Story and photos from John Gunnell

The 1970 Plymouth AAR ’Cuda was one hot car in its day. Even though it was powered by a small-block V-8, the AAR is a coveted muscle car with a value on par with many of its big-block brothers — even some Hemi cars! Old Cars Report Price Guide currently prices a No. 1 condition AAR ’Cuda in show condition at $85,000, which is down from six figures just two years ago. Back in 2017, top examples of the AAR ’Cuda were fetching $100,000 and more. The slide in price isn’t due to lack of interest in the AAR ’Cuda, but rather the general softening of muscle car prices under a market correction from peak muscle car prices.

Plymouth built the AAR ’Cuda exclusively with the small-block 340-cid V-8 engine. Building hot small-block muscle cars became a trend among automakers in the late 1960s and early 1970s to combat higher insurance rates on big-block muscle cars. The trick then became for Detroit automakers to maximize power from their small V-8s.

The reason for use of the small-block 340 in the AAR ’Cuda was two-fold. In addition to being trendy, Plymouth installed the hot small-block into its ’Cuda in order to homologate the car into the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) Trans-Am Series of racing.

The AAR ’Cuda available at Plymouth dealers was named after Dan Gurney’s All American Racers, who raced ’Cudas in the Trans-Am Series. Gurney was signed by Chrysler’s Plymouth division for 1970 after having driven previously for Mercury. He entered a ’Cuda in the Trans-Am series with Swede Savage as the driver.

Although the AAR ’Cuda option package was built to homologate the components built into Gurney’s race car for the Trans-Am Series, the production car evolved with a split personality. “The new AAR ’Cuda is every inch a hot rod,” said the July 1970 issue of Car and Driver. The magazine’s reviewer found the car poorly weight-balanced for a road course, but it had plenty of guts for straight-line acceleration.

Having a player in the Trans-Am sedan racing series was a must for Detroit’s purveyors of pony cars in 1970. There were factory-backed Trans-Am Series efforts from American Motors, Ford, Pontiac and Chevrolet. For Trans-Am racing, Dodge also outfitted its E-body pony car, the Challenger, with similar equipment to the AAR ’Cuda and appropriately named it “T/A.” While most of the Trans-Am programs were supported by the manufacturers, Chevrolet and Pontiac technically had back-door programs.

Factory-backed Plymouth and Dodge participation was new in ’70. It came together at a time when there was a new Plymouth Barracuda body design (the Dodge Challenger was altogether new), and because competition rules changed so that the 5.0-liter engines used in the racing cars didn’t have to be exactly the same size as the production engines from which they were derived.

Chrysler’s potent 340-cid small-block V-8 could “legally” be de-stroked to 303.8 cubic inches to come in under the Trans-Am sanctioning body’s displacement limit. Manufacturers could legalize their Trans-Am equipment by building 1,900 or more special models. Plymouth’s result was the 1970 AAR ’Cuda, which had a production run of 2,724 units.

The production AAR ’Cuda’s 340-cid small-block V-8 had high-performance heads and thicker webbing in the block to allow the racing team to use four-bolt mains. Even though only a single four-barrel carburetor was allowed in racing, that didn’t prevent triple two-barrel Holleys from being used in the production model, which developed 290 hp. A fiberglass cold-air-induction hood let the carburetors breathe fresh air. A seal between the hood and the air cleaner pushed fresh air down the carb throats. NASCAR-style hood pins locked the fiberglass hood in position.

Other components of the one-year-only AAR package for Plymouth’s E-body model were a rear spoiler, front and rear sway bars, chrome trumpet exhaust tips that exited in front of each rear tire, rally wheels with E40x15 tires up front and large G60 tires in the back and Elasometric bumpers. Transmission choices included the A-833 four-speed manual gearbox with a Hurst gear shifter or the Chrysler 727 TorqueFlite automatic. AAR decals and striping and a flat black hood identified the package. The stripe on the sides had a unique strobe effect that incorporated the AAR ’Cuda identification. Also incorporated were front and rear spoilers.

The fiberglass hood on the AAR ‘Cuda was of a sleek design that blended in with the rest of the car. The hood was painted flat black Organasol as were the tops of the fenders and doors. These AAR ’Cuda hoods were notoriously ill-fitting. On their press car, said to be the first of the AAR ’Cuda run, Car and Driver testers joked that the oil dipstick could be removed between the gap in the hood and the fender.

