{"id":29597,"date":"2019-10-19T13:00:24","date_gmt":"2019-10-19T17:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dodgegarage.com\/news-api\/?p=29597"},"modified":"2024-03-25T11:23:57","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T15:23:57","slug":"1970-plymouth-barely-cuda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/owners-clubs\/2019\/10\/1970-plymouth-barely-cuda.html","title":{"rendered":"1970 Plymouth “Barely-Cuda”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"1970<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Deep down, everyone has a\ndream car; the one that dropped your jaw when you saw it rumbling through your\nneighborhood as a kid, the one that blew your mind pulling stunts on TV, or the\none that prowled through the high school parking lot, always attracting envy from\nthe other students. Most people never wind up getting that dream car – maybe\nbecause it\u2019s something embarrassing, like a VW product or some sort of a Yugo –\nbut more often than not, it\u2019s because their dream car is also the dream car of\nmany others. In my case, I can relate to the latter with my life-long goal of\nowning an E-body Plymouth \u2019Cuda. These cars are almost always worth a minimum\nof $50k restored, and depending on their options, they\u2019ve sold for as much as $3.5\nmillion dollars! With even crusty, rusty project \u2019Cudas fetching around $10k, I\nfigured this was a dream that I would only live out in my sleep; but after\nyears of dedicated hunting, an ambitious attitude, and a desire to give an\nunwanted car a second-chance, I finally was able to score my dream car! <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"decrepit<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll admit, this hacked-up 1970 Barracuda is a\nbit of a daunting sight. Her sheet metal was haphazardly ripped away, her\noriginal parts were stripped, and she was left for dead decades before I was\neven born! My Barracuda spent most of her life in a private lot with (at times)\nhundreds of other E-bodies, but as time ticked away and the value of Plymouth\n\u2019Cudas and Dodge Challengers climbed, the community standards for a fixer-upper\nfell and more and more abandoned cars were pulled out of this E-body graveyard\nfor their second chance at life. Like an unwanted shelter puppy, my Barracuda\nsat for decades watching her fellow E-bodies get rescued, but time after time,\nshe was rejected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"several<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward to 2019 and the hundreds of\nE-bodies that once flooded this private collection has dwindled down to just a\nselect few. Sunken between a plethora of crushed, crashed and completely\nrotted Mopar\u00ae<\/sub> vehicles sat my sad little Barracuda, just waiting for the right\nperson with the right ambition to see her overwhelming potential.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"decrepit<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s no stretch of the imagination to see how\nthis car earned the nickname \u201cBarely-Cuda\u201d. While your average Joe might see\nthis poor little Plymouth and consider her crusher-ready, it doesn\u2019t take a\nrestoration expert to see what she could<\/em>\nbe. Like any good (but also cheap) project car, my \u2019Cuda is just scabby enough\nto scare away many other potential buyers, but solid enough to provide the\nperfect blank canvas for a rebuild. Problems plaguing the Barely-Cuda are skin\ndeep, but her frame rails, floor pan, firewall and entire chassis are rock\nsolid! When taking on a budget build, these are the areas that truly count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"decrepit<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Now, if you’re like me, you can\u2019t even fathom getting to own your $3.5-million-dollar dream car, you might not even have enough play money to throw down on the $50k B-list version, but when you have sincere ambition and a strong will to learn, anyone <\/strong>can afford to create the car of their dreams. It\u2019s easy to believe the perpetuated fallacy that the climbing value of old muscle cars has made them unattainable to the general public, but in reality, that couldn\u2019t be farther from the truth! At the age of 23, I may not have had the opportunity to experience the original horsepower wars of the 1960s and \u201970s, I may never have gotten to take advantage of the dirt-cheap prices of these cars in the 1980s and \u201990s, but despite society\u2019s groans, 2019 truly is a great time to be a muscle car fan! Only in modern day can you build an entire car with reproduction metal, or with a click of a button replace any factory clip, fastener or trim piece with an authentic Mopar part. Before the boom of the aftermarket industry, only survivor cars and real deal originals were considered worthy of restorations, but nowadays, affordable aftermarket parts means anyone can rescue and restore a reject that was parted out and passed up on for decades. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if you think you can’t afford it, I encourage all of you to start chasing your dream car. Find a cheap shell to build or a reject to restore; but before you get in over your head, make sure you know how to properly inspect these classic Mopars. Check back here on Dodge Garage to learn how you can tell if that old Dodge or Plymouth you\u2019re looking to buy is Too Far Gone.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"olivia<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deep down, everyone has a dream car; the one that dropped your jaw when you saw it rumbling through your neighborhood as a kid, the one that blew your mind pulling stunts on TV, or the one that prowled through the high school parking lot, always attracting envy from the other students. Most people never wind up getting that dream car – maybe because it\u2019s something embarrassing, like a VW product or some sort of a Yugo – but more often than not, it\u2019s because their dream car is also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":29699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2624],"tags":[2949,943],"class_list":["post-29597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-owners-clubs","tag-plymouth-classics","tag-restoration"],"acf":[],"custom_fields":{"post_thumbnail_image":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/feature-38.jpg","icon_selection":"article","external_link":"","featured_article":[],"upload_background_image":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29597"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29597"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29706,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29597\/revisions\/29706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.api.dodgegarage.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}