Jaclyn Sunseri has been running the numbers at Hemmings from her Charlotte, NC base and she lives by one defining mantra: “Stay close to the money and you’ll always succeed.” Another saying at Hemmings is, “You can’t live this life without a good truck.” Sure, that means Hemmings is in good hands, but it also means that her 2021 GMC Yukon is well-taken care of, too.

North Carolina is the jewel of the American Southeast, but Charlotte’s weather can be surprisingly unpredictable: the summer heat comes with that famous southern humidity and the winters can see some infamous northern snow. Jaclyn reminds us, “If you don’t like Charlotte weather, just wait five minutes and it’ll change.” So, to stay cool under pressure, and in any extreme weather, she has to make sure her Yukon never lets her down.

There are SUVs and then there’s the Yukon from GMC. It’s big. It’s powerful. It’s smart. And it’s cool. Especially in Onyx Black – Jaclyn’s favorite color. But, as much as her Yukon takes care of her, it needs some attention paid to its vital fluids. Regular drivetrain fluid changes are necessary, and the thick Southern summer air demands a coolant designed specifically to move nearly three tons of American steel – and Jaclyn’s hectic schedule – with ease and reliability. PEAK’s Original Equipment Technology™ 50/50 Antifreeze + Coolant for North American vehicles is designed expressly for her SUV and everything she demands of it:

• Warranty Coverage: Jaclyn expects her Yukon to last well past the factory warranty and she puts it to the test every day. She only uses PEAK’s Orange Original Equipment Technology™ Antifreeze + Coolant 50/50 Prediluted mix, which matches the vehicle manufacturer’s technology and color requirements while providing guaranteed service life protection of up to 5 years/150,000 miles with a complete flush and fill.

• Color-coded with Inhibitors specifically for Jaclyn’s GMC: Mix water with metal and sooner or later, rust can form. Scale inhibitors make sure that corrosion and flakey, “scale” rust won’t form in all the channels of your radiator as liquid circulates through it. PEAK’s OET Antifreeze + Coolant’s high-quality organic acid corrosion inhibitors are free of borate, nitrite, silicate and amines chemicals, so it meets the performance requirements of ASTM D3306 and D4985 as recommend by General Motors for Jaclyn’s demands on her SUV.

• Specific fit: Jaclyn’s ’21 GMC Yukon is a precision machine designed so that she never has to worry about the engine keeping its temperature regulated. And PEAK has designed its Original Equipment Technology™ Antifreeze + Coolant 50/50 Prediluted mix specifically for any American vehicle requiring ORANGE phosphate-enhanced organic acid technology extended-life coolant. That’s a mouthful, but it means that she can top off her SUV’s cooling system with PEAK’s OET prediluted antifreeze and rest assured that it’s the right liquid for the job.

Date: circa 1980s

Location: Portland, Oregon

Source: via Historic American Building Survey / Library of Congress

What do you see here?

Date: May 1968

Location: Montreal, Quebec

Source: via Archives de la Ville de Montreal / Flickr

What do you see here?

Work continues apace on Project Rampart, our ultimate track-support vehicle using a 2021 Dodge Durango Hellcat as a 700hp base. Last month, we showed you some of the parts and pieces to make it live up to its claims. This month, we’re adding exhaust, push bars, lighting, and more. Though the intention of this rig is race support, its debut will be at this year’s SEMA Convention in Las Vegas. Can the revamped Durango make it to the Dodge booth at SEMA on time? (Spoiler warning: Yes, it will.)

Project Rampart: Part Three

The exhaust is a custom arrangement designed by Unique, featuring custom stock-diameter mandrel-bent tubing, mufflers built in-house, and twin 2.5-inch exhaust tips side-exiting from the rear bumper cover. According to builder Neil Tjin, “We usually custom-build mufflers for Porsches and Ferraris, but for the Durango, we didn’t want them to be so loud and super-obnoxious.” The mufflers are located just behind the bumper on each side.

Project Rampart: Part Three

The plan was to have a pair of 2.5-inch exhaust tips exiting through the side of the rear bumper cover. Unique used CAD software to illustrate a template to accommodate the size of the hole to be cut.

Project Rampart: Part Three

The template was designed so the hole would accommodate both custom tips. Once careful measurements were made (the “measure twice, cut once” mantra was in full effect when handling the custom-wrapped bumper cover), the template was placed and marked off, with the holes cut.

Project Rampart: Part Three

The exhaust relief surrounds are simple sheet steel, powder coated black to match the exhaust tips and the bumper bars, then riveted in place. The sound is aggressive, but not annoying, and the look is tough.

