Triple Crown 'Cuda

Casey Hornik’s ’70 ’Cuda wins TCR Best Street Machine

- John Gilbert

There’s an old adage seasoned customizers often cite when the query is how to begin a build and that’s to start with the very best example of the desired car one can find. And that’s really good advice, but here’s an exception to the rule: this stunning ’70 Plymouth ’Cuda that took Best Street Machine at the inaugural Triple Crown of Rodding held within the 34th Annual Hot Rod Roundup, hosted by Shades of the Past Car Club in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

The saga of Zach Ingram’s Z Rodz and Customs resurrecting Casey Hornik’s ’70 ’Cuda into a show winner began when the prime-year Plymouth was found stuffed in a semi-trailer in a salvage yard on the outskirts of South Bend, Indiana. It was an extremely rusted hulk, so rusty that plucking it out of the trailer on the prongs of a pale loader and plopping it onto a car trailer didn’t seem overly disrespectful. Underneath its hole-riddled cancerous shell the skeleton of the ’70 ’Cuda was intact and DNA-wise the car had excellent bones, it rolled off Plymouth’s Hamtramck, Michigan, assembly line with 340 ’Cuda bloodlines. And then it’s guessed somewhere in the ’80s that the 340 ’Cuda was cloned to AAR specs using genuine AAR parts.