Available just before Ford's Mustang, so really is the first "pony car" and better looking anyway.
While the Ford Mustang galloped into American culture almost 50 years ago and brought us the term “pony car,” let us not forget that it wasn’t the first sporty American car based on a compact car platform aimed at younger buyers. Instead, Plymouth beat Ford to the punch by a couple of weeks, so let’s take a moment to celebrate the Barracuda’s pending 50th birthday.
Ford’s Lee Iacocca was absolutely correct in his reasoning that the American public wanted a sporty but reasonably priced car that seated four and could be customized to individual owner tastes with a wide array of options. His strategic error, however, was allowing leaks of information about the Mustang, along with the occasional spy photo. As early as 1962, both the American public and rival automakers knew about the Mustang, and Plymouth wasn’t just sitting idly by. As Allpar relates, the brand went so far as to hire private investigators to turn up as much dirt on the new Ford as possible, including details such as wheelbase, powertrain options, available amenities and even the platform Ford was using to create its new sporty car.
Armed with this information, and facing the same budgetary restrictions as its rival, Plymouth began working on a sporty compact of its own, also based on an existing platform. The Valiant, Chrysler’s compact offering, was chosen to donate its chassis, and engine choices would include the same 225-cu.in. inline six-cylinder with a one-barrel carburetor (rated at 145 horsepower), or 273-cu.in. V-8 with a two-barrel carburetor (rated at 180 horsepower) available on Valiant models. Buyers would be able to choose between manual and automatic transmissions, and a generous selection of options allowed buyers to configure their new sporty Plymouth to suit individual tastes. The car’s most distinctive feature, however, was likely its large glass rear window, which flowed into a rear decklid raised to meet the bottom of the glass.
In profile, Plymouth’s new Valiant Barracuda package was unlike anything else on the market at the time. From the front, however, the car looked very similar to the Valiant, a car that conveyed no more sporting image than Ford’s budget-minded Falcon. The fact that the Barracuda was further labeled with the Valiant tag didn’t help sales, as those looking for a young and sporty image car weren’t putting the model, or any of its variants, on the shopping list. From the car’s introduction on April 1, 1964 (16 days before the Mustang’s), through the end of the model year in October, Plymouth sold just 23,443 Barracudas; by contrast, Ford sold 126,538 Mustangs in the same time period. Plymouth may have fired the first shot, but clearly the automaker’s execution was lacking.
For 1965, Plymouth dropped the Valiant name from the Barracuda lineup, offered a four-barrel carburetor on 273-cu.in. V-8 models (raising output to 235 horsepower), and introduced an S packkage with improved handling, but sales remained unimpressive. The same held true for 1966, when the Barracuda got a unique dashboard to further distance itself from the Valiant, but Ford had already cemented its reputation for performance among new car shoppers. In the final year of the Barracuda’s original styling, sales totaled just 38,029 units, to the Mustang’s 607,568.
Help was on the way. For 1967, Plymouth released a newly styled Barracuda that offered buyers the choice between fastback, coupe and convertible models and further strengthened the car’s performance with the addition of an updated Formula S model, which boasted 280 horsepower from its available 273-cu.in. 383-cu.in. V-8. The changes helped, and sales rose to 62,534 units (including 30,110 fastbacks, 28,196 hardtop coupes and 4,228 convertibles); they likely would have risen further had GM not introduced their own pony car variants, the Chevrolet Camaro and the Pontiac Firebird, for the 1967 model year.
Having played its hand with the 1967 restyling, Plymouth knew that another redesign would be years off. To further promote Barracuda sales, however, the division increased 1968 engine offerings to include the 318-cu.in., 340-cu.in., and 383-cu.in. V-8 variants. A Super Stock 426 Hemi package was also available, but produced in extremely small quantities exclusively for drag racing. By 1969, the 383 V-8 was producing 330 horsepower, but for those who still wanted more for the street, the Barracuda (now called the ‘Cuda in performance trims) was also available with the 440-cu.in. V-8, rated at 375 horsepower.
No matter what V-8 version customers selected, performance was more than acceptable. Hot Rod reported a quarter-mile time of 14.32 seconds at a trap speed of 99.7 MPH for a 1969 Formula S package model equipped with the 340-cu.in. V-8, while the 440 equipped Barracuda could run the quarter in 14 seconds flat at 104 MPH. Cars built with the Formula S package were set up for handling, while those with the 440 option box checked (which eliminated the chance of power steering and the four-speed manual transmission) were intended to go fast primarily in straight lines.
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