50k Mile Survivor: 1971 Plymouth ‘Cuda
Automotive manufacturers sometimes give their features unfortunate names. As an advertising copywriter, I scratch my head over engines named Fireball, distributors marked “DUI”, and anything that even obliquely references a collision. So who knows why Chrysler would choose “High Impact” as the name for their premium color palette that debuted in 1969, where an extra $15.05 let you order one of ten flamboyant shades with a cheeky name to match. You can find this bright Mopar here on eBay in Webb City, Missouri.
High Impact Paint colors were most common on muscle cars, but you could order them on anything from lowly compacts to full-size C-bodies. Various hues came and went during HIP’s brief run and ended in 1973— coincidentally, when vibrant performance also went away, due to tightening emissions regulations and rising insurance costs.
This 1971 Cuda wears EL5 Butterscotch, also known as Bahama Yellow, which was available from 1969 to 1971. It’s tame compared to Plum Crazy, Sassy Grass, and Panther Pink, and obscure compared to brighter yellows like Top Banana. Yet it looks sharp on the body of this Cuda, presented as a 50,000-mile original car. “Survivor” is a much-abused term but it seems to fit here—the car looks clean and unmolested, except for a small crunch on the right rear corner. Unlike the color, thankfully it was low-impact.
The seller could certainly provide more information in the ad, but I get an honest vibe from their few words, claiming the paint is 70% original with some dents and dings, and the AC does not work. Their perfect eBay record is reassuring as well. To me, it’s not really an auction if your minimum bid is $47,500… that’s a reserve price. And there really should be more photos.
What we can see is the engine compartment is clean, and the brake master cylinder and vacuum booster look new. The battery is probably a fresh NOS-style replacement, but those Goodyear Polyglas tires are at least forty years old and may even be factory—see the matching spare. It’s likely this car has been in storage for years and recently revived. It would be interesting to see a close-up of the row parking stickers neatly applied to the front bumper, usually the sign of a conscientious owner. The interior looks perfect, and it’s unusual to see a ‘Cuda with a bench seat minus the Slap-Stik console shifter, especially with the high-performance 340 engine. The steering wheel looks to be a Rim-Blow.
Pictures show a kitchen table full of paperwork and the seller claims to have two full build sheets on the car (Hint: show them!). The groovy Peter Max-style owner’s manual features an amusing notation that any “squeaks, rattles and defects after 4,000 miles” are considered normal and they’re the new owner’s problem…perhaps foreshadowing the end of the ’70s, when Chrysler would find itself on the brink of bankruptcy with a reputation for building low-quality, gas-guzzling cars that nobody wanted to buy. But at the dawn of the decade, Mopar was still flying high.
It took many years for Chrysler to get back on top of their performance game, and in the past decade, they’ve revived some of their greatest hits, including the Charger and Challenger, the Hemi engine, and some of the original High Impact colors. EL5 yellow has yet to make a return. What do you think: would you pay $50 grand for this tasty bowl of Butterscotch?
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Comments
Some of the stickers on the bumper are military base stickers, this car is/was GI owned.
This goes to prove beyond a doubt that you COULD get a bench seat in an E body, something I’ve argued about before! This is a beauty and I’d love to own it….if only! GLWTA! :-)
For sure you could. Anyone who argued with you didn’t have a clue.
Had the same argument about bench seats in Firebirds. My wife had a 67 factory bench
The horn is operated by the center button. Same wheel as in Dad’s 70 Challenger.
It also appears to have been repainted.
Stickers are post control stickers, being red (stickers, not the car) this car was owned by an enlisted man. And not so much “conscientious” as “following regulations.” They go at the base of the windshield, drivers side nowadays. Makes it easier for the gate MP to know whether to wave you through, salute or stop you. Steering wheel is absolutely not a rim blow and I’m not sure why the author would think this. This is a pretty car, but the seller doesn’t understand how auctions work.
It looks like the sticker expired in 1990.The pic is fuzzy whem zoomed in on my phone. They were allowed to put them on the front bumper at that time. Also this has the yellow sticker that designates non-commissioned officer not just enlisted. If it were lower enlisted as you said, it would be red. Blue would designate officer and green would be civilian. Not sure if all the branches are still using them. The Air Force stopped after 9/11.
