Take Note, Mopar People: Gearhead Custom-Built This 1973 Barracuda 440 in His Home Garage

A man of high standards


Look up ‘Garrett Huyler,’ and two results will pop up: a high jump All-American Ivy League Champion profile and a YouTube video about a 1973 Plymouth Barracuda 440. While the first part is plausible beyond any shadow of a doubt, the latter needs some explanation – particularly for gearheads who know their Mopars inside out. In short, the first owns the second, and this is their story.

Garrett Huyler (pronounced ‘high-ler,’ please) is a car nut. He’s many other great things, but his passion for wrenching is every piston addict’s fantasy. Not only does he own a classic – an iconic Mopar, for that matter – but he also restored/rebuilt it himself in his home garage. He is not a professional mechanic by trade. However, he shared that he is very handy with tools – skills he developed from a young age at his family farm and put to great use in getting his Barracuda fixed up and ready for the road.

I found the video on his YouTube channel; he posted a very abridged version of the two-year restomod project (see it below). I asked him to tell me the full story because this isn’t something I ran across every day. He was kind enough to accept, and I thank him for taking the time to share the adventure with all us autoevolutionists out there.

The car in question is a Plymouth Barracuda, assembled on September 25, 1972 – an early build of the famous original pony car. Garrett got the vehicle from a car guy who had too many cars on his hands and had to let the Barracuda go despite the heartbreaking breakup. That was about two years ago, and from that moment on, Garrett Huyler put his wrenches where his heart was and came up with the splendid 1973 Barracuda 440.

One Fast Fish

Ok, before I go further with the backstory, let’s get one thing straight. Out of the 19,200 examples built of the Barracuda assembled in the moniker’s penultimate year on Planet Piston, precisely zero were 440-powered. The only two engines available were both V8 small-blocks, the 318 and the 340. The big-block Super Commando had left the stage the year prior. But Garrett's Mopar is no regular Plymouth pony.

When he found the car, he searched for it for over half a year. The Barracuda was in St. Paul, Minnesota, where it had spent the better part of 15 years with its owner from that time, metal fabricator and absolute piston head Eric Hokenson. Eric had no plans to sell the Barracuda; on the contrary, he wanted to make it a nice driver, but life happened, and the Mopar had to go. That’s how Garett bought it, sparing it from another winter in a pop-up tent in the field.

Despite not finding the time to get the car sorted, Eric Hokenson didn’t abandon it to the elements and even got it running twice a year and performed routine checks on it. Before selling it, the metal fabricator cleaned the car thoroughly, so Garrett Huyler didn’t bring back any Minnesota dirt with the Barracuda.

The car's history is a little foggy until 1997 and completely blank before that date. One of the previous owners, a man from Ohio, dropped a 1973 440-cube V8 in it, apparently with every intention of building a drag strip racer out of it. By all accounts, the big 7.2-liter engine came out of a Chrysler New Yorker and replaced the 318-cubic-inch (5.2-liter) original motor.

In preparation for its quarter-mile fame, the car received drum brakes on the front, replacing the factory discs, an 850-cfm Holley 4150 carburetor, a Holley electric fuel pump, a single plane Edelbrock intake, a Turbo Action Cheetah manual valve body, a high stall torque converter (3,500 RPM), an Accel Super Coil, a Mallory Unilite Distributor, and long tube headers. Notably, all these add-ons are still Garrett’s car, and they work.

‘And it only took 2 years, 400 hours, 300ft of new wiring, 150 stripe decals, 50ft of chrome polished, 15 coats of paint, 4 mouse skeletons, a disc brake conversation, a new dash, new suspension, new steering box, new fuel system, new brake lines, exhaust leaks, a million restored 50-year-old parts...’ This is how Garrett Huyler summed up his work. For a regular guy who's never restored a car, taking a shot at getting a neglected one back on the road,’ I’d say the former professional track athlete nailed it in the head.

If you want something done right, do it yourself (with help from friends)

The Charlotte, North Carolina resident had only one goal with his ambitious hobby: to make it look and run better than the day we got it – without getting the car to a paint, body, electrical, or mechanical shop. The only help Garrett got was from a friend from high school, as well as a neighbor and fellow ‘Mopar fanatic.’

Gary Graziosi, the high school buddy, is the owner of a custom paint shop in Pennsylvania (along with his wife, Amber) and provided ’tons of priceless technical advice on body work, materials, and painting throughout the process.’ The Mopar ultrafundamentalist is Greg Thomas, the casual good neighbor who served Garrett overdoses of tips and tricks.

The one-off Barracuda got just one professional touch-up put on it from the CleanAir Blasting company in Charlotte, who stripped the old purple paint off the shell (please note the car was originally red but got repainted during its dragstrip wannabe period). The rest of the work, about 99%, according to the owner, restorer, driver, and gearhead Garrett Huyler, is his own. His wife helped put the windshield on and move the large parts around the garage.

At this point, I should be jealous of Garrett – he’s got life all figured out, it seems. Except he isn’t holding the car on a higher horse than it deserves (in his opinion) because ‘it is far from perfect, there are some runs in the paint, tons of waves, dry spray, solvent pop, parts I burned through when cutting & buffing. I made every mistake you could in the bodywork. I'd call it a 5- to 10-footer. It'll never be a true show car, but it's a great driver.’ I’m not the one to carry a magnifying glass with me, and I’d definitely not be putting this car under one now that I’ve learned its recent history.