The spoilers on the AAR were also unique. Up front were “eyebrow” spoilers located on the front fender, ahead of the tire. A ducktail rear deck lid spoiler was finished in black to contrast the body color

AAR ’Cudas were only produced during the months of March and April 1970. Production of the AAR ’Cuda began on March 10 and continued until April 17. However, a pilot car was produced Feb. 3, 1970. According to a couple of AAR ’Cuda Registries, there were no AARs produced on March 10, from March 25-27 or on March 30. At least one car was built April 20, 1970, so the production plan may not have strictly followed. Of the 2,724 AAR ’Cudas produced in the six-week time span, 1,120 had manual four-speed transmissions and the rest (1,614) had the three-speed TorqueFlite automatic.

Despite Dan Gurney’s racing efforts, the Barracuda did not win a Trans-Am race in 1970. Factory support for racing was quickly eroding and in 1971, there was no racing team or AAR ’Cuda.

’Cuda Vehicle Identification Numbers (serial numbers) are on a plate attached to the left door hinge pillar. A typical VIN starts with BS23J0B, followed by six numbers. The first symbol identifies the car line: B=Barracuda. The second symbol identifies the series: S=Special. The third and fourth symbols identify the body style: 23=two-door hardtop coupe. The fifth symbol identifies the engine: J=340-cid 290-hp “Six-Pack” high-performance V-8. The sixth symbol indicates model year: 0=1970. The seventh symbol indicates the assembly plant: B=Hamtramck, Mich. The last six symbols are numbers denoting the sequential production number.

The featured car belongs to The Automobile Gallery (www.theautomobilegallery.com) of Green Bay, Wis. Adcock Brothers of Manheim, Penn., completed a frame-up restoration of the car in 2008 and it was purchased in a recent Mecum auction. It is one of 1,614 hardtop coupes made with automatic transmission and one of only 255 cars painted Moulin Rouge (Dodge called this color Panther Pink). A car like this had a list price of $3,966 in 1970. That equated to $1.17 per pound.

Although the AAR ’Cuda wasn’t a first-place winner in Trans-Am racing, it was a great-looking and unique package on Plymouth’s hot pony car. For those reasons and more, it’s easy to understand why AAR ’Cudas remain desirable cars from the muscle car era.

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By John Gunnell

The first time Deaner Probst saw his Corvette “sedan delivery,” it was covered in snow behind a shed that had once been its home.

“To be honest with you, I didn’t know what it was,” says the Jefferson, Wis., antiques dealer. “The snow had drifted against the side of the shed and over the top of the car.”

After that, the car disappeared. The owners moved it into the shed just before one end of the building collapsed. Luckily, the car was parked in the other end. When Jack Bender of Jack’s Auto Ranch in Watertown told Probst the car was still there, he decided to look at it once winter ended.

Probst went back in the spring and found the front end of the Corvette sticking out of the shed. The car was absolutely filthy, full of mice and it stunk. The wheels were corroded, the tires were shot and the exhaust pipe had rusted right off.

“It had custom graphics on the body,” Probst recalls. “So I thought it had to be something special that might be worth saving.”

Probst bought the car. “I felt sorry for it,” he admits. “And I also felt sorry for the people who had it.” The lady who owned the customized 1968 Corvette kammback really had no idea what to do with it. She had called many people to examine the car and none of them wanted it because it was modified and looked terribly rundown.

“You couldn’t easily see the graphics,” Probst recalls. “It was so dirty from just sitting in the old shed.”

Probst dragged the car to his Jefferson home “like some kid who brings a sick dog home.” He soon had it running down the road and found it to be a great driving car. He’s also shown it at several collector car venues and it drew attention.

The Corvette — which Probst calls a “sedan delivery” — has a customized roofline that extends to the rear of the car, making it into a kammback coupe or kind of a “Corvette station wagon.” Under the hood is a 350-hp/327-cid V-8 that’s linked to a four-speed manual transmission and a Positraction rear axle.

Stickers under the hood are a “who’s who” of 1970s performance companies: Edelbrock, Hooker, Mallory, Factory Racing Parts, Cobra, EBC, Tuff Stuff, The Paddock and other companies. It has a full chrome undercarriage, Ansen wheels and fresh tires.

Probst doesn’t know the complete history of the car, but from meeting various people at car shows, he has pieced together a bit of its background. It was originally built in 1968 from a new Corvette and was made to compete on the International Show Car Association (ISCA) professional show car circuit.

