1967-1969 Barracuda Owners Group

The key names I’ve been able to find in the design team for the first- and second-generation Barracuda are as follows.

John Samsen
John Herlitz
Irv Ritchie
Milt Antonick
Dave Cummins
Fred Schimmel

To get a more complete context of what we know as the second generation (or 67-69) family of fish we really should take a brief visit to the 64-66 first generation of Barracuda and how IT came to be.

John “J.R. or Dick” Samsen was interviewed by Mopar Action in 2008 about the birth of the Barracuda. In that article he said that the Barracuda was not brought about in the normal way (for the day). By that, he said that the design team went to management with the idea. He credited Irv Ritchie for the fastback idea, which had lost its luster in the US by the late 50’s. The original Barracuda sketches must have made an impact on the marketing team. Because it became a real project rather quickly. Studio management also liked them enough to assign John Samsen again to move forward, only this time in clay models.

To be fair to Chrysler Marketing there were also serious rumblings of a sports car Ford was working on based on their Falcon. Chrysler didn’t want to be left out of a potential market without a car. The Plymouth marketing team also wanted something to compete with the European inspired Chevrolet Corvair. However, the corporate bean counters were unwilling to assign anything but a minimal budget. To be fair to the accountants, the Corvair was NOT setting any GM sales records, Chrysler had JUST exhausted a tremendous amount of money on the Chrysler Turbine car, a “grand experiment”, which in reality was NEVER going to be able to recoup those expenses. The Dodge division got a new car in the 1966 Charger and that car had NOT won any sales records yet. Additionally, the small car market is not, and never has been a profitable segment. The ONLY reason to be in that market segment was to get buyers young, early, and hopefully they would come back next couple of years to the same brand, and buy up. For these reasons a “whole new car” was TOTALLY out of the question.

The design team was set to task with designing a car, heavily leveraging the existing Valiant line. I personally feel that was one of the pitfalls of the first-generation car, when it was released in 1964 it was known as the Valiant Barracuda. That changed a bit in 1965 with the Valiant brand being removed entirely from the tail panel and in 1966 the Fish logo being used in the center trim between the glass and the trunk lid in lieu of the V Valiant logo. But these subtle changes weren’t enough to distancing it from the “lowly” economy car. However, I’m getting a little bit ahead of the background story here.

There was also some strong debate over the NAME of the car, the marketing team wanted the name Panda! When the design team balked Marketing asked the design team to come up with something better. They did!
Luckily, John Samsen internally pitched the name Barracuda and thankfully that name also won over the marketing team. I can’t image being overly proud to drive a "Panda" today… John was assigned to be the design lead for the project.

Milt Antonick came up with a stylized Barracuda fish logo and it was used unaltered throughout the lifecycle of the brand. John also credits Milt for much of the overall look and feel of the second-generation car.
Fred Schimmel offered this rendition (below) in April of 1964. Probably for the 2nd generation Barracuda. Note at that time, they still wanted to tie the car to the Valiant with the distinct Blue and Red stylized V – Valiant logo on the front of the car. This thinking would change as the Barracuda evolved. This design was an obvious whole new car as it bears no resemblance to the Valiant family of the era.
The sales comparison chart (below) from the 64-66 Barracuda compared to the Corvair and Mustang were, to say the least, a significant disappointment. THIS had to change. I would NOT have wanted to be in those offices as Management was being called to task, trying to explain to the Executive team how this could have happened and more importantly how they were going to fix it.
While the first generation of the Barracuda DID beat the Mustang to the punch as far as being released earlier (16 days), it unfortunately, had to deal with the stigma of the Valiant’s mundane, lackluster, secretaries’ or schoolteacher’s front half of the car. In my opinion, the first-generation Barracuda’s profile is misshapen because of it. It has a longer back than the hood, a total opposite of the long hood short deck sports car trend that they were trying to go after. The cost savings and penny pinching had hurt sales. Marketing, Management, and the Executive team were sorely aware of the misstep. Just look at those first and second year Mustang sales figures and I am certain the Chrysler-Plymouth dealer channel screamed at this lost opportunity.

Therefore, the edict was given from on high, that Plymouth would get the green light for a whole new small sports car in the Barracuda. Clearly the Ford Mustang had proven there WAS a market. There were also rumors from the GM side of the world that they were producing a “Mustang killer” code-named Banshee (what would become the Camaro / Firebird in 1967) that was going to go after some of that same Mustang market. Things were getting decidedly exciting.

The design team was told the new (1967 Model year) Barracuda STILL had to be based on the (new widened) A-body platform, however they would have free rein and wouldn’t have to pull ANYTHING from the existing corporate parts bin for exterior body panels. It wouldn’t use the Valiant name at all AND it would have 3 distinct body styles to match the Mustang. The fastback would stay but a coupe and a convertible body would ALSO be added, again like the Mustang. The Plymouth design team WAS able raid the corporate parts bin for the side windows and top mechanism from the planned 1967 Dodge Dart convertible and then Plymouth killed off any ideas of Valiant convertible variant. This bold approach undoubtedly was a risk.

