Keep in mind..
The grilles in 69 mostly were made of metal by going to plastics in 70 they had multiple issues for endurance..
Mainly the grille mounting points under stress would develop cracks. Early plastics did not hold up well for exposure to the sun...

Just my $0.02...

It's all conjecture unless someone who was involved & responsible for the decision can comment, but:

The '71 seem grille - and tail lamps - seem the most expensive to make, and Chrysler was generally always trying to cut costs.
Yearly updates, and several treatments being designed, likely contributed to '70-'70-'72 facelifts.

Personally, I like the '72 grille & rearend treatments the best, and feel the '71 is indeed a bit heavy on decoration.
But I wouldn't be likely to kick one of any year out of the garage.
I like that folks have their own favorites, as I've said many times before; it would be boring if we all liked and drove the same thing.

WRT E-Bodies overall: Plymouth was "recognized" as the Performance model, while Challenger was for "Styling".
They were targeted to different age groups overall. Challengers were always Challengers regardless of the build.
But Barracudas became 'Cudas with a performance build.

Up until that time grilles and tail lights changed every year in every body style. Starting in 1972 the changes were more subtle (if there were any changes). I suspect the bean counters jumped in in 1973 to limit changes as the handwriting was on the wall as far as Chrysler's future financial struggles...

That's my take on it...

I like the 71 slightly more than the 70. Also wish 71's came in sublime green or lemon twist.

71 with the dual headlights and billboards may be a little less likely to be confused as a Camaro with less knowledgeable car people. Sit in the stands at the races or a car show and listening to someone call a 70 Cuda a 69 Camaro is always entertaining. Doesn't seem to happen as much with the Challengers, but those Plymouth E bodies trip them up for some reason.

The '70 only lasted one year as well, not to mention each and every year before that. Seemed like '72 - '74 was when Chrysler started to figure out that they could amortize tooling costs over 2 or more years to save development/manufacturing costs.

I would guess (after all, we can only guess unless somebody who was 'there' can tell us the real story) based on how development cycles went and lead times required for styling approval, engineering drawings to be finalized, and tooling to be created in time to refit the factories in the summer of '71, that the '72 grille was decided long before reaction to the '71s, for better or worse, was known.

I would expect that it wasn't reactionary to sales, but that's not to say that it couldn't have been fast-tracked based on reaction to magazines' negative press. It's hard to be sure, but I agree that it is odd that they went to quad headlights for only one model year. Maybe Dodge complained that it looked too much like Challenger? There was a Dodge/Plymouth in-house rivalry happening at the time.

I had a 70 Cuda, Ed funny car body I made into a door car, about 4” narrower. It had the Mopar decal at top of windshield, some dude came over and asked why I had Mopar on a Camero? He was kinda pissed when he realized it was a Cuda. We laughed at that all nite!

Here's one response so far from the "old breed:"


The Stylist for the 71 front 10 “ was Don Hood. He may have been responsible for more but I know that for sure. Don did a large aggressive rendering of the 71 in color and this painting hung in Dick Macadam, , head of styling, office until he retired and Delarosa came in. He called Don and told him he better come and take it before he left Chrysler, which Don did. I believe this painting became the inspiration for those surreal aggressive posters MoPar had in the early 70s.

My point here is that if the VP of design liked it enough to leave it on his wall so long he must have thought highly of the design. Don moved to Texas in 1980 and remained a close friend till his passing a few years ago. You can google Don Hood designer to learn more. He did a presentation at Lawrence Tech about 10 years ago.

Marv Raguse

I love the 71 Grille design in both the Barracuda and Challenger. It is my favorite for both models.
I also prefer the 67-69 Barracuda in coupe/notch form versus the fastback.

But weren't the Chally R/T's the Cuda of the Challenger pack?