1967 'Cuda Formula S Four-Speed Took 25 Years To Restore, Great Job or What?

Fine, I’ll tell you right now: April 1, 1964, is when Chrysler officially created the not-yet-pony car segment by launching the first-generation Plymouth Barracuda. However, there was something fishy about calling the newly-discovered niche “a fish car.” Everyone agreed that Ford’s galloping wild stallion emblem on the Mustang made sense, and the aquatic animal was left out. So here we are today, Ford getting all the praise for something they didn’t create, but sure as internal combustion fire did a fine job at popularizing.

The second point of view regarding April 1 is the worldwide accepted April Fool's Day –when practical jokes are more abundant than Halloween candies. But in 1975, Canada played the prank of the century (all by and on itself) when it switched to metric. That day, the weather service announced the temperatures in Celsius. From there on, it all went toward the world-spread, (almost) world-agreed measurement system.

Despite embracing the mainstream units, the planet’s second-biggest country didn’t break its oath of appreciation for Detroit’s finest. The automobiles produced across the lake (literally) were held in high regard by the Maple Leaf citizens. And who can blame them – being close friends with the world’s biggest carmaker of the last century helps spread the love for cars made in the United States of Automobile.

And Mother Mopar was just as appreciated on both sides of the International Boundary. Take this splendid white Plymouth – vintage 1967 – built for the Canadian market with a proper 150-mph smiles-per-gallon-meter. Eight years before the metrication and a decade before, the country switched from miles to kilometers (that happened on Labour Day, 1977 – September 5, for clarification). It’s no ordinary Plymouth, but the Barracuda Formula S – Plymouth’s big-block answer to the other two Detroit Big.

The car we see here has been with its owner since 1988 and has been under restoration for 25 of those 35 years. That’s not entirely unseen – there are gearheads out there who have been wrenching their classics for ages and still have something left to fix. However, Dennis Chouinard – the proud owner and restorer of this Barracuda – has reached its end.

On Sunday, July 23, 2023, he and his car were present at the car show. The date bears tons of importance since the ‘Cuda was approved for out-of-restoration status on Saturday (July 22) by Mrs. Chouinard. When a woman has the patience to wait for a quarter of a century before giving her piston-addict man the green light on his iconic Mopar, that man has won the lottery of life.

But Mrs. Chouinard was right – the restoration is a hats-off job. And to think that Dennis bought the car to turn it into a racer and blast quarter miles with it (For Canadians – and the rest of the planet – that’s 402-meter-short fun). However, since he already had a dragstrip weapon (another ‘Cuda), Mr. Chouinard took the long road to automobile Nirvana.

He set to work, and the outcome would make Chrysler reprint their brochure for the 1967 Plymouth Barracuda Formula S only to have this white example as the photo model. The 383-cubic-inc V8 (6.3-liter) is burbling like it’s waiting for the stoplight to turn red despite being down on power due to space limitations.

That was one of the drawbacks of putting a big-block motor inside an A-body engine bay –minimal space left for the ancillaries. That’s why a Formula S doesn’t have air conditioning – making it a double-hot car. The ‘shoehorn-the-big-engine-until-it-fits’ job also took away the power steering – and yet Plymouth bragged its vehicle was one of the best-handling American cars ever built.

The Formula S package mandated thicker front torsion bars, a front anti-roll bar, and heavy-duty shocks. This particular example (one of just 1,841 built for the model year) has disc brakes on the front (optional equipment) and the no-cost optional four-speed, three-pedal transmission. The rear end of this marvelous ’67 ‘Cuda is the standard 3.23 with a Sure-Grip differential. The engine’s four-barrel output was 280 hp and 400 lb-ft (283 PS, 542 Nm), drastically lower than what it was capable of in the Belvedere and Fury (325 hp, 328 PS).

The reason was the lack of harmony between the big-block 383 and the small-volume engine bay in the ‘Cuda. Since there was so little space to play with, the headers had to take one for the team, hindering power output after being modified to adapt to the already crammed bay. Nonetheless, the Formula S convinced Plymouth that the A-body platform was no match for the corporation’s big guns, the 426 Street Hemi and the 440 Super Commando. And that, in turn, led to the creation of the E-platform and the two legends that shared it, the 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda and Dodge Challenger.