“Someone I met told me that a man named Butch, who was from Milwaukee, originally built the car,” Probst says. “This fellow said that he had worked on it for Butch. He told me it was built at ‘Sahagen’s’ body shop, or something that sounded like that, and that the shop was also in Milwaukee.”

Probst was told the kammback body was made from the hull of a boat rather than being one of the aftermarket kits that might have been sold by companies such as Eckler’s or American Custom Industries.

“At one show, I parked next to a Corvette that had one of those kits on it,” Probst said. “Their kit didn’t have this little lip that goes all around the roof, and they had windows in the side.”

The Greenwood Corvettes website (www.greenwoodcorvettes.com) documents Eckler’s kammback roof kit for 1968-’73 Corvettes that it called the Panelwagon. The roof came with or without windows. According to Mike Guyette, who wrote the online article, this kit could be ordered as an upper-half rear section or as a complete rear clip, with or without flared fenders.

The custom graphics on Probst’s Corvette were done by Vince Balistreri of Vince Balistreri Signs in Orlando, Fla. According to a 1995 web article, custom graphics and flames became a big part of Vince Balistreri’s business in the 1970s. Over the years, he painted flames on boats, bikes, trucks, toys — and even a mailbox.

Balistreri remains active in the “Pinstriping Legends” charity event that started in 2003 at the World of Wheels car show in Milwaukee. The Pinstriping Legends auction held annually at the show benefits the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin.

Probst’s main interest in buying the custom Corvette was to save the car and give it a new life. He says that at first he didn’t think the paint on the car would ever come back, but he wanted to try to preserve the graphics since he knew they were special. He buffed the paint out and found the lacquer to be very forgiving. It cleaned up well and the Corvette was once again a good, solid, drivable car. Eventually, he met Balistreri, who originally painted the graphics.

As might be expected, the Corvette’s period custom interior was in bad condition and it smelled. Luckily, Probst was once a used car dealer and an upholsterer, so some years ago he had purchased a special ozone machine designed to take foul odors out of cars.

“I had bought a really nice Cadillac that had the back seat burned out of it,” Probst says. “It cleaned up good, but it stunk. So I bought that ozone machine for about $80. It was advertised in … Old Cars Weekly, and it works really good as long as you treat the rubber parts first, because ozone attacks them. The machine took all the stink out of the Corvette.”

The Corvette was so nice after Probst reconditioned it that his daughter took it to her company’s “drive your fancy car to work” day.

“Every year she takes one of my cars and she had taken my ’33 Ford convertible and my Berlina,” Probst noted. “But the Corvette sedan delivery got the most attention with those custom graphics.”

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By John Gunnell

Dennis Statz’s ’57 Pontiac-Superior ambulance never did an emergency run, never had an accident and never backed into the garage door due to driver error. The totally unrestored rescue rig is about original as they come, although Statz had repainted the roof at one point about 25 years ago.

“I’ve owned this vehicle since 1979, which is hard to believe,” Statz told Old Cars Weekly. “It came from Detroit Diesel-Allison’s Plant No. 3 in Indianapolis. It was a back-up vehicle and it never got used at all on an emergency run. In 1973, they retired it with 1,500 miles on it.”

The ambulance was sold to a man named Robert in Indianapolis and he became its second owner. Statz purchased it from him in 1979. At that time, it had 6,340 miles on it. “Here we are in 2018 and I just turned 15,000 miles,” Statz emphasized. “I was on my way to the Pontiac-Oakland Club International Convention in Wisconsin Dells and I hit 15,000 miles in Sturgeon Bay, just after leaving home.”

In addition to refinishing the roof around the tunnel lights, where the paint had cracked. Statz has also put new B.F. Goodrich Silvertown tires of the correct original style on the ambulance. “Other than that, those are about the only things that have ever been changed in terms of anything significant,” he stressed.

Built at the Superior Coachworks plant in Kosciusko, Mississippi, the ambulance — known as the “Statzmobile” to many early POCI members — has Star Chief trimmings, front and rear tunnel pod roof lights and a big chrome plated siren and warning light. Its two-tone blue color combination is very unusual for an ambulance. Records show that Superior made 360 conversions of Pontiacs in 1957 and that included both ambulances and funeral cars.

The ambulance has the 347-cid Pontiac V-8 with a four-barrel carburetor. It also has Hydra-Matic Drive, power steering, power brakes, a deluxe siren, lights all around, rear Scenaramic corner windows, etched glass and pull-down shades inside. “It even has windshield washers,” Statz pointed out. “The story is that the guy at Detroit Diesel-Allison was ticked off that they told him to get a Pontiac because a recession was setting in. So, he decided to get a Pontiac just loaded to the gills with options. This thing cost about $7,600 in 1957.”

