Sam Krahn 
If 1970s muscle cars had anything over current ones, it was the outrageous paint colors they had on offer. Just as there was a horsepower race, there was also a battle between manufacturers to see who could offer the best, and most colors on their muscle cars. The result were some extensive and bold paint offerings. In 1970, the Mustang offered 15 colors. Nice. The Camaro stepped it up to 18. Better. Then came the Plymouth Barracuda with a whopping 25 colors on offer.
To show this off, Plymouth created an advertisement that showed all 25 colors running vertically down the side of one half of the car. Nicknamed the Paint Chip ‘Cuda, it looked fantastic, but was only a rendering for the ad. But Tim Wellborn, owner of the Wellborn Muscle Car Museum, liked the ad so much, he decided to bring it to life.
According to Car and Driver, Wellborn worked with New Orleans hot rod shop The Bomb Factory to create the paint job. Sure enough, it has the 25 vertical stripes in the original 25 colors offered on the Plymouth ‘Cuda. The other half of the car is completely different, though, painted in the 1970s Ivy Green, which must be Wellborn’s 1970 Barracuda favorite color.
Now, the Paint Chip ‘Cuda is displayed at the Wellborn Muscle Car Museum. The museum features mainly ’60s and ’70s muscle cars, and hosts frequent events throughout the year for fans to attend. Unfortunately, Coronavirus has currently closed the museum, like most other businesses.
In addition to this vivid Plymouth Barracuda being real, the Wellborn Muscle Car Museum has an online configurator where you can see the 1970 Plymouth ‘Cuda in each of the 25 original colors. Its definitely strange seeing a configurator offered for an old car, but fun to play around with. Out of the 25 colors, how would you have your 1970 Plymouth Barracuda painted?
