17 missing Canadian spec 1970 HemiCuda's

[RzeroB]

@cuda hunter and his recent parade of fender tags has motivated me to be a little more active here on the site. Thanks Josh!

44 1970 HemiCuda's were reported as originally being sold through Canadian dealerships. These are your "Y07" Canadian-spec cars. Of those 44, at least 27 are known to still be around today in one form or another. But what about the other 17 that are missing and at large? What might have become of them and where might they be today? After 54 years, some of them have surely been wrecked, rusted-out, parted out and scrapped. Others were probably stripped, acid-dipped, raced and then retired to some corner of a long forgotten storage shed.

So are all of missing 17 gone forever? Probably not. I would think that a few of them are still out there ... somewhere. If you knew where one was hiding would you tell? Probably not. Usually the location of an elephant E-body is a closely guarded secret! However, what if one or more of these cars is still out there in plain sight not hiding from anybody? Take a look at these VINs. Maybe you have seen one of these missing cars? If it's not a secret, let us know and post it up.

Check out the graphic below. Note that 10 of the missing 17 were sold new around two of Canada's three largest population centers; the greater Toronto area (I'm including Barrie and Cobourg in that), and Vancouver. Then there's two in Quebec, one in Manitoba and four whose original point of sale is not known.

[blown motor]

If there is 24 known out of 44 that would leave 20, not 17.

[RzeroB]

If there is 24 known out of 44 that would leave 20, not 17.

Whoops! Thanks for the math check Murray! 

[Cuda Cody]

I love stuff like this! 

[blown motor]

I was on a garage tour a couple years ago and at the one stop there were two Hemi Cudas. I checked the VINs and they were both originally 318 cars. I wish I could have checked the stamping on the blocks to get the VIN for the original car they came out of.

[Brads70]

worked for Gord Coats for a few years at a speedway he owned. He had lots of fun stories. He was the half of the Cloak and Coats race team. He said he blew up quite a few Hemi's One story he told of a race where the engine was hurt, down a cylinder , likely hole in the piston, he added more oil and sent it. Totally destroyed it, nothing salvageable from it. He laughed said they would routinely  pull motors from cars on the lot to race all weekend then put them back on Monday then sell the cars... Gord was .... well..... very well off , money was not as important to him. Racing was more fun. He was a guy you wanted on your side. He offered to back me if I wanted to start my own shop for an obscene amount of money, but I thanked him and said no.  I always got along great with him, lots of bench racing stories over the years, both drag racing and circle track and some personal non racing stories too.  I'll miss him as he passed a few years back. Nov 10Th 2016 He had quite a few Hemi cars over the years. Jackson Motors was the dealership back in the day, Gord had a few pretty successful dealerships too. One night he called me up at like 11pm! I was already in bed , he asked hey what are ya doing? I replied well I'm in bed? He said come over to the dealership I want to talk to you about the race track. So I went over . He just wanted to talk and have fun making plans. Another time he called me to his office and said oh just a minute I have a car going thru an auction.....  Turned opn his big screen tv, It was Barret Jackson and it was a 70 Hemi purple roadrunner that sold for some crazy amount of money. I was shocked, he just laughed it off....  I asked him years later if he had anymore cars tucked away and there were lots of rumors that he had quite a few prized Mopars hidden away. He smiled and said naw why would I do that, then laughed?  After he passed I ran into 2 of his son's at a car show one had a beautiful 70 Burn orange Challenger RT/SE and the other son came rumbling in with a 70 Hemi Cuda. I never did see the tags or checked the vin, but I wonder if or what else the family has lurking around?  I'll miss him, and all his fun stories!  Rest Easy Gord, your a legend around these parts!   

[cuda hunter]

@RzeroB    Glad you are posting some info. Lots to learn.
  When I open the picture you posted it gets blurry when I upsize it. How do I stop that?  Any suggestions?
 

  When a Hemi is found in America, if it has Y07 on the fender tag, would that signify that it was originally a Canadian order car?  Perhaps some of those hemi's have migrated south.   
  Are there other things that Y07 could stand for other than canadian order?

[JH27N0B]

Y07 is Canadian sale.  Y09 is export sale. There are some other codes too, Y05 for US of course, but some others besides those.
I don't know that any US cars were sold new in Australia 50 years ago.  The cars there are right hand drive, and I'm not aware of any of the big 3 that engineered American models to have a right hand drive version to sell in Australia. Some used, and perhaps also some new cars, did get shipped there to sell, but there were 3rd party car shops there who would modify the cars to move all the drivers side features, steering, brakes, instrument panel, etc to the right side. Must have been quite a job, I wonder how they redid the dash pads for example after moving the instrument panel to the opposite side?

[cuda hunter]

Not to get off subject, just a few pics of a few aussie RHD cars. I have a valiant too but it's wrong format to post pics.

Would Australia be Y07 then?

[YellowThumper]

Cool stuff to learn. I also would like to see a right hand drive conversion.