Is there a website that would help me decode the military sticker on the bumper of one of my cars?
47k and 1 day to go and 0 bids. Wow. I’ve crossed over from concerned to worried.
With the way things are going, and hopefully the seller realizes this, this may be a 12 to 15 thousand dollar car now. You might be able to get into a nice Hemi Mopar for 25-30…
Chubby, there was a really pretty postwar aircraft called the Ryan Fireball. Maybe not the best name for a plane, but memorable…
I don’t think a nice low mileage ’71 Cuda is a $15,000 car. But it’s clearly not a $47,000 car, at least right now. That would have been unthinkable to say 30 days ago.
Remember, 47k is just the opening bid. That wasn’t what the seller was expecting to get. Let that sink in.
The sky is not falling. This is nowhere near a $12,000-15,000 car and won’t be.
Steve R
Agreed. But the look on my face right now is the same as if my favorite team was up 2 to 1 in the ninth inning of the ALCS and the opposing team hit a ball about 520 ft into the upper deck for a 3 run homer. This is at or above 6 figures last month.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going out to find some toilet paper.
Stevie, not only is the sky falling, but I think it banged you on the head.
Who cares about the Cuda, I want to know about the Mustang in the background! Maybe an original Pro Stocker from the 70’s?
It’s was featured in at least one magazine several years ago. It was built as a class legal car when new, but didn’t see much track time. I can’t temember if it was Pro Stock or Super Stock.
Steve R
Pro Stock, was never really competitive to heavy and the short wheelbase cars Vega,Pinto,etc with small blocks were gaining popularity
That was never a 6 figure car. Ever.
Soon you will be lucky if it is still a four figure car. How many of us here have been saying that the tsunami was coming for these cars? Too bad it took a world wide tragedy to do it, but it still happened. How much “investment” was washed away? Do you think these cars will ever rebound back to what the prices once were? The economy is going to be on shaky ground for quite some time, oh a vaccine will help, but people are going to be jittery for the foreseeable future. Investments are no longer going to be “something you can drive”. I fear many Average Joes were conned into this, many I have read put 401K money into this. (Shame the government for allowing such) Will they ever be able to comfortably retire? The bubble has burst and left just a sticky mess of residue that few will want to clean up. At least soon, mere mortals may be able to afford a car like this, as it always should have been, before greed and foolishness tarnished the hobby. Sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but when you right, you right.
SMDA, thank you. I don’t know if I’m that deep in yet with you on the current status of classic cars BUT am glad to know others know how to read the market.
The classic car market has been changing for some years now. My opinion, the virus has no impact other than everyone is “frozen” right now. Bad time to sell if you are looking for B-J prices.
I feel like I have been singing a solo and your comments give me hope that there is a choir out there.
I am not a Mopar guy and never really understood the big bucks shelled out. I think we all understand the really rare cars, hemi 4 speed number matching low production stuff but the common or maybe above average cars, I believe the prices have been “cult” driven.
As you said and I said in a different post, perhaps the prices will mate up with “reality” and allow “mere mortals” to get into the hobby. If this starts happening, combined with some time, getting more young people interested in these cars….in 10-20 years the prices might ramp back up a bit AS THERE WILL be less of these cars around at that time, less to restore anyway which leads me back to Economics 101, tighter supply with increased demand causes price to rise.
Preach it brotha !! I have been on this page for a while now. I don’t think I am as down on the market as you are but it is NOT going to ever get back to pre-2008 levels without additional interest from young people with money and that will take about 20 years to materialize. Too much student debt. 20 years from now anything that MIGHT be restorable if neglect is continued will be yard art only. Economics 101 people.
I hear most of what you’re saying except I have a hard time feeling sorry for the grown adults who have been paying this kind of money. And I sure as heck do not want to see government get even bigger still to protect them from themselves.
I don’t want to sound cold or insensitive but come on. We need the government to protect people from putting their 401k into an old car in a world where Millennials and Gen Zers don’t even know how to check tire pressure? Seriously?
I hope things rebound but if not, those are the breaks. We don’t need the government to protect us from every possible idiocy.
