1971 Plymouth Barracuda and 'Cuda: Four Headlamps, Seven Hemi Convertibles and the Last Year of the Big Engines

Plymouth's specification sheets for the 1971 Barracuda, dated July 27, 1970, still carried a row for the AAR 'Cuda. On paper, the Trans-Am special had a second year. In the showroom it did not: no source has established a single 1971 retail AAR 'Cuda, and Over-Drive's fact sheet says the model was initially cited as available and then disappeared from factory mention. That orphaned row is a fair introduction to 1971. The Barracuda kept nearly everything that had made the 1970 car remarkable, gained a new face, and then found out how few buyers were still coming through the door.^1,2

The new face was unmistakable. Over-Drive notes that 1971 was the only year the Barracuda wore four headlamps, and that the grille, taillamps and trim all changed. It was also the only year of the fender gills on the 'Cuda, and the only year of the full-length billboard side decal with the engine size called out inside it. Those details make a 1971 car easy to identify from across a parking lot, and they make it a one-year design. Underneath, the car still rode a 108-inch wheelbase and measured 186.6 inches long and 74.9 inches wide.²

The lineup kept three series. The Barracuda came as a pillared coupe, a hardtop and a convertible; the Gran Coupe was offered as a hardtop; and the 'Cuda came as a hardtop or convertible. The production table's prices start at $2,654 for a six-cylinder coupe and $2,766 for a six-cylinder hardtop. A V8 Gran Coupe hardtop listed at $3,029, a 'Cuda hardtop at $3,156 and a 'Cuda convertible at $3,412. Jim Schild's originality guide prints $3,134 for the 'Cuda hardtop, and without a factory price list in hand, both prices stay on the record.^2,3

Under the hood the 'Cuda kept the full menu one more time. The 383 four-barrel was standard, though its rating is itself a small puzzle: the 1971 AMA figures recorded elsewhere give 330 horsepower and 425 lb-ft, Over-Drive's engine table gives 300 horsepower at 4,800 rpm and 410 lb-ft, and the same site's text still describes a 335-horsepower 383. The 340 four-barrel, at 275 horsepower, was a $44 'Cuda option. Above it sat the 440 Six Barrel, rated 385 horsepower and 490 lb-ft, at a reported $275, and the 426 Hemi at 425 horsepower and $884, all of them period advertised factory ratings.^1,2

Then came the numbers that changed the tone of the whole line. Automotive News, Chilton's Automotive Industries and the Americana Annual all put 1971 Barracuda model-year production at 18,690, against 55,499 the year before, roughly a two-thirds fall in one season. The production table divides the 1971 cars into 9,459 Barracuda hardtops and coupes, which it counts together, 1,014 Barracuda convertibles, 1,615 Gran Coupes, 6,228 'Cuda hardtops and 374 'Cuda convertibles. The 'Cuda figures are repeated in Schild, in Mueller and Glatch's Dodge and Plymouth history and in John Gunnell's muscle-car guide, so they are among the better-attested counts of the year.^{4,5,6,2,3,7,8}

The Hemi counts shrink to a size a single garage could hold. Mike Mueller and Tom Glatch list 48 Hemi 'Cuda hardtops with TorqueFlite and 59 with four-speeds, and seven Hemi convertibles, five automatics and two four-speeds. The seven-convertible figure is repeated by Schild, who notes that only two were four-speeds, and by Peter Sessler's collector's handbook. Against the 374 'Cuda convertibles in the production table, seven is fewer than one in fifty. John Gunnell's guide prints a broader line, that 153 cars had Hemis, but the entry does not show whether that means 'Cudas alone, so it stands beside the per-transmission counts rather than over them.^7,3,9,2,8

The 440 Six Barrel tells the same story at a slightly larger scale. Randy Leffingwell's book on rare convertibles gives 237 Six Barrel 'Cuda hardtops and 17 Six Barrel convertibles for 1971, printed together in one sentence as the year's Six Pack production. Put beside the production table's 6,228 'Cuda hardtops, the triple-carburetor 440 went into fewer than one hardtop in twenty-five. Both big engines were in their final year in the Barracuda, which makes the 1971 order form the last on which a Barracuda buyer could check either box. At $884 and $275, the two options were priced far apart, yet neither went into as many as three hundred cars.^10,2,7

Plymouth dressed the year loudly even as sales fell. Over-Drive's paint chart for 1971 runs to nineteen colors, including Sassy Green, Citron Yella, Top Banana, Bahama Yellow, Hemi Orange, Plum Crazy, Tunisian Tan, Tawny Gold and Gold Leaf; Schild shows a 'Cuda convertible in Gold Leaf Metallic. The lower Barracudas kept the 225 six and the 318 V8, and the TorqueFlite and four-speed were listed at about $209 and $198. The coupe, at $2,654 with a six, gave Plymouth a cheaper way into the E-body. None of the price and color choices changed the fundamental arithmetic of the year.^2,3

Reading the 1971 ledger closely shows where the market went. The Barracuda convertible fell to 1,014 cars, and the 'Cuda convertible to 374, while the Gran Coupe totaled 1,615 hardtops. The 'Cuda hardtop, at 6,228 cars, was the second-largest body in the line, behind only the Barracuda hardtops and coupes that the table counts together. None of the sources cited for this year explains the drop in its own words, and the cause is better left unassigned than guessed. What the numbers do establish is scale: Plymouth built 18,690 Barracudas of all kinds for 1971, and only a few hundred of them carried either big engine.^2,4,7,10

That leaves 1971 as a peculiar kind of landmark. It is the only four-headlamp Barracuda, the only gilled and billboard-striped 'Cuda, the last year of the Hemi and Six Barrel, and the home of some remarkably small production counts, seven Hemi convertibles chief among them. It also carried, in a specification sheet written before the season began, the ghost of an AAR 'Cuda that never reached a dealer. The car buyers could order was still extraordinary. There were simply far fewer of them, and the extraordinary versions were down to a few hundred.^2,7,1