Statz reiterated that the Pontiac “never, ever got used as an emergency vehicle. He added, “All they ever did was change the oil every year and that’s why it had only 1,800 miles of use in 17 years of sitting at the plant. They always used their Cadillac ambulance first, so that’s why it is the way it is.”

Statz said that the ambulance has been a “hoot” to own. “Actually, the only other extra thing I ever added was the factory optional illuminated fender ornaments,” Statz admitted. “I also put them on the Pontiac about 25 years ago.”

Statz doesn’t drive the ambulance a whole lot. The last previous POCI convention he took it to was in 2001 in Red Wing, Minnesota. The ambulance has a dual rear heating system, two color-coordinated fold down jump seats and the cot or “gurney” in the rear. The aluminum gurney latches into the side of the cargo area. “It has 15-inch wheels instead of the normal 14-inch wheels,” Statz pointed out. “So, they had to use 15-inch wheel covers left over from 1956. That usually confuses people, if they know these cars. They often think something has got to be wrong, but no, that’s what they actually did. In fact, they did that thru at least 1962 and maybe even 1963, because they wanted bigger wheels on the professional cars. These are heavy vehicles. The front tires do kind of rub if you turn them too tight, but I have 9.00 x 15s on here and I think the originals may have been somewhere around 8.50 x 15.”

Statz says the car rides really well with its heavy weight and long wheelbase. “I’m telling you, this thing rides good,” said Statz. “I really was cruising about 75 mph on the way here. I learned a long time ago to try to get ahead of the traffic, because it causes a traffic jam around you when people slow up to take a look. It causes a dangerous situation when you have a bunch of cars all clustered around you, so you step on the gas and get away from them.”

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On February 9, The Yellowstone Trail Association (www.YellowstoneTrail.org) held its annual Board of Directors Meeting at Sentry World in Stevens Point, Wis. As part of the meeting, former Old Cars Weekly editor John Gunnell and former Old Cars Weekly advertising representative Dave Sarna were presented with certificates recognizing them as “Honorary Trailmen.”

The Yellowstone Trail was the first coast-to-coast highway across the Northern United States. It was known as “A Good Road from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound.” The trail was blazed by a man named Mike Dowling driving a 1913 Oakland 6-60 touring car.

During the first week of October 2017, the two Old Cars Weekly alumni took Gunnell’s 1917 Oakland Model 34 touring car across the Wisconsin section of The Yellowstone Trail in a promotion designed to raise money for the Lion’s International Summer Camp for Blind and Disabled Children in Rosholt, Wis. Gunnell and Sarna raised over $7,500 in direct donations and mileage pledges with their 7-day-long tour.

Mark Mowbray, the Executive Director of the Yellowstone Trail Assoc., made the presentations at the meeting. “Trailman was the term used for the important individual in each major town along The Yellowstone Trail who was assigned to answer questions and help direct travelers in his area,” Mowbray explained. “It was an important assignment in those days. We do not have many folks these days who actually do that, but we do honor individuals who have contributed efforts in their areas to promote the Yellowstone Trail and you two certainly did that on your YT WI Tour in October.”

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A 1917 Oakland motor car was displayed outside the entrance to the Wisconsin Capitol 100th Anniversary Gala on Nov. 8, 2017. The car was built in 1917, in Pontiac, Michigan and cost $875. The Capitol was completed in 1917 at a cost of $7.25 million.

The Gala was planned by the100th Anniversary State Capitol Commemorative Commission “It is with great honor that we have opened the doors and the history of the Capitol this evening to celebrate a shining star of architectural design and the blood, sweat and tears that brought it to life 100 years ago,” said an official announcement.

The 1917 Oakland Model 34 or “Sensible Six” Touring Car was selected to illustrate Wisconsin’s transportation history, a subject that is also depicted in murals inside the State Capitol building. The car had recently been driven over the 409-mile Wisconsin section of The Yellowstone Trail to help support the Lions Club Camp for Blind and Disabled Children in Rosholt, Wisconsin. This trip raised approximately $7,000 so far.

Automotive historian John Gunnell, of Iola, Wisconsin owns the Oakland, which is an example of the predecessor make of the Pontiac automobile. Dave Sarna, the former Mayor of Manawa, Wis. and a retired automotive technology instructor at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton, prepped, drove and maintained the car.

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