@Superdessuckle, Not asking for anything from the government right now (Pretty inept as I can tell on some levels). All I would like to see is a more defined 401K rule that only allowed more traditional investments, that way less informed (read, more impressionable) people wouldn’t be talked into a far too risky investment that could damage their future. Rich dudes were taken by Bernie Madoff, average dudes by the guys telling them that the freshly restored E Body (that they made out like bandits restoring for them) was never going to drop in value. How many were taken by the line, “Why have a 401K on a piece of paper, why not have one you can look at in your garage and enjoy?” Government doesn’t have to be intrusive, just look out for the less informed and ones susceptible to herd mentality. For too many recent decades now, government has let the finances of our nation be a free for all, like it was the wild west, time to get back on track. Hopefully when the recent woes have been righted, they will be so.
Thanks SMDA. Muscle cars are not an allowable 401k investment. You can only invest in stocks and bonds. So to obtain a muscle car with your 401k, you would need to withdraw the funds early subject to Federal income taxes and penalties.
Let’s do a hypothetical. You badly want to get into this Butterscotch muscle beauty. So to get the $75,000 you’ll need to put it in your driveway (I’ll be conservative as to what this would have gone for until now) you have to withdraw $120,000 from your 401k. $12,000 of that would be an IRS penalty, $24,000 would be Federal income taxes, and $9,600 would be additional Federal taxes. Now you’ve got $74,400 in your pocket to buy this car.
Then, yes, you guessed it, there are lost opportunity costs to doing this. Per Wells Fargo, the potential future value of that $120,000 in 15 years is $380,660, at a modest 8% annual return. You can do the calculations here.
https://www.wellsfargo.com/investing/retirement/tools/401k-early-withdrawal-calculator/
Those over 59 1/2 wouldn’t have to worry about the penalties but they’d still face the Federal income tax component, plus the lost opportunity cost – a big deal with people are now routinely living into their 90s.
Then there’s the matter of a Superdessucke pulling up next to you in a brand new Charger Scat Pack that he bought for $37,500 out the door with 0.5% APR financing and full warranty and blowing you right into the stickerbushes ;-)
So what else would you propose to do to disinsentivize this behaviour any further? I’m curious. If the above has not been deterring them, not sure what would work. And every draconian measure you put in place will have unintended consequences.
Superd, you may be right. Is a collector car on the list of prohibited “collectibles”, not sure. Maybe what I heard was an urban myth. Of course, the person who buys in as an “investment” outside of a tax deferred IRA (and maybe the IRA is what I was thinking of vs a 401K) is still not going to come out well here. I have investments too , outside of traditional retirement instruments, but none of them are as speculative as the car market. My cars are for my pleasure only, not to make any money. BTW, like your comment about the new Mopar dusting the old rattly one, so very true.
You’d smack this very badly in a new Scat. The Scat runs a 12.4 quarter. This runs a 15.2 quarter. That’s an MOV of 488 feet, 2 inches, or a little over 1.5 football fields, if you want to picture it. And the average human needs 67 feet or less to read a license plate. So I doubt you’d even be able to tell what color the Scat’s plate was by the end.
And you can get a Scat now for more like around 32-33k if you don’t need the widebody and are willing to take a stripped down version.
Thanks for snapping me back to reality
I was just looking and reading about cool cars and might have become completely oblivious to an unavoidable crisis
Was the over hyping of the price of these cars reality? Seems that the old car hobby has been on a drunken stupor for quite some time now all by itself.
Went back to the ad. AS many have said and do say, rare does not equate to “valuable” all the time. A small block, automatic, bench seat, on the column (YAWN !!!!) in a color you either love or hate…..by low order production numbers I will go with “not a favorite” back in the day.
I had a 67 442 with a bench seat on the column with really cool history and story of the original owner buying it in 1967 at the age of 55…..older guy back in the day but was “old man” who wanted some power….pretty cool BUT everyone, including me, would rather have bucket seats, center console and a manual trans in a 67 442. Just sayin.
Not to mention, oh yeah really original WITH A FEW DENTS….really?,,,, that dent on the RR quarter corner is not good and IT COULD NOT BE IN A WORSE PLACE….for repair and paint blend on a hard top (no vinyl top).
