The Chrysler Corporation has never built a four-door Plymouth Barracuda, even though it flirted with the idea for years. But a renowned Mopar restoration expert did. He spent roughly four years and an estimated 10,000 man-hours, engineering and hand-fabricating this showstopper.
All Plymouth Barracudas produced by the Chrysler Corporation from 1964 to 1973 were either two-door coupes or convertibles. However, Chrysler designers did seriously consider rolling out one and even came up with a four-door E-body mockup clay model in the late 1960s.
The auto giant’s executives wanted to anticipate the future, trying to figure out if a potential four-door could compete with the high-end European sports sedans of the era. The full-scale prototype that was presented to them behind closed doors featured shorter front doors, functional rear doors, and a slightly altered roofline to allow for rear-seat headroom, much like the four-door custom build that is now being auctioned off through Bring a Trailer.
Back in the 1960s, executives eventually determined that the costs to manufacture unique rear doors, glass, and quarter panels would not be profitable for a low-volume sedan. The four-door never got the green light, and they had to permanently scrap the project.
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Fast forward to 2016, and a four-door Plymouth Barracuda was exhibited at the 2016 SEMA Show, where it was also entered into the event’s prestigious Battle of the Builders competition. Because it was meticulously protected and treated like a flawless museum-quality build, its tires never actually touched the road pavement from its initial SEMA debut until 2022.
Finally out of storage six years after SEMA
That was when the four-door Plymouth Barracuda made headlines, finally coming out of its long-term storage. In October 2022, it was finally rolled out just to be photographed, filmed, and officially presented to the public as a functional, running vehicle. However, now, it has only one mile on the clock, which proves it has been a garage queen all its life, stored away from the eyes of the curious.
This car is the creation of Dave Walden, a renowned custom car builder, Mopar restorer, and the founder of ECS Automotive Concepts. He and his team spent four years and an estimated 10,000 man-hours to build the four-door Barracuda.
Because the Chrysler Corporation never made a four-door E-body, the team couldn’t simply go out and buy off-the-shelf parts, so they had to come up with a manufacturing process that mirrored the 1970s factory products.
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The most challenging part of the build was adding two doors without ruining the iconic, low-slung silhouette of the Barracuda. They began with a standard 1970 Plymouth donor car, cut the chassis, and precisely lengthened the body by 10 inches to make room for an extra pair of doors and a functional rear seating area.
To prevent the car from looking like an odd stretched limousine, the team hand-fabricated entirely custom steel rear doors and inner door jambs, while using the structural B-pillars from a Dodge Coronet sedan. A standard Barracuda roof tapers aggressively toward the decklid.
To ensure the rear passengers actually had enough headroom and did not have to sit contorted in bizarre positions, Dave Walden’s team entirely reconstructed the roofline, altering the pitch of the C-pillars and blending them into the stock quarter panels.
Instead of using modern glass, Dave Walden and his team sourced custom, date-coded windows specifically cut to match the newly fabricated four-door dimensions, complete with authentic factory safety stamps.
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Walden was famous for his obsessive attention to historical accuracy. The mechanical assembly of the car was handled with a strict restoration-first mindset and did not allow a single deviation unless it was critically necessary.
Red paint and a black vinyl top over a black vinyl interior
The car was finished in a flawless Rallye Red, paint code FE5, and equipped with a custom black vinyl roof, stretched and fitted over the elongated body, hiding the seamless weld points where the body had been stretched. The Barracuda sits on 14-inch wheels, wrapped in F70-14 Goodyear red-line tires.
The Barracuda’s cabin hosts period-correct bench seats upholstered in black vinyl. The woodgrain-rimmed steering wheel sits on a unique tilting and telescoping steering column, framing an instrument cluster that integrates a speedometer scaled up to 120 mph, a clock, and gauges that indicate fuel level, coolant temperature, and alternator status.
Under the hood of the Barracuda, he slid a period-correct, high-performance 340-cubic-inch (5.6-liter) E55 LA V8 engine, with a Carter four-barrel carburetor set up atop a factory-spec intake manifold. The V8 was factory-rated at 275 horsepower (279 metric horsepower) and 340 pound-feet (461 Newton meters) of torque.
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A fully rebuilt 727 TorqueFlite three-speed automatic transmission put the power down through the rear wheels. The car features power steering, while power front disc brakes and rear drums provide the stopping power. Though, given its mileage, it has hardly had the chance to use them.
Every single bolt, clamp, and bracket utilized original assembly markings. The underside of the chassis, engine bay, and suspension components were intentionally hit with the exact paint dabs, chalk marks, and inspection stamps that a factory Barracuda would have received on the assembly line in 1970.
To complete the illusion of a real four-door Plymouth Barracuda, Dave Walden created a fully customized, historically accurate window sticker and assembly broadcast sheet, detailing the pricing and options for the phantom build.
Following the passing of its creator, Dave Walden, in 2019, the sedan has been carefully preserved and was only taken out in October 2022 before a public sale. It crossed the auction block at the Mecum Kissimmee event in January 2023, when someone paid $121,000 to take it home.
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That owner sold it again at the Kruse Auctions Auburn Fall Event for less than half that sum: $54,880. Now, it is going under the hammer once again on Bring a Trailer, with the odometer still indicating just one mile and a Pennsylvania title that classifies it as a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda four-door. With six days to go, the highest bid reached $40,000.