Project Rampart: Part Three

Project Rampart: Part Three

The front bar needed to not only look good, but also had to be capable of acting as a push bar should the situation demand it (i.e., a broken car at the top end of the track). This was hand-fabricated from 1-3⁄4-inch steel tubing to match the contours of the Durango’s nose, and Unique also made sure to include attachment points for the Rigid lights.

Project Rampart: Part Three

Mandrel-bent to fit and MIG-welded at the joins, the fabricated bars would show any imperfection beneath the powder coating, so of course there aren’t any. Maverick Powdercoating in Anaheim, California, took care of making sure all of the added finishes were uniformly matte black.

Project Rampart: Part Three

The end result looks like it should have been there all along. The quartet of Rigid lights is attached, hooked up, and functional. For added durability, the front push bar has six separate attachment points on the frame rails.

Project Rampart: Part Three

The side steps, fully capable of allowing even the beefiest of pilots a step-up into the cabin, are attached to chassis pinch welds at the far ends of the bar. Though not shown here, these will also be powder coated black to match the front and rear bars, and to give visual continuity to the end pieces.

Project Rampart: Part Three

The rear bar, made from the same 1-3⁄4-inch steel tubing as the front and similarly fabricated in-house and finished to the same high degree, saw its contours dictated in part by the trailer hitch receiver. It also allows for a step to reach items stored on the roof rack. The bar has four attachment points fastened to the frame rails.

Project Rampart: Part Three

“Tough, subtle, functional” was the motif of the entire project. The bottom rail wraps around the lower bumper and ends at the trailing edge of the wheel opening. Keeping it black also helps disguise the molded-in lower fascia exhaust reliefs, meant to clear an exhaust that no longer exits there.

Project Rampart: Part Three

The roof rack is being handled by Brian Stevens and the DeLux Customs crew out of St. George, Utah; it’s well on its way to being complete and will be powder coated and installed soon enough.

Project Rampart: Part Three

Given that Project Rampart is to be a well-equipped, modern race-support unit, a modern approach to pit transport will be included in the form of a Super 73 Z1 electric bicycle. Neil sent Project Rampart’s silent pit cruiser to Blur Boundaries of Newport Beach, California, for some visual tweaks. Mechanicals were left alone for the time being, but Blur Boundaries included a variety of bespoke, one-off 3D-printed items, including new custom wheel covers, pedals, hand grips, handlebar, chain, pedals, red LED headlamp, and a black leather seat with diamond-type red stitching. The acrylic-mesh piece that fills the void in the frame has a hexagonal theme that ties in with the Durango’s grille.

Project Rampart: Part Three

Conjuring up images of the popular minibikes of half a century ago, the Super 73 Z1 features a 500-watt motor, 36-volt Panasonic battery (stored under the seat), a two-amp charger, a steel frame, a 20-mph top speed, and a thumb throttle to make cruising the pits easy. Unless you enjoy hot-dogging it, range (about 15 miles) shouldn’t be an issue.

Project Rampart: Part Three

In our last issue, we showed you the awesome custom 20 x 10.5- inch Vossen HF-5 wheels in Satin Bronze. As we were going to press, the tires arrived: the only set of 295/45R20 (stock size, as per Dodge’s request) Falken Azenis FK460 all-season rubber that you’ll see at SEMA this year. Wheel Warehouse in Orange, California, is seen here assembling the formidable footwear.

No hard proof exists to say that Chrysler intended to build a four-door E-body in the early Seventies. For that matter, no hard proof exists to say that Chrysler didn’t, either. Dave Walden, however, believed in the idea so much that he decided to build a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda with two extra doors more or less from scratch. The resulting car, the only known four-door Barracuda in the world, will soon come up for auction.

According to the blog that Walden kept to document the car’s build, he had already finished a few factory-correct restorations of other muscle-era Mopars and pony cars and was looking to do something different for his next project. In September 2010, he came across a rendering of a bluish-gray four-door Barracuda—Walden didn’t specify whether it was a factory rendering, so it very well may have been one of Aaron Beck’s E-body photochops, which Beck had posted in March of that year—and subsequently decided that the rendering needed to become reality.

Fleshing out the idea

Beck’s vision specified a Barracuda—not a ‘Cuda, which would have been a bridge too far, even for a photochopper accustomed to altering reality—powered by a 383 under a flat hood and fitted with redline tires on steelies with pie-pan caps. (For what it’s worth, he also included a four-door Barracuda woodie station wagon and even a two-door Challenger hearse in his collection of renderings.) More significantly, Beck also decided his what-if four-door Barracuda deserved a pillarless hardtop treatment. Walden decided to take the build in a slightly different direction, envisioning a pillared sedan with a rally hood, Gator Grain vinyl top, and Lemon Twist Yellow paint.