[JH27N0B]

Not to get off subject, just a few pics of a few aussie RHD cars. I have a valiant too but it's wrong format to post pics.

Would Australia be Y07 then?

American market cars in Australia would have whatever code the car had before an Australian bought it and had it exported and modified to RHD there.  If Chrysler had engineered any American market cars to export there with RHD, there would be a specific Y code for Australia. If you found a car in Australia now that has a Y07 code on its tag, it was originally sold in Canada then bought by someone and shipped across the Pacific.
I haven't researched the subject in detail, but Chrysler corp cars sold in Australia new were unique models designed specifically for their market and presumably built there. Their "Utes" being one example.  Their models tended to be smaller than big fat American cars.
Same as South America and Mexico.
I wonder if someone has a registry of export Mopars, or any deep dive articles have been written on the subject?
I've seen and or read about American market cars exported new to countries like France, Switzerland, South Africa, Greece and even a few to the Middle East. They had a few special features to make them meet the rules for the country they were being exported to, like metric speedometers, that could easily be done on US assembly plant lines.  Trying to build RHD versions on US lines would not have been feasible.
A lot of vintage Mopars you see now with export tags never actually were exported.  There was a program set up where deployed US servicemen could order a new car shortly before their tour ended, and pick up their new car at a local US dealer after their deployment ended.  Even though delivered new in the US, these cars had export tags since they were ordered through Chrysler reps in places like Germany and Vietnam.

[704406]

In 1989 I owned a Hemi Cuda that was bought at Beausejour Chrysler in Beausejour Manitoba just east of Winnipeg serial # BS23R0B219183 it's been sold a few times in recent years.
Also a Hemi Cuda that was sold new in Vancouver BC was totalled in the spring of 1970. A friend of mine bought it for parts, sold the engine and 4 speed for $900.00 and installed it in a 69 super bee. Sorry no serial number on that one
Both Cuda's were FE5 red

[RzeroB]

In 1989 I owned a Hemi Cuda that was bought at Beausejour Chrysler in Beausejour Manitoba just east of Winnipeg serial # BS23R0B219183 it's been sold a few times in recent years.
Also a Hemi Cuda that was sold new in Vancouver BC was totalled in the spring of 1970. A friend of mine bought it for parts, sold the engine and 4 speed for $900.00 and installed it in a 69 super bee. Sorry no serial number on that one
Both Cuda's were FE5 red

Thanks for your reply. I've seen that your former HemiCuda has managed to survive. Last time I saw it, it was painted up in a kind of Sox & Martin - ish paint scheme. I thought that it looked pretty nice.

Intriquing comment about the other HemiCuda that was wrecked and parted. Probably one of the ones on the missing list that we are looking for. 1970 was a looooooong time ago so I get that those numbers are probably gone for good.

It made me think of my own practices back then. To be honest, I didn't pay much attention to VIN stampings and numbers-matching stuff. To me the VIN was just something you needed for the DMV paperwork. The fender tag was even more of a mystery. On it I could see the VIN, but the rest of those codes were just "Greek to me". I would have liked to have been more educated with that stuff back then but unfortunately I wasn't.   

[JH27N0B]

I still feel bad about a 71 cuda 340 I bought from the original owner while in college in 1983.  Loaded car that he said he bought off the showroom floor in 71.  Sadly he used it to commute to the train station everyday including winter and by the time I bought it, it was badly rotted despite only having 30,000 miles.  One of the most loaded cars I ever saw.  Did I take a picture of the tag or make a rubbing of it before I sold it? Nope, the thought never crossed my mind then, nor did I know what the codes meant! I also never kept anything VIN or tag info from a V code 70 Challenger project car I owned for a time then.
I also found a broadcast sheet in my T/A during that period.  I was in the SIAC club and put on my application sheet for the club that my car had the broadcast sheet.
In the early 90s I was registering my car with Jeff Coe, who ran the T/A registry then, and said that I had my cars sheet.  I then dug out the sheet from my files and looked at it for the first time in years.  The color code immediately caught my eye.  FC7?  WTH, my car is FE5?!  Then I noticed the vin, not my T/A! I had the BCS in hand for 10 years before realizing it wasn't for my T/A.
And another couple years after that before I learned how to find the numbers on the block and trans to confirm it is #s matching.
I was very ignorant then, fortunately I sur iz smart now! 

[704406]

RzeroB if you saw pictures of my old Hemi Cuda in Sox and Martin paint that would have been from when it was in Beausejour when the original owner still had it before he died. The car came to Victoria bc in 1974 and was here in that paint scheme until I got it in 1989. I have posted some pictures of the car previously.
JH27N0B I'm with you, when I got my 70 440-6 Cuda in 1972 there were ton's of guy's swapping engines, wrecking perfectly good cars, and street racing with no thought that these Numbers Matching cars were anything but drivers and didn't care about originality or rare options.
I had a 1971 FC7 Cuda 340 4 speed car I sold that the next owner eventually parted out because it had been lightly crashed. He sold the drive train and the nose off the car, threw away the rest!