1970 Plymouth Barracuda – Muscle Car Facts

“The most changed car in America. Strong. Low (one of the lowest four-seaters in the industry). Wide (one of the widest tracks of any American-made sporty car). Maneuverable. Fun. And, above all, low-cost.” 1970 Barracuda sales brochure

• The beginning of the third-generation Barracudas, the 1970 models were completely restyled from the second-generation models.
• The Barracuda was produced on the new Chrysler E platform for the first time – previously it had shared the A platform with the Variant.
• Because of the bigger car, the Barracuda could fit just about any engine Plymouth made under its hood, and offered almost all of them as options, including a Hemi.

With two major restyles since its introduction in 1964, it seemed that Plymouth was willing to retool the Barracuda until it got it right. Low sales numbers probably contributed to this thought process. But on the second overhaul, it seemed Plymouth did in fact get it right. The question remains: was it too little too late?

The new 1970 Plymouth Barracuda was introduced along with the all-new Dodge Challenger. Both shared the new E platform, which stood for extended and, appropriately, was an extended version of Chrysler’s K platform. An extremely similar look shared by the cars fittingly resulted in them being known as the Mopar Twins.

But the sleek new exterior that finally looked as good as all of the other pony car competitors wasn’t the only new feature of the new Barracuda. The ‘Cuda, introduced as a sporty option package the year before, was now a Barracuda model in its own right, and came in both a hardtop option and a convertible option. Another new model called the Gran Coupe served as the luxury model Barracuda, which followed a trend used by the other pony cars and treated buyers to an upgraded interior trim. This model also was available in a hardtop and a coupe. The fastback model was phased out in 1970, leaving only the hardtop and convertible options for each model.

Total production was up significantly with the new models to 55,499, an increase of 73.5 percent over the previous year. However, this was a spike that would fall sharply the following year. Though Plymouth had finally found a Barracuda that could compete on a visual and performance level with all the other pony cars, sales in the class were already beginning to dwindle as performance buffs turned their eyes toward muscle cars. In response to this, all the pony cars, Barracuda included, offered options that packed as much power as possible into the cars.

As stated before, the Barracuda offered just about every engine Plymouth produced as an option. In fact, the only engines you could not get in a Barracuda was the smallest six-cylinder engine that was reserved only for the Valiant and the 340 CID Commando V8. Standard in the Barracuda was a bigger 225 CID slant six-cylinder that produced 145 horsepower. After that, the buyer could choose from six other V8, starting with the 318 CID motor producing 230 horsepower and going up to the 426 CID Street-Hemi V8 that produced 425 horsepower. However, at an additional cost of $1,068, less than 1,000 Hemi Barracudas were produced in 1970. Cuda models came standard with a 383 CID Super Commando V8 that produced 335 horsepower.

Hardtop and Convertible

The hardtop was the best selling Barracuda model, and more than doubled its production from the previous year with a model year run of 25,651. An additional 1,554 convertible were sold, also up slightly from the previous year. The base hardtop model cost $2,764, while the convertible cost $3,034.

Gran Coupe Hardtop and Convertible

The new luxury model Barracuda sold relatively well, but still brought up the bottom of the three Barracuda models when it came to production numbers. With a base price of $2,934, the hardtop version had a production run of 8,183, while the convertible cost at least $3,160. There were 596 Gran Coupe convertibles produced in 1970.

Cuda Hardtop and Convertible

Considering they had the highest price of any base Barracuda, the Cuda performance models sold well in 1970. The hardtop had a production run of 18,880 while 635 convertibles were produced. Base price was $3,164 for the hardtop and $3,433 for the convertible.

Pony Car Competition

As mentioned before, even though the pony cars wars appeared to be in full swing in 1970, the signs of the end of buyer’s interest in the class was beginning to show. By 1975, only the Chevy Camaro and Pontiac Firebird would continue to carry on the pony car torch, as the rest would be discontinued, except for the Mustang, which was converted to a compact car in 1974.

Until then, however, Plymouth had a powerful and good-looking Barracuda to offer car buyers through the middle of the decade. With the sales spike that came with the redesign, the Barracuda finally was out of last place in sales for the pony car class – that distinction now belonged to the AMC Javelin. Though, as mentioned before, the worst was yet to come.