, they show 666 'Cuda 340s shipped, 196 automatics and 470 four-speeds, and 472 'Cuda 383s, 309 automatics and 163 four-speeds, for 1,138 in all. The 440 'Cuda row is printed NA, not zero, so its number is unknown. Formula S packages ran to 1,839 with the 340 and 718 with the 383. Zazarine counts cars shipped during a year rather than built for a model year, and his column order still needs checking against the printed page, but even with those cautions the 'Cuda looks like a thousand-car idea that was planned as a ten-thousand-car one.^3,1

Under the hood, Plymouth offered a full ladder. The 225 Six was standard at 145 horsepower and the 318 V8 optional at 230. The 340 four-barrel carried a rating of 275 horsepower at 5,000 rpm and 340 lb-ft at 3,200, and Car Life pointed out that NHRA factored it at 310, which the magazine offered as proof that even NHRA was impressed. Over-Drive lists the 383 at 330 horsepower at 5,200 rpm and a 440 four-barrel, added during the year, at 375 horsepower and 480 lb-ft, without stating the rating basis. The Formula S package cost $212 with the 340, $251 with the 383 and $351 with the 440; the four-speed was $188.^1,2

Car Life's test car was a 'Cuda 340 fastback with the four-speed, a 3.91 limited-slip axle, E70-14 Goodyear Polyglas tires, power steering, power front disc brakes and semi-bucket seats, so it was, the writers said, fancier than the standard package. It weighed 3,470 pounds at the curb and 3,650 as tested. It reached 60 mph in 7.1 seconds and ran the quarter-mile in 14.93 seconds at 96.63 mph, with shifts at 6,000 rpm, and averaged 12.8 mpg on test. The magazine noted that those quarter-mile times beat the 383 Road Runner it had tested the year before. Prices had not been announced when the test ran.¹

The handling earned as much praise as the speed. Car Life found very good handling with mild understeer and none of the determined front-end plow of several big-engine pony cars; the 'Cuda could be driven through corners with the front pushing, all four wheels sliding or the tail hung out under power. The disc-brake car pulled 27 ft/sec/sec on its first hard stop and still 20 by the sixth, with only slight swerving. Car Life also remarked that the previous year's test Barracuda had not made its list of Ten Most Satisfying Test Cars, and suggested that this year could be different.¹

The wider Barracuda line was shrinking. Over-Drive's production table and period trade figures give 31,987 Barracudas for 1969: 17,788 fastbacks, 12,757 hardtops and only 1,442 convertibles. Automobile Quarterly's pony-car history sets that against 62,534 for 1967 and 45,412 for 1968, so Plymouth built about half as many Barracudas as it had two years earlier. Peter Sessler and Zazarine print a lower 27,392, on a basis that is not settled. List prices started at $2,674 for a six-cylinder hardtop and $2,780 for a V8 hardtop, $2,813 for a V8 fastback and $3,082 for a V8 convertible. Buyers could choose Barracuda Orange, Limelight or Scorch Red, or special-order Bahama Yellow and Rallye Green.^2,4,5,6

The Barracuda's racing reputation was being made by cars that no showroom sold. NHRA's history of Super Stock at the U.S. Nationals records that Hemi-powered factory Darts and Barracudas had been a highlight at Indianapolis since 1968, when Arlen Vanke's Barracuda chased down Wally Booth's Camaro in the Super Stock final. In 1969, NHRA recalls, future Pro Stock legend Ronnie Sox drove his red, white and blue Barracuda to the win. Those were Hemi race cars built under a factory drag-racing program, not 'Cuda 340s off a dealer's floor, but they tied the Barracuda name to the strip in exactly the year Plymouth began selling a street 'Cuda.^7,8

The stripped 1969 package turned out to be a pilot for something much larger. When Plymouth launched the new E-body for 1970, its Rapid Transit System catalog headlined the car "'Cuda. The R.T.S. presents the ultimate Barracuda," offered it with five engines from the 340 to the 440 Six Barrel and the 426 Hemi, and claimed a chassis virtually the same as its intermediate supercars'. The name Car Life had watched Plymouth turn from an abbreviation into a model had become the top of the line. The first 'Cuda, meanwhile, remains what its production tables say it was: a clever idea that, in the only table that counts it, reached dealers a little over a thousand times, plus an unknown number of 440s.^1,3