It was August of 1969 and McAlpin Chrysler had just opened the doors of a brand-new dealership in Somerset, Kentucky. On the showroom floor was a cutaway 426 Hemi display flanked by a Dodge Charger and Plymouth Road Runner. In the parking lot was the new-for-1970 Plymouth Barracuda in all of its shapely E-body glory.
Proprietor J.D. McAlpin, salesman extraordinaire, took no time in winning the hearts of the locals with the dealership’s 440 Six Barrel ‘Cuda, a decked out drag car with a Shaker hood, fat Cragar wheels, hockey stripe, and big Plymouth lettering on the doors. The story goes that this car dragged Billy “The Kid” Stepp in three straight street races on opening day and the dealership was off and running.
Above: McAlpin Chrysler in late 1969, just a few months before they would start receiving AARs. J.D. is third from left and a 426 Hemi cutaway display is center. (Photograph – JD McAlpin Group Inc.)
Just seven months later, Plymouth announced another E-body iteration in the AAR ‘Cuda. A March 4, 1970 dealer bulletin introduced the snarling 340 small block with a stack of three Holley two-barrel carburetors on top. “Named after Dan Gurney’s All American Racers, the AAR ‘Cuda represents the cars he will campaign in 1970 Trans-Am competition,” the letter explained.
It went on to outline a litany of special features like a fiberglass hood with functional scoop, ducktail rear spoiler, side exhaust outlets, big ‘n’ little tires, strobe stripes, and flat black paint accents. Of course, that was all just aesthetics and the real meat was in the motor.
While the 340 cubic inch displacement was nothing new, this wasn’t the standard engine. A specially-cast block and cylinder heads were the foundation while the aluminum Edelbrock Six Barrel intake held the three Holleys.
The resulting output was 290 horsepower and 345 ft-lbs of torque compared to the four barrel variety’s 275 ponies and 340 ft-lbs. Just 2,724 All American Racers were built in a short window between March and April of 1970 with 1,604 of them purported to be equipped with an automatic transmission like the example shown here.
Sold new at the aforementioned McAlpin Chrysler in Somerset, this AAR came from the factory with EV2 Tor-Red paint, manual steering, power front disc brakes, road lamps, and a non-Rallye gauge cluster. None of those would be surprising, but the column-shifted automatic is.
After all, real muscle cars should have some sort of floor shift, right? Not in this case. The ‘Cuda came not only with your grandma’s column shifter, but also her bench seat. While not necessarily desirable, the oddity is just another link in the lineage of this rare Plymouth.
That lineage was able to be traced back to West Frankfort, Kentucky where current owner Mark Meyer found it around 1983 during a time when he and a couple friends were snapping up Mopars left and right. In a five-year span, Mark and crew gathered up a gaggle of muscle cars including a 1969 Plymouth Road Runner 440 Six Barrel, 1970 Dodge Super Bee 440 Six Pack, 1970 Hemi Dodge Super Bee, 1971 Plymouth Road Runner 440 Six Pack, 1974 Plymouth ‘Cuda 340, and this AAR.
“I can’t remember the guy who actually owned the car. It was his brother and, if I remember right, he was in the military. His brother was selling it for him,” Mark explains. The 340 Six Barrel was already long gone but Jeff Bozic, the brother, let it go for $1,500 which was a salty sum at the time for a raggedy E-body without a drivetrain.
Since the body was decent enough, Mark got it home, stabbed an engine in, and called it good enough. “I had a 440 in it with an automatic transmission. I think it had a 3,500-stall converter. I drove it around for a while,” he recalls.
The miles did not rack up as, for the better part of two decades, the ‘Cuda slept a comfortable, untouched slumber indoors until local friend Kevin Wernsing offered to buy the car in January of 2003. Mark agreed and, from there, it followed Kevin and his U.S. Marine Corps travels to Nevada, then over to North Carolina in 2005. In 2010, it came back to Illinois where disassembly began, but fizzled out as project cars are wont to do.
The AAR basically stayed in pieces and dormant for another decade-plus until April of 2025 when Kevin was prodded to sell by another Mopar afficionado from Kentucky. A deal was struck and shook upon, with Mark only finding out after the fact. Understandably, he was a little disappointed that he didn’t have the chance to buy back his old car.
As fate would have it, the prospective buyer backed out at the last minute and Mark pounced at the opportunity to pick up his old Plymouth, even though it looked a little worse for the wear than when he’d last owned it 22 years prior.
A quarter panel had been cut off, all of the bolt-on body panels had been removed, and mice had gobbled up the broadcast sheet behind the glove box. No doubt, it was in a state of disassembly that came to be with good intentions, but disassembly is always the easiest part.
Luckily, most of the hard parts that mattered were still perfectly intact. The original fiberglass hood, trunk spoiler, grille, and dash were all found to be in pretty decent shape given the ‘Cuda’s well-traveled history. And, most importantly, it still had its original McAlpin Chrysler dealership emblem.
Back home, Mark put the puzzle pieces back together to make for what looks like a pretty respectable 55-year-old automobile. From here, one might be surprised that there are no grand plans of concours gold restoration and that’s just fine.
In Mark’s own words, “I was one of those guys to buy a car and just shove it in the corner. I don’t know if that’s weird or whatever, but I guess it’s an obsession.” Well, Mark, when your obsession involves a 340 Six Barrel AAR ‘Cuda, we’d say it’s actually a healthy one.
