The Barracuda is one of the most advanced off-road racing vehicles in the world, the fact that you can build one from either a kit, or from plans also makes it one of the most affordable.
Each Barracuda has a tubular steel chassis with rack and pinion steering, a liquid cooled motorcycle engine, independent front and rear suspension, front and rear disc brakes, a top speed of 120mph (depending on gearing) and a 0-60mph time of 4.5 seconds (on dirt).
Most people who build this buggy choose a 600cc to 1400cc superbike engine with the Suzuki Hayabusa engine being the most popular choice. The original transmission is kept and the chain drive runs directly to the rear wheel drive assembly, the completed Barracuda weighs in at ~380kgs so as you can imagine, the off-road performance is a little on the brisk side.
If you want to build a Barracuda in your garage you have a few options, you can buy the kit here from Edge, you can buy the plans here, or you can grabs the plans, build the parts you want and then individually order the parts you don’t want to make in the garage.
It’s possible to build a Barracuda for ~$7,500 USD depending on the options you choose while building, sourcing a suitable engine isn’t as difficult as you might expect – a large number of high-performance bikes are wrecked every year by riders who slightly overestimated their ability, so grabbing a crashed crotch-rocket and pulling out the engine/transmission can be a cheap way to get your hands on 140hp.
If you’d like to see a Barracuda in action, hit play on the video below, or you can visit Edge here.
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
