1967 Plymouth Barracuda - What If?

"What if?" Are there two words when combined more thought provoking? What if...Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy hadn't been assassinated? What if the oceans dried up? What if plastic was banned? What if The South won the Civil War? What if you never had to sleep? What if...in 1964 Chrysler came with this Plymouth Barracuda they debuted in 1967 instead of the dressed-up Valiant they did come with? Now that, car friends, is a "what if" scenario worth talking about. 

"Pony Car" pundits claim the problem with the 1964-1966 Barracuda was that it was a lightly disguised Plymouth Valiant; save for the massive and heavy rear window that did not open, did anyone hear that tree fall in the forest? No. They didn't. Dressing up an economy car as more than it is not necessarily a bad thing although pony car cognoscenti want nothing to do with acknowledging their beloved steeds are in fact gussied up economy-cars. 

Ford disguised that their original Mustang was little more than their economy-car Falcon with a fancy body quite well. Plymouth? Not so much. Ford sold 418,000 Mustang's by the end of the 1965 model  and more than 1.4-million by the end of 1966. The Mustang's ribald success is the reason Ford is given  credit for creating the "pony car" market segment or niche. Meanwhile, Plymouth sold fewer than 100,000 Barracuda's en masse during the same time. 

Let's add insult to injury and remind you that Plymouth introduced the Barracuda just over two-weeks before Ford pulled the sheet off the Mustang at, of all places, New York City's World's Fair. Ford's multi-media mix of advertising and promotional stunting, that was by some accords three year in the making, stoking the coals of a buying public that was at a near fevered pitch when the car was actually finally released. Ford also claimed to have done exhaustive market research to determine that drivers coming of age in the 1960's wanted a smaller, sporty car. The success of the Mustang was certainly no accident. 

After it was apparent the 1964 Plymouth Barracuda was a sales dud, Chrysler's stylists led by Dick McAdams got to work immediately on a new model that although continued to use Chrysler's compact A-body chassis, shared no body panel stampings with the Valiant. Subjectively, through my goggles, the 1967 Barracuda was every bit as pretty if not somewhat more refined than Ford's seminal '64 1/2 Mustang. Especially in "notch-back" or coupe guise like our lovely subject here that the '64-'66 Barracuda's was not available in. In fastback mode I may give the nod to the Mustang, the convertibles are all a wash. 

While the "coke bottle" styling may seem derivative today given that General Motors designs of the vintage lean heavily on that theme, the '67 Barracuda was a fresh and unique design that critics at the time declared was decidedly "Italian"; ala Ferrari. Imagine that. On a Plymouth of all things. If Plymouth could have done this for '67, why not '64? Well, story goes that Plymouth didn't have the budget or crisis-plagued Chrysler chose not to give the project one but I digress. 

This is where the "what-if" discussion about these cars gets interesting since the updated Barracuda sold even worse than the '64-'66 Barracuda's. How was that even remotely possible? 

For starters, it didn't help that it rode and handled like a truck with square wooden wheels, especially equipped with a 383 cubic-inch V-8 that was so big Chrysler engineers couldn't fit a power steering pump on it despite making the chassis wider specifically so the big engine could fit in it. Air conditioning was a no go as well on Barracuda's with the 383. Meanwhile Ford's also new for '67 Mustang, well, more like updated, came with an engine room big enough to house not only their monstrous 390 cubic-inch V-8 but they squeezed in power steering and air conditioning. Whoops. 

Another problem was competition. For 1967, General Motors came with two "ponies", the Chevrolet Camaro and the Pontiac Firebird that sold, combined, more than 300,000. Ford also introduced a Mercury version of the Mustang. Suddenly a market segment, and lest we forget a niche market, that didn't exist just four model year prior, was clogged with five different makes and models for buyers to choose from. As we like to say, choice is great for the consumer but it's bad for business.  

"What if". With regards to the Plymouth Barracuda, who knows. Of course, it's impossible to say if the 1967 Plymouth Barracuda was launched in 1964, with a '64 Mustang sized ad budget, if the fate of the Barracuda (and Plymouth, ultimately) would have been different. All these years later, the pony car war is still all about Mustang vs. Camaro and to some degree, especially over the last twelve, thirteen years or so, the Dodge Challenger although most consider the modern Challenger more of a grand touring car than a pony. Sadly, you have to remind people that there was once a Plymouth that was, in reality, the first muscle car. "What if..."

1979 Ford Mustang - Horse of a Different Color

If you're of a particular vintage and have a proclivity to appreciate automobiles chances are you are have fairly fond feelings of early "Fox-body" Ford Mustangs like our '79 here. I know I do. Especially the legendary 1982-1993 "5.0" models. While they were extremely long in the tooth when Ford finally put them to pasture after 2004, personally, I give them credit for being the cars that started the end of the "Malaise Era" of cars. However, let's be brutally honest, shall we? At the time of it's introduction, the 1979 Mustang seemed like such a watershed automobile mostly because of what it replaced. That being the 1974-1978 Mustang II, the most vilified Ford since the Edsel. 

We can't pin all of the vitriol we have for the Mustang II on the fact that Ford loosely based them on their sub-compact Pinto. You ever drive a Pinto? They handled like go-carts and had grippy brakes like no other domestic at the time. In short, they were a ball to drive. Sure, they were ugly, under-powered and pretty deadly when hit from the rear but they were fun. Save for brakes, steering gear, rear axle and part of it's floor pan, there really wasn't that much Pinto in a Mustang II anyway. But don't blame it's Pinto DNA for the reason the Mustang II was so awful - blame it's styling. Whereas the original Mustang was based on the Ford Falcon, certainly a far cry from a movie star handsome automobile, what Ford's stylists did with the Mustang is the stuff of legend. These things? They're just flat out clumsy looking. And even if they handled like a Pinto, which of course they didn't because they were four to five hundred pounds heavier, that wouldn't be enough to assuage how homely looking they were. 

The Mustang II had a two-inch longer wheelbase than the Pinto and was overall six inches longer so you can't blame the size of the canvas for its design either. Although, perhaps if these cars were generally larger they wouldn't look so darn shrunken. At certain angles in pictures, it's actually not half bad looking. Helps if you blur your vision too. 

You have to give Ford some credit for at least being forward thinking with the Mustang II since planning for it started years before the first gas crisis. By the time the '71 "big" Mustang rolled out, what there was of Mustang's sporty image had all been worn away by competition and insurance surcharges on performance cars making anything deemed "sporty" incarnate evil. In the early '70's imports where gaining more and more traction as well and let's not forget that there was the looming specter of an energy crisis.

At the beginning of the first gas crisis, which all but those who had their heads buried in the proverbial Middle Eastern sand saw coming from miles away, and permanently higher priced gas, the "II" was a smash at the box office. Those buyers looking for an economy car with sporty looks, however, were not "Mustang fans" per se and as soon as the ink dried on newspaper headlines that the embargo was over and that gas prices were going to stabilize, the sales bloom fell off the "II". Cash strapped Ford slogging through the rest of the 1970's with a car emblazoned with a name that little more than a decade prior was emblematic of a Ford Motor Company with nothing but blue skies on its horizons. 

It was pretty obvious right from the start that the new-for-1979 Mustang was literally and figuratively a horse of a different color. While stylistically it was still a far cry from Mustang's of 1964-1970 yore, note how we gently side step the 1971-1973's, it checked all the right boxes on what fans of the literal breed expect from a sporty "pony" car. The fact it actually handled well was like apples and carrots to a hungry foal reared on a diet of dry grass.