I was done with the Mopar E-Bodies, I swear! That is, until I found this ’70 Barracuda…
Now I want to emphasize here: Barracuda, not ‘Cuda! Big difference, right? I have no idea where this body came from; I’ve never seen it before. Maybe it’s a brand new issue, I don’t know, but I bought this from a seller who seemed to only have one T-jet body on sale-not some big reseller-and it captivated me because, as you can see by the flat hood, this is a fair-to-midland Barracuda and not a high-horsepower muscle machine! So whether it is a new wide release and I just happened to snap up the first one I saw, or it’s some weird limited edition made for a set of some kind, it seemed too cool to pass up; imagine, someone running around the track with a 318 powered automatic! The only things that mark this as anything other than a base slant-6 are the black tail cove and the fog lights, and you could get those on a Barracuda, as well as the vinyl top…and many did!
It came as a body only so I fitted it to a regular Ultra-G and added a set of Vincent chrome reverse wheels which give it a mean look but are not so expensive that you wouldn’t see them on a regular car owned by a regular joe! But of course, due to my infamous OCD, once I bought another Plymouth, I had to have another Dodge as well, in order to keep things balanced, right?
And here it is! As you can see, this is an early Johnny Lightning body from the late 90’s mounted on a pull back chassis before they started making their own T-Jets, and I picked this one as the best companion for the Plymouth since its in pedestrian white. Of course, one glance can see its not as stripped down as the Plymouth, having a shaker hood and a rear wing, but does that necessarily mean it’s a Hemi, or even a 440? It could be a 383, and it probably is! For this one I used a set of 871 “Narrows” from Road Race Replicas, a wheel type I haven’t used on many cars, in an attempt to keep that “low budget” look. Even if it is low budget, it still looks pretty good and it runs pretty good too.
OK, so now what do I do with them? Well, add them to the muscle fleet, of course! Perhaps these belong to young drivers just getting into the game, cars for the “run what ya brung” days at the track, because Drag City does have those kind of days, and they are often even more entertaining than the experienced semi-pros with their high dollar purpose-built cars. I don’t know if these two are getting nicknames or driver names any time soon, but its likely that someday in the middle of a race something will occur to me, and we’ll see what they get christened with when it does. For now, I just consider these “oddities.” I bought them because they were unusual and cheap…and often, those are the most satisfying buys!
Yeah, I can see this beauty with the Vanishing Point name from the movie! Didn’t Depeche Mode sing about “Get the Balance Right” so of course you HAD to get this! 🙂 The story behind this is intriguing and was a good purchase for sure!