We have all heard the stories! I have been loving and chasing muscle cars since I was 12 and do have a lot of cool stories, but this one is pretty neat.
A Chevy buddy of mine came over to my garage to purchase a Muncie transmission I had and saw a few of my Mopars and he told me that he knew of a guy not too far away that had a 71 Cuda in a barn that he would like to sell (I asked him several times if he was sure it was a 71 and he told me it had the "air slits on the fender"
). He told me that the guy didn't want to list it anywhere because he was a private person and didn't want all the hassles of dealing with prospective buyers. I didn't think much of it but I told my buddy to give him my number and I may be interested in looking at it.
Two weeks go by and I get a phone call from the owner and we setup a date to meet at his place...well, I was not disappointed!!
There sat a 71 Cuda in a pole barn on jack stands!
The guy is retired military and retired police officer. Being prior military we actually talked for about an hour before we even looked at the cars (thinking back now I think he was actually kind of interviewing me to see if he was going to even let me see the cars!). He had the 71 Cuda, a 70 Barracuda and a 73 Cuda 340 4-speed (the 73 was a parts car and too far gone, but a lot of good parts). He also had about 10 B-bodies...Roadrunners, GTX's etc! His goal was to get rid of the E-Bodies and concentrate on bringing the B-Bodies back to drivable condition. After taking a good look at the cars and parts we came to an agreement and I ended up buying the 71 Cuda, the 70 Barracuda, the 73 Cuda parts car (if you can call it a car...it was mostly just parts) and all the E-Body parts. We agreed to cash and trade for some of my B-Body parts he needs.
Another cool thing is this guy worked at the Chrysler dealership in the 70's and told me stories of the dealership throwing away parts from previous year cars to make room for the new parts!! He included in the deal some NOS parts that the dealership threw away that he got from the dumpster!! I can't even imagine!! A couple of cool parts he got from the dumpster were a NOS 70 Header panel and a NOS 71 Cuda complete grill...both of which were included in the deal. They were hanging on the wall in his other shed!
He is the 2nd owner of the 71 Cuda and has had it since 1982! The 70 Cuda he has had since 1985. They both had clear titles although the OLD SCHOOL Florida titles
The 71 Cuda is most interesting to me. He had the crumbled build sheet, but no fender tag. The original motor and trans are long gone, but it did come with a 68 383 with dual quads on an engine stand.
From what he tells me the car came with the following from what the original owner told him and what he noticed about the car since he has had it:
Winchester Grey Color
Black Vinyl top
White interior
Billboard car
383 4 barrel
3-speed manual on the floor
Air Conditioning
Power front Disc brakes
Manual steering
I tried to piece together the build sheet, but it is pretty tattered. I do have a picture he took of the build sheet in the back of the seat that is a little better.
Not sure of my plans for the car, but I thought it was a cool find!
I have a video of the trip on YouTube...not sure if the link will work here but here it is:
https://youtu.be/L6hPAUY5kFo
Topic: Chevy buddy: "I know where there is a 71 Cuda in a barn" me: "sure you do :)" (Read 3471 times)
