The VIN on a 1972 Plymouth 'Cuda listed on eBay out of El Paso, Texas, is BS23H2B288566, and the seller's headline mentions only the first two characters."Real BS Code Car," the listing title says (eBay item 318930291622, from seller 4thepool). That part holds up. Under Chrysler's 1972 passenger-car VIN code, the first B is the Barracuda E-body line and the S is the Special price class, which is what separates a 'Cuda from a plain Barracuda on paper. The 23 is a two-door hardtop, the 2 is the 1972 model year and the second B is the Hamtramck, Michigan, assembly plant. The last six digits are the build sequence.The fifth character is H, Chrysler's code that year for the 340 four-barrel V8. In 1972 the 'Cuda came with a 318 as standard and the 340 was the only engine above it, so this car left the factory as a 340 'Cuda. In the listing's 18 photos the engine bay is empty. One shot looks past loose firewall wiring straight down to the gravel. The item specifics list an automatic transmission; no photo shows one.Bidding opens at $6,500. On Monday morning the car had no bids and 17 watchers, with the auction set to close at 2:06 p.m. Eastern on Oct. 5 under eBay's extended-bidding rule, which resets the clock to 60 seconds after any late bid. The winner owes a $2,000 deposit through eBay's Secure Purchase program. The odometer field reads 999999, and the title is listed as clean.What the seller disclosesThe description runs six sentences and doesn't oversell. The roof under the old vinyl top is rusty and needs repair or replacement. The car was hit on the driver's front corner, and the seller suggests replacing the driver-side front frame rail. The dash frame and dash pad have been pulled out. Front and rear seats come with it, plus new white seat covers, and a new grille that needs one mounting tab repaired (the seller has the piece). The floors need repair or replacement.The subtitle on the same listing reads "Frame rails are solid." Both statements can be true if the rails aren't rotted and one is bent from the hit. The listing doesn't say which, and none of the photos was taken from under the car.The pictures match the description. The driver's fender and front structure are crushed, the bumper and grille are gone, and rust has opened holes along the windshield and rear-window channels, where a vinyl top holds moisture against the steel for decades. The driver's floorpan is perforated. The trunk pan is rusty but looks intact. The car sits in a dirt lot surrounded by other stripped Mopar bodies.What the paperwork doesn't coverThe VIN is the only documentation in the listing. There's no photo of the fender tag, the stamped plate that records factory paint, trim and options codes and, on E-bodies, is mounted on the driver's-side inner fender, the side the seller says took the hit. There's also no photo of the dash VIN plate, a build sheet or the title. eBay's vehicle-history box says no report is available and lists manufacture before 1981 among the possible reasons; federal rules didn't standardize the 17-character VIN until the 1981 model year.A missing engine changes what the BS and H codes can buy. The VIN still establishes a factory 340 'Cuda, which matters to whoever restores it, but the car can never again be numbers-matching. Any 340 that goes back in is a replacement, and the listing doesn't say what happened to the original or whether it was with the car when the seller got it. Listings that say plainly what's missing do exist: in July a Rio Rancho shop put "clone" in the title of its $22,000 1973 'Cuda. On the other end, a single surviving document can carry a whole car, as it did for the 1970 Chevelle LS6 whose proof sat under the front seat for 55 years.The seller has been on eBay since 2002, shows 37,982 feedback ratings at 100% positive and has sold more than 58,000 items. Recent feedback is mostly for lots of paperback novels, plus a set of stainless exhaust tips for a 1969 Road Runner or GTX.The listing shows no reserve notice, so the next number that matters is whether anyone bids $6,500 before 2:06 p.m. Eastern.Would you pay $6,500 for a documented H-code 'Cuda with a bent rail and no engine, or is a 340 car without its 340 just a rusty Barracuda body?Sources: eBay listing 318930291622 (seller description, item specifics and photos); Chrysler 1972 passenger-car VIN code; 49 CFR Part 565. Representative photos by Sicnag and sv1ambo via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
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