Home Run

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, BRENDAN TURNER BUILT THIS STUNNING '72 BARRACUDA PRO TOURER IN HIS HOME GARAGE

- KIAN HEAGNEY

WE WERE just as stunned as you probably are now when we first laid eyes on Brendan Turner's beautiful '72 Plymouth Barracuda. Especially once we learned that, despite the build quality and finish, this wasn't a big-dollar workshop project built to take silverware at Australia's premier car shows. I never built it to be a show car like that, which is why it was never unveiled at one, Brendan says. I just built it at home on my own, with the idea of making it a tidy cruiser I could enjoy in my local area on the weekends. Brendan's love affair with Mopars and building cars was fostered early on as a child of a motoring family. My dad was a development engineer for Ford, but before that he did 11 years at Chrysler, he says. The rest of the family was Ford, so I went the other way with Chrysler.

After owning a Chrysler coupe and a '69 Plymouth Fury, Brendan decided he wanted an E-body Mopar in his life. We found this '72 'Cuda in nice nick in Wyoming, USA, so I had it imported with help from American Hemi Speed Centre, he explains.

The coupe they found was in top-notch shape, but it still didn't take fitter and turner Brendan long to find a reason to pull it apart. When I got it, I took it for a drive around the block and found the factory brakes were pretty poor, he says. So I pulled it into the garage to start what was meant to be a quick freshen-up. It wasn't long until I was building a rotisserie for it!

That wasn't due to the car having hidden nightmares, but rather Brendan's desire to turn it into an immaculate pro tourer. I had it blasted and we only found a few specs of rust, so it was a really solid shell to start with, he says. The pro tourer scene was really starting to gain popularity in the States at the time, so I decided I wanted to have that kind of look for this car.