That owner’s manual is far out! Greg Brady would approve. 😂
My brother had a 1970 with a 340 4 speed and after 1970 they started cutting down on the horse power from the 360 on down u could still get a 383 and up with the horse power till 1972 and they cut all those down except for the Hemi and it went in 73 so I think that a hole lot of money for this 71 cuda with a 340 the car is around 15 to 18 thousand know if the motor is a older 340 high performance it’s around 25 maybe 30 with out a total restoration but I personally wouldn’t give over 18,000 for it the way it sets. I had a 70 Roadrunner with a 4 speed 383 a magnum. I was going to by a new 72 Roadrunner until I found out they only had half of the horse power of the 70s so I got a pickup
In Canada the 71 year still had the 275 horse orange engines, I had 1 Demon & 2, 71 Dusters & they all had the orange engines. No doubt as they didn’t bring the emission requirements in here until 72. We had Passion Purple & Forest Green Sunfire Metallic paint as well.
Comments today were very enlightening and gave me hope that I wasn’t the only person who didn’t sleep through Econ 101!! In fact, my professor was so good that I majored in Business and minored in Economics… RIP Fr. Killeen LMU LA!!
I would still take this Butterscotch beauty over the”scat pack charger” any day, to me it’s not just about quickness, it’s about burying your right foot ,hearing those four barrels open up and getting the whole sensation of 60s-70s power! I was raised in the 60s and I still love to hear a camned up motor just idling by with a set of headers and glass packed mufflers. Thats what I’m talking about!!!
Car has New York State registration and inspection stickers on windsheild
I am enjoying this discussion about the economic realities of just what it costs to spend money. I wouldn’t liquidate any critical investment nor undertake any debt to buy an old car.
As far as this little beauty goes the engine is the “wrong” color. 1971 340s should be orange. 72-74 were blue. Ad says matching numbers. Was this motor rebuilt but repainted incorrectly?
Also I like the little sticker on the owners manual noting that squeaks, rattles, and paint defects are the owner’s responsibility after 4000 miles. I’ve owned a 70 ‘Cuda, a 71 340 Duster and a few lesser Dusters and never encountered that addendum. I would be willing to bet that it was put their by the selling dealer limit the amount of warranty hours spend tracking down and eliminating noises of all kinds. Mopars of this era especially E-bodies rattle, squeak, buzz, and drum enough from the interior components alone to drive you nuts. I think this dealer had enough after two years of Ebody build quality.. It contradicts the factory 5 and 50 warranty and if it was official there would a document code on it as well as a corresponding factory service bulletin.
Has anyone ever encountered this one before?
21 hours to go and not a single bid. What does that tell us? If it were mine, I would cut the price in half and hope for a live one to take her off my hands. After the sale I would pour a tall cool one and be thankful I got out with my skin.
I was a mechanic at a Chrysler dealer back in the day & I had several 71 340 cars & the engines were all orange, the 72 models had blue engines, which had less compression . The only bench seat Cuda’s that I remember were slant 6 & 318 models but it is possible there were some for sure. I wonder what transmission & rear axle it has ? If it is a 340 car it should have a 727 transmission & 8 3/4 rear axle. Interesting to see what the vin tag says what the drive train was when new.
1971 340 engines were orange at the start of production, but changed to blue late in the model year. This car has a June 71 build date so the engine color is probably correct.
The price is “aggressive”, but original E-bodies are not exactly common. I had a Butterscotch 71 Charger SE in college so I may be biased but I think it’s a cool color. Beats “Detroit green” anyway.
I don’t remember seeing any blue engines in Canada in the 71’s we pre delivered, I wonder if the blue ones were the what we called smogged engines with less compression.
Nice. But before I spend $47k+ on something I’ve had a few of over the years with lower miles & bordering mint that sold for $3k-$4k at one time, I then realize why I sold them to begin with. The novelty wears off after about 8 mos, a year most. Then had I bought something like this, it’d be a stretch that I’d ever see my $$$$$ back. For that cash I want buckets, console, pistol grip 4sp. Oh, lets not forget a big block too lol! Nah, I’ll pass gleefully.
Better get your wallet out if you want a Big Block 4 Speed console 71 Cuda… Beginner!!! LOL!!!!