To determine just how the four-door Barracuda could be built, Walden consulted with metal shaper Steve Been. The two determined that, rather than start with an existing E-body shell, they needed to base the car on a four-door car, specifically a 1971-1974 B-body Dodge Coronet or Plymouth Satellite. They found a stripped 1972 Coronet four-door in Clay Kossuth’s Mopar salvage yard and decided to build upon that car’s roof, A-pillars, B-pillars, and partial rockers.

In researching what they’d need to build the car, Walden said they came across a tantalizing bit of hearsay. “[Steve] stumbled across an article written by Roger Johnson,” Walden wrote. “We didn’t know who Roger was and had never spoken with him at that time. In the article, Roger described a red four-door Barracuda parked on a loading dock behind the Highland Park Chrysler Headquarters. This occurred sometime in early fall of 1969.” Johnson, a mailroom employee for Chrysler, couldn’t provide photos, documentation, or any further context for his sighting, but the report boldened Walden, who decided to alter his plans for his four-door Barracuda to reflect Johnson’s recollection as much as possible.

(A brief article in the October 1969 issue of Mechanix Illustrated mistakenly—or perhaps not—reported that the upcoming 1970 Plymouth Barracuda would be available in convertible, two-door hardtop, and four-door hardtop body styles. Walden also pointed to proposed four-door Camaros and Mustangs to defend the idea as not so outlandish.)

Putting the car together

The work on the car commenced in late 2013 with Been grafting what appear to be reproduction E-body quarter panels, wheel wells, trunk panel, cowl, windshield frame, and front sheetmetal to the skeleton of the Coronet. He shortened not only those quarter panels but also a pair of reproduction E-body doors to make room for the rear doors, which he constructed from the rear section of an E-body door and the forward section of an E-body quarter panel. According to Walden, nothing that went into the body construction—not even the Coronet donor parts—escaped the welder or hammer and dolly as he, Been, and Rock Bommarito spent the next few years getting it all to fit.

“Every single body panel was altered and no longer exhibits a ‘factory’ fit,” Walden wrote. “They had to have flat metal pieces added, sections removed and alterations of some sort to provide a correct fit. Many other pieces were fabricated from flat metal stock by using body hammers, English wheels, and heat for shaping. Even the door hinges were altered to work with the custom doors. Not a single exterior panel will fit any other vehicle built by Chrysler.” Similarly, much of the trim and interior required modification, adjustments, or custom fabrication to fit Walden’s “what-if” vision, particularly around the rear doors and rear seat.

Design compromises

As Walden noted, many of the design decisions he and Been made during the car’s construction—such as the height of the roof—proved controversial, but were ultimately necessary to build a functioning and finished car.

“We did not take the ‘easy way out’ and construct something using shortcuts,” he wrote. “I learned that sitting in a chair verbalizing the ‘obvious’ was nothing like building and engineering the real thing. While the light blue/gray Artist’s rendering of the 4 Door Barracuda looks appealing, that appearance would never work in actual design.”

Going the extra mile

Perhaps more controversial was Walden’s decision to consider himself the original manufacturer of the car and to have the state of Montana issue a brand new VIN (BH41H0B100000) to the car. (That VIN, for what it’s worth, is a portmanteau of sorts of the Barracuda series and trim level—BH—and the B-body four-door sedan’s body number —41—along with the H-code 340, the 0 for the 1970 model year, and B for Hamtramck assembly.) He followed that up by taking out a U.S. design patent (D831539S1) on the car, calling it his own design, and photoshopping the four-door Barracuda into the 1970 Plymouth brochure and Barracuda ads. He even mocked up a window sticker for the car reflecting the 340, Torqueflite, power brakes, tilt wheel, and vinyl roof he fitted to the car and then printed out a number of broadcast sheets that he then distributed throughout the car in locations that Chrysler was known to leave them.

In total, Walden said the car took more than 10,000 man-hours to complete. It debuted at Mopars at the Strip in 2017 before going on to appear at Chryslers at Carlisle, that year’s SEMA show, and the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals. Walden died of cancer in July 2019 at the age of 58.

The Barracuda has since made its way to the Gary Edwards Mopar collection, which includes no less than seven 1969 Dodge Daytonas—including the Big Willie Robinson Duke and Duchess Daytona—and five 1970 Plymouth Superbirds, all of which will cross the block as part of Mecum’s Kissimmee sale in January. No pre-auction estimate for the four-door Barracuda was available.

Mecum’s Kissimmee auction will take place January 4 to 15, 2023. For more information, visit mecum.com.