Some of Plymouth's more rabid enthusiasts might still make the claim that the Mustang-generated "pony car" era of the 1960s should more properly have been known as the "fish car" phenomenon as the division's Barracuda actually arrived on the market a couple of weeks before Ford's model.
But the Barracuda - created by grafting a fast-back roofline onto a compact-class Plymouth Valiant; basically the largest (1.33 square metres) glass backlight seen on a production car - didn't strike quite the same chord with the emerging youth market buyers of the day as that original Mustang.
Ford's pony car outsold it eight-to-one in the months ahead, which is likely better than the Barracuda would have done if Plymouth's obviously not very "with it" execs had had their way and named it the Panda. And no, apparently they weren't kidding.
The Barracuda nameplate went on to survive through three generations, however, becoming one of the established warriors in the pony car wars that were fought on the streets, drag strips and road courses of the late 1960s, lasting until 1974.
That was just a year after the example owned by Josh Sanders of Wilsonville, Ont., (near Brantford), was built and sold under the contracted and even cooler-sounding name 'Cuda.
I ran into Sanders at the recent Automobile Journalists Association of Canada Canadian Car of The Year TestFest in Niagara-On-The-Lake, Ont., where the 21-year-old student in the Canadian Automotive Institute program at Georgian College in Barrie, Ont., was handing out keys to test cars.
Family legend has it Sanders worked on his first car while still in diapers - "scraping bondo out" of a battered and rusty E-Type Jaguar being restored by his father Ted - which means he's been messing about with automotive machinery for going on two decades now.
And five of those years were spent restoring the 1973 'Cuda to pristine original condition.
Sanders was 14 and in Grade 9 when, after a long search with his father for a car to base a street-rod project on, they came across the 'Cuda in Niagara Falls. Buying it provided Sanders with his first lesson in the often-convoluted and frustrating process of negotiating the buying and selling of old automobiles.
This one turned out to have been its owner's dream car and had recently been imported from New Mexico, so there was obviously some emotional hurdles involved in its sale.
"He told us he'd sell it to us for X amount, and wouldn't budge when we tried to dicker. And then when we said, 'Fine, we'll pay your price,' he wouldn't sell it to us," Sanders says.
Both he and his father were "extremely pouty" on the ride home, he recalls, but his mother was more upbeat. And her instincts proved correct as shortly afterwards the seller relented and sold Sanders the car, which was basically sound, but had a thrashed engine, fried wiring and badly done bodywork.
The deal was that his parents would lend him the money, which had to be repaid, and he had to be fully involved with its restoration. His father would help, but was involved in his own projects - the E-Type, a '72 Dodge Challenger and a '34 Ford coupe street rod.
During the remainder of his teen years, Sanders served an unofficial apprenticeship working on the 'Cuda under his father's tutelage and with his help. "We did virtually everything ourselves," he says. He's currently putting that knowledge to work restoring a 1963 Ford F100 pickup.
The original slant-six- and small V-8-powered Barracuda of 1964 gave way to the second generation in 1967, still Valiant-based but with unique and more contemporary styling that didn't include a huge rear backlight, and with more potent power plants under their hoods, including the ultimate 426-cubic-inch Hemi with twin four-barrel carbs.
