- A 1970s muscle car with a Hollywood backstory is up for auction.
- The 1967 Barracuda was painted by Barris Kustom Industries.
- Still wears its period mods and could sell for as little as $20k.
If you’ve ever wanted a slice of automotive Hollywood history but your budget screams used Camry, this might be your moment. A heavily customized 1967 Plymouth Barracuda from the 1972 movie Corky is up for grabs, and it looks like it could sell for less than $20,000.
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The modified Plymouth fastback was driven in the movie by Robert Blake, who plays Corky Curtiss, a race-car mechanic with dreams of track glory. Blake, though, is more famous for playing a TV cop in Baretta the following year, before becoming infamous decades later after being accused of shooting his sometime girlfriend, a charge for which he was ultimately acquitted.
Custom Survivor
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Blake died in 2023, but the Barracuda is still going strong, dressed much as it was more than half a century ago in Corky and later in the 1980s when it briefly cameoed in Knight Rider.
The car was transformed in period by Korky’s Kustom Studios and painted by the legendary Barris Kustom Industries. That’s the same Barris outfit that left fingerprints all over some of pop culture’s most famous rides, including the 1960s Batmobile.
Refinished from its original silver in multi-tone tangerine with pinstriping, the Barracuda wears its Seventies attitude loud and proud. It’s also got side pipes, scoops on the hood and rear quarters and a huge Superbird-style rear wing. Naturally it rides on a set of slot mags with white-lettered tires.
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Inside, you’ll find white and brown vinyl, a fur dash cover that’s even more voluminous than Blake’s hair, a Dixco tach perched on the column and a wood-rim steering wheel.
Slower Than It Looks
Contrary to what the shouty modifications would suggest, under the skin sits a 273 cu-in (4.5-liter) V8, which was actually the smallest V8 you could get in a Barracuda for 1967 and only rated at 235 hp (238 PS). But at least it’s paired with a four-speed manual transmission and a limited-slip diff. It’s also had a rebuild and an Edelbrock carb, and is backed up by a disc brake conversion and suspension refresh.
The second-gen Barracuda has long lived in the Ford Mustang’s shadow, which is a little unfair because it was every bit the muscle car rival, had some kick-ass big-block V8 options and looked great in fastback form (you could also get it as a notch or convertible).
But the upside of the Barracuda being the underdog, and of Corky being a long-forgotten movie about an unlikeable character, is that it could give you the chance to get an interesting piece of history for peanuts. Someone famously paid $3.74 million for Steve McQueen’s Bullitt Mustang in 2020, but this car won’t even set you back 1 percent of that. Check out the listing here.
