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A Rio Rancho, New Mexico shop just listed a black 1973 Plymouth 'Cuda on eBay for $22,000, and to its credit, the listing doesn't try to pull a fast one. Right there in the title: "1973 Plymouth Hemi Cuda Clone." No winking, no "numbers-matching" nonsense, no story about a barn find with a mysteriously replaced fender tag. Just an honest admission that this is a tribute car wearing a genuine 'Cuda body — which, as it turns out, is the only way a 1973 Hemi 'Cuda could ever exist.
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Chrysler Killed the Hemi Two Years Before This Car Left the Factory
Here's the detail that gets lost whenever a '70s Hemi 'Cuda pops up for sale: Chrysler pulled the 426 Street Hemi from its regular passenger-car lineup after the 1971 model year. Tightening emissions standards and a shrinking appetite for thirsty big-blocks made the math stop working, and the option simply vanished from the order sheet. The E-body Barracuda and 'Cuda soldiered on through 1974, but for its final three model years, the biggest engine Plymouth would sell you in one was the 440. A factory 1973 Hemi 'Cuda isn't rare — it's fictional. Every one on the road today, however correct the parts, got there through a home garage, not an assembly line. That's not a knock on this build. It's the more honest way to approach the hobby, and it's exactly why the seller can casually mention swapping in a Hemi without anyone crying foul — because he's not claiming otherwise.
What's Actually Sitting in That Driveway
Underneath the tribute engine is a real 'Cuda shell, referenced in the listing by its factory body code, BS23 — Plymouth's designation for the 'Cuda hardtop. This particular car keeps its factory bucket seats and center console, and according to the seller it never came with the optional Rallye dash cluster, though it does carry the factory air-conditioning dash panel and a working factory clock, an option that plenty of these cars lost to age, neglect, or a previous owner's speaker upgrade. It left the factory as an automatic, and while the seller says he planned to swap in a four-speed manual, that project never got past the planning stage. The odometer shows 100,000 miles, the exterior and interior are both black, and the title is listed as clean.
The Hemi Isn't New — It's Just Never Been Used
The engine is where this listing gets genuinely interesting for parts nerds. The seller describes a brand-new-old-stock Mopar Hemi block dating to the early 1990s, bored to 4.5 inches and still sealed in its factory crate before he pulled it for this build. That tracks with how Chrysler kept the Gen II Hemi architecture alive commercially long after the 426 left regular production — Mopar's performance-parts division kept casting and selling Hemi blocks for racers well into the 1990s, exactly the kind of leftover inventory that turns up decades later still wrapped in factory grease paper. eBay's own spec field lists the engine simply as a "528 Hemi," the cubic-inch total you land on when a block like this gets stroked into big-inch territory — a common combination among Mopar builders chasing serious displacement without sacrificing an original numbers-matching 426. Topping it off are aluminum Edelbrock heads, an Edelbrock intake, and dual Edelbrock 650-cfm carburetors, a setup that echoes the original dual-quad Hemi induction without forcing anyone to hunt down increasingly unobtainium factory carburetors and linkage.
Why the Fenders Alone Cost Real Money
The seller claims more than $10,000 sunk into new sheet metal from Auto Metal Direct, and if you've ever owned an early-70s Mopar E-body, that number won't shock you. These unibody cars are notorious rust traps — torsion bar crossmembers, floor pans, trunk drop-offs and quarter panels all corrode from the inside out, and Chrysler's original dies for these panels have been gone for decades. Companies like AMD fill that gap with new tooling, but accurate E-body reproduction steel isn't cheap, which is why a full metal package on a 'Cuda restoration can eat a five-figure budget before a single panel gets painted. Here's the part worth reading twice: at the current $22,000 asking price, the listing specifies that buyers only get the AMD front fenders, not the rest of that metal investment. The seller's own description separately references a $25,000 figure tied to a fuller package. Whatever the final number lands on, it's a good reminder to nail down exactly which parts convey with a project car before any money changes hands — verbal descriptions of "what's included" have a way of getting fuzzy once a deposit clears.
The $500 Question Before You Click Buy It Now
Structurally, this is a straightforward eBay Motors listing: a $22,000 Buy It Now price gated behind an immediate $500 deposit, processed through eBay's Secure Purchase program, which advertises up to $100,000 in vehicle purchase protection. No vehicle history report is available here — not a red flag, just a byproduct of the car predating 1981, the model year when NHTSA's 17-character VIN standard took effect and made those reports possible in the first place. For a partially disassembled project car like this one, that absence puts more weight on old-fashioned diligence: matching the fender tag to the title, getting eyes on that "NOS" block in person before assuming it's untouched, and treating the seller's cost breakdown as a starting point for negotiation rather than gospel.
Insuring a Car That Isn't What the Title Says
One detail future owners shouldn't skip: insuring a Hemi clone isn't the same as insuring a numbers-matching original, and it isn't the same as insuring the 340-powered 'Cuda this car started life as, either. Agreed-value collector policies price coverage around a car's actual, disclosed specification. List this one as a stock small-block 'Cuda to save a few dollars on premiums, and a total-loss claim down the road could leave an owner badly underpaid on a car now carrying a fresh crate Hemi and thousands in new sheet metal. Disclosing the swap up front costs nothing and matters enormously the one time it counts.
Clone Economics, in Context
None of this makes the car a bad buy — it makes it an honest one, which in the Mopar hobby is worth more than people give it credit for. Genuine numbers-matching Hemi cars occupy a different financial universe entirely, the same rarefied air where a numbers-matching 1963 split-window Corvette commands a premium most enthusiasts will never touch. Clones exist precisely because that gap is unbridgeable for most buyers, and building one openly, the way this seller has, sidesteps the kind of title trouble that turned a Missouri-impounded Dodge Daytona into a decade-long legal mess before it ever saw a garage again. It's the same instinct pulling buyers toward rough, unrestored Dodge Challenger project cars and putting fresh attention on affordable small-block Barracudas at Mecum — the accessible end of the E-body market, where the fun is buying a car you can actually finish rather than one you can only insure.
For $22,000 and a four-figure parts invoice still to go, this 'Cuda offers a shortcut to Hemi ownership that Chrysler itself never built. Just make sure that $500 deposit buys clarity on exactly which fenders — and whose Hemi — actually come with the car.