However, Garrett Huyler is a man who likes to raise the bar ever higher (go figure). Still, he won’t back down from a challenge – particularly not one involving wrenches. As he put it, the car was solid and workable when he bought it, but it definitely wasn’t to anyone’s taste.

It was a running and driving automobile – it just wasn’t advisable to use it on public roads. I’m no automotive eminence, but 90 degrees of play in the steering box without any effect on the position of the steering wheels is something I’d consider ‘risky.’

As if that wasn’t enough, braking wasn’t a simple ‘press the pedal’ affair. Each of the four wheels had a mind of its own when stopping, so the Barracuda would fishtail (pun intended, yes) right-to-left and back under hard braking. The 727 Torqueflite automatic three-speed transmission slipped ‘a little, but nothing terrible,’ but the engine was pretty solid. The trunk held one of the big surprises in the shape of a metal sheet bolted to the gas tank.

‘What the F(ish)!?’ is right – who does that to a car? Garrett found out about the makeshift solution to replace the original rusted-out trunk pan when he attempted to drop the tank. The fuel container wouldn’t obey gravity – the screws held it firmly attached to the trunk. The interior was not the most inviting place on earth, with the cracked dashboard padding, a non-functional radio, and only three gauges out of the seven in approximately working order.

Rodent infestation was the least concern, but the dents on the deck lid (from a hail storm – check the second video for details) weren’t easy to pass. Predictably, the single-stage purple paint wasn’t in the best of shapes, cracking and peeling everywhere. And yet, here it is, a marvelous E-body Barracuda from 1973 sporting the fabled 1970-only AAR ‘Cuda stripes.

Who needs showroom-perfect when they can do better?

The graphic elements came to replace the stripes the car had on it when Garrett bought it. He didn’t like them, so he simply stripped the shell to bare metal and put a fresh new livery on it before reaching out to Gary Tooker at Top Flite Signs & Graphics to make a custom variant of the famous Trans Am homologation special All-American Racers ‘Cuda from 1970.

Instead of sporting the famous AAR emblem, the Huyler mobile says ‘440’ at the end of the slanted stripes. The visual theme was chosen after an intense consideration between the ’71-style billboards, the 1970 hockey stripe, and the AAR ‘Cuda signature decals.

So, why did Garrett choose a Barracuda and not something else? Because of the car’s value – a ’73-’74 Barracuda is considerably cheaper than earlier E-body ponies. The car’s non-survivor stance was another advantage – no serious, self-respectable Mopar guy would even fathom the concept of butchering that. ‘I could build it how I wanted and not feel bad about it not being original; it made parts easier to find, too.’

That last bit covers about half the build – the other half comprises restored old parts. With a solid set of skills at the ready, Garrett made the best of it and didn’t dig a money pit with his Barracuda. That’s one reason why he went for the nameplate and not other classic – parts available, be they original, aftermarket, or New Old Stock.

So, what’s the plan for the 1973 Barracuda 440? It’s not for sale – it probably will never be. ‘Hopefully, it’ll drive us to local cruise-ins and weekend trips for another 50 years.’ So far, the all-around do-it-all owner has put some $20k in his labor of love (this includes all parts, materials, and tools he didn’t have but needed).

The man has made a great deal – according to his own research, the same work would have set him back anything between fifty and eighty grand in professional repair shops. And to think, it all started when Garrett finished college. He had a 2000 Pontiac Firebird with squeaky brakes, and the shop slammed him with a quota of 750 bucks for pads and rotors.

Fresh out of college and not dripping money from every (or any) pocket, the high jump champ went back home, bought a Haynes repair manual, and did his brake job. Much to his surprise (and chagrin), the brakes were not even halfway gone, and the screeching noises came from a tiny pebble stuck in a brake pad.

It was enough to trigger an awake call, and Garrett learned how to perform basic maintenance on his cars. But that didn’t make him a certified wrencher – a minor detail that didn’t stop him from putting a lift on a Jeep Wrangler and installing a new sound system.

That was the peak of his car fixing endeavors before he crossed wrenches with this Barracuda. The Charlotte man gives due credit to his parents and their farm – they introduced him to tools early in life. They allowed their son to find practical solutions to everyday challenges.

Even if the car is now upgraded with QA1 Adjustable shocks, QA1 Upper Control Arms, Hotchkiss Leaf Springs, a rear sway bar, and MasterPower disc brakes under the Rallye Wheels, it’s not yet done. The owners want to paint the engine bay to match the body, clean up the engine paint, and put a Tremec TKX five-speed and VintageAir AC in it.

However, he isn’t going to do it just yet – he leaves some of it for later when his kids grow up, so the three of them will have something to bond over. Garrett has put less than 500 miles (800 km) on the car in the last two years. The odometer in the 1970 Rallye dash shows 57,212 miles (92,074 km)—probably not original, but just the numbers on the non-original milometer in the replacement instruments cluster. Nonetheless, the engine runs strong, and the 3.23 tall gears will not entice the owner into doing something to the car that he’ll regret for the rest of his life.

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