In the Mopar Action article in 2008, John Samsen shared a few concepts he penned for 1967 model year Barracuda. If you look closely, note the date on these drawings, August 24th and 25th respectively in 1964. The first-generation Barracuda was released April 1st, 1964, and the Ford Mustang was in April 17th 1964. They ALREADY knew the Mustang was going to be a hit.
The front of the car (the drawing below) looks to me like a 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado, a production release of the car is below. This sketch was drawn a good 2 years (Aug-25-1964) before the 1966 Olds was released. With an aggressive 36 (often actual 48-52) month lead time it typically took to get a car from the drawing board to the dealer floors, it just makes me wonder if ideas that were declined from one manufacturer were not somehow un-officially shared amongst other designers, no matter what the brand.
The 1966 Olds Tornado as a comparison below
The overall design of these sketches was rejected but the coke bottle fenders seemed to stick with the John Herlitz penned Barracuda SX below.
This drawing was selected to become a show car called the Barracuda SX. So, this car was shown and built. This next is a direct quote from the article in Mopar Action in 2008…
“As an interesting side note, when John Herlitz joined the Plymouth design team in ’64, he had just come from GM, where he had seen the creation of Pontiac’s GTO. Chrysler was looking to create a show car based on the ’64 Barracuda to generate some buzz for their new A-body. Herlitz was given the show car assignment, and his concept ended up being pretty close to the GTO. Chrysler built the car and called it the Barracuda SX. According to Samsen, the show car made its debut in ’66 as a ’67 model, and GM raised a big stink about it, because of its similarity to their Goat. Chrysler caved, pulled the car off the circuit, and never released any additional photos of the car. As a result, hardly anyone knew about it. But, when the designers were working on the ’67 A-body, the directive was that the production ’67 Barracuda car resemble the Barracuda SX show car as much as possible. Herlitz was an obvious choice to be a lead designer on the project, but he was called up for National Guard duty. So, the job of supervising the clay modeling fell to John Samsen and Milt Antonick. Samsen did the grille, front end and the hood, while Antonick did a lot of work on the body sides. Other designers, such as Dave Cummins and Fred Schimmel also contributed.”

The team is working on a clay model of the Barracuda (below).

A finished clay model version of the proposed 1967 Barracuda model year (above).
Finally a more production ready version. Note what appear to be “air extractors” over the front wheel wells.
Again, from the Mopar Action 2008 article.
“The ’67 grille is a story in itself. The engineers had moved the front frame rails apart to permit big-block engines, which would require larger radiators for cooling. They were concerned about airflow through the grille. Samsen, in creating the grille, had to come up with a low restriction design. He leaned his head back on his chair, and looked up at the ceiling, waiting for inspiration. It was then that he noticed the egg crate grilles in the studio ceiling lights. They were real thin and made of aluminum. Hmmm…
Samsen obtained a chunk of light fixture grille from the manufacturer and cut it to fit. It was perfect. The grille then had to be proven by engineering to make sure it would hold up under the rigors of real world driving conditions. It passed with flying colors.
Production 1967 Barracuda Grille detail

To clarify, it is significantly more expensive (like in the hundreds of thousands of dollars) to have unique doors and front cap. I do think the company learned from the first-generation car’s mistakes of using too much from an existing car. The concept of economies of scale, as an example, the completed 67 model year Dart 4-door car has the same front cap (fenders, hood, grille, and bumper) as well matching profile lines as it did with the Dart 2 door and Dart convertible. The Dodge branded Dart also didn’t have a fastback “type-car” until the ‘70s Demon (which became the Dart Sport). Using the same stampings and door skin saved millions and were used with the Plymouth Duster of the same year(s).
One underlying difference between the Dodge and Plymouth A-bodies has always been wheelbase lengths. Dodge Darts have always had a little longer wheelbase, at 111-inches for the Dart and a 108-inch wheelbase for the Plymouths. I have YET to have anyone at Chrysler definitively tell me why the extra costs were worth THIS difference. This stubborn difference, and most decidedly expensive cost carried on through the years (with the Demons, Dusters Darts and Valiant lines) and even migrated over to the E-Body based Challenger and Barracuda. But those are all stories and cars for another day, another document and maybe another author.

It can’t be emphasized enough that the new Barracuda line-up was a unique and a radical departure for Chrysler, in that the car shared NO body panels with any other car in its lineup. This is especially true when you consider that the Barracuda was the smaller car of the time. Being in this “compact” class meant there was going to be less profit per vehicle. Thinking of the day was Plymouth couldn’t charge as much as they could if it were a larger car. They were obviously focused on the Mustang success, and vehemently needed to remove the Barracuda name away from its compact car lineage from the Valiant underpinnings. This was the breakout success formula that was used by Ford for the Mustang with its mundane Falcon compact car underpinnings. For perspective, between 1964, 1965 and 1966 model years Ford had sold over 1.2 MILLION Mustangs and the Barracuda had sold ~ 126,000.

The Plymouth division (and Chrysler) wanted a larger slice of the big number. They didn't get it. But we got the 2nd generation Barracuda.