My Father originally purchased the 1973 Barracuda in 1974 as a result of the gas crises in the early 70's. At the time he was driving a 1955 Chevrolet and needed something more "Economical" 1984 I acquired it from him again after he felt that it was going to start costing to much to fix. I hastily got the car running only to have it blow an engine. (what do you expect from a car with 250,000 miles) At that time I chose to have the 318 rebuilt by a local performance shop. I asked to keep it simple to aid in getting it through California's tough smog checks. All-in-all he converted it to unleaded, slipped in a new cam and balanced the rest. From there I added headers and a Mallory ignition. With that I was able to get the car up to 150 without much effort. (Pretty good for a 318 with a stock intake manifold, local parts store rebuilt 2 barrel carb and stock air cleaner) It sounded healthy and when it was due for its smog check I meet with a leery mechanic that was later surprised when it passed with out any tweaking. Sometime in 1989 that engine blew big-time where then I put the 273 from my 67 in it. (Also rebuilt for the 2nd time) 1992 I found a blind mechanic to do a smog check on it. In 1994 I chose not to sneak the car through smog and chose to retire it until I could afford to do it right. January 1, 1999 the smog law in California change such as a 1973 car was now exempt from biannual smog checks, so I rushed out and reregistered it. I have recently received many offers for it but in no way will I let it go with the engine, suddenly they're not interested. I have finally settled on a deal with someone and it has been sold. From what the new owner described it will look virtually identical to Dana's 1970 383 Cuda. Basically it'll look the same aside from the differences in the grill, taillights and marker lights. Scott plans to put a 440 automatic and keep the AC. He is painting it the same yellow and using the 70 stripes and add the Cuda hood and wheels. Hope to have updates posted soon.

THE CAR:
• Barracuda Hardtop
• 318 2bbl
• Console Automatic
• Air Conditioning

In 2000 I sold the car and took over a year to recover the engine that was not part of the original deal.