A lot of our focus during Mopar Week has been on cars built since World War II, but let’s not forget Dodge had been around for a long time by then. Combine that with low production numbers, just a hair over 4,000 for this model and body style, and it will help explain why seeing a ’36 Dodge is so rare.
The Series D2 was planted on a 116″ wheelbase and powered by an 84 horsepower straight six.
When looking for period advertisements, Dodge certainly has more of the memorable ones from the time.
This particular D2 coupe has a rumble seat. There was also a longer wheelbase Dodge offered that year with a model specifically called “Rumbleseat Coupe”; model names created confusion even then.
Despite being at a car show, this Dodge is very much in driver status as the paint appeared to have been applied with a brush. These pictures were taken at the monthly car show here in Jefferson City in June; when I saw it at the show in July, two of the fenders were in primer, so it’s being restored.
It looks like it hasn’t had a heart transplant, which is refreshing to see after all the 351 and 460 powered ’30’s era Ford’s at the same show.
What a gorgeous car. And I love the wheels.
When I was a youngster I had a chance to ride in a rumble seat. An absolute blast.
Hi, I’m a visitor from the Ford Barn. Someone mentioned that some manufacturer other than Ford had a better idea for how to keep the water from running down inside the rumble seat deck lid. How did Dodge do it? Seems like there should be some kind of intersecting U shaped catch.
Steve
Mr. Shafer, you have redeemed yourself. 🙂
Chrysler in the 1930s was a charmed organization that went from being just another independent to No. 2 in the U.S. car industry. Dodge was a huge part of that success. This particular body style may not have sold too many, but Dodge was always right up there near the top of the sales charts back then.
Nice,I like the wheels on this car.I hope it’s safe from the hot rod vandals
Some forget that Dodge was once its own Car Manufacturer, Dodge Bros. which had its own plant, Dodge Main. When the founders died, Walter P bought the company.
That is one reason why the brand is still around and not Plymouth. There was never a ‘Plymouth Main’ or “Plymouth Brothers”.
True, but Chrysler bought Dodge in 1928, so this car is a Dodge (division of Chrysler) car, not a Dodge Brothers car.
In terms of Chrysler internal corporate politics, it seemed like the Chrysler and Dodge brands had all the power, and the Plymouth and DeSoto brands always got the short end of the stick. I think this is the point Chicagoland was trying to make. I don’t think there was really any parallel to this at GM and Ford. I guess you could say the Ford brand held a dominant position at Ford Motor Company, but given the Ford brand’s huge market share, that made sense. Chrysler and Dodge’s dominance at Chrysler wasn’t based purely on market share. As Chrysler Corporation was being assembled in the 1920s, Chrysler and Dodge came into it with existing manufacturing facilities and dealer networks, while Plymouth and DeSoto had to build these things from the ground up, or rely on what Chrysler, Dodge or corporate would give them. That relationship never really changed, and it’s no surprise that Chrysler and Dodge are the two survivors of Chrysler Corporation’s original brands.
Imagine a GM where the following happened:
Early on, it was decided that Pontiac was the division that would build trucks, and Chevrolet wasn’t allowed to sell them, no matter how much they protested that they needed them to match up with Ford.
Chevrolet wasn’t allowed to have its own dealer network. Instead, each of the B-O-P brands had their own dealer network, and all three sold Chevrolets as a secondary line.
When Chevrolet managed to convince corporate to allow them to sell pickups, Pontiac did everything it could to make sure the Chevy pickups were a failure (bearing in mind that a large chunk of the dealer network that sold Chevys also sold Pontiacs), and the Chevy pickups were withdrawn from the market after only five or six years.
When after thirty years Chevrolet finally managed to convince corporate that having all three of the B-O-P networks sell Chevrolets was counterproductive, corporate responded by merging the Chevrolet Divison into the Oldsmobile Division, and decreeing that only Olds dealers would sell Chevys. To make up for the loss of Chevrolets, Pontiac dealers were then allowed to begin selling low-priced cars in Chevrolet’s price class, turning to their Canadian division for inspiration. (To sum up: Chevrolet had lost its status as an independent division within GM’s corporate structure; instead of getting its own dealer network, it was now subsumed into Oldsmobile’s; a significant percentage of the dealers who had previously sold Chevys no longer did, but now had their own models competing directly with Chevy.)
The Chevrolet Caprice, introduced in the late ’60s to compete with the popular Ford LTD and Plymouth VIP, never really took off, as Oldsmobile-Chevrolet dealers were more interested in putting customers behind the wheel of a Delta 88.
A early ’70s proposal for a new midsize personal luxury coupe, to be sold by Chevrolet and called the Monte Carlo, was shot down because of concerns that it would steal sales away from the Cutlass Supreme. Chevy fans were forced to look on in envy as the Plymouth Cordoba cleaned up in the midsize personal luxury segment.
When GM’s downsized B-bodies debuted for 1977, GM corporate decided not to sell a Chevrolet version, figuring that Oldsmobile-Chevrolet dealers would have the fullsize segment covered with the Olds versions. After a year, they relented and brought back the Chevy Impala (but not the Caprice), aimed mainly at fleet sales.
Chevrolet didn’t get a version of GM’s downsized 1978 A-bodies, either, though it would later be used as the basis for the downsized 1982 Impala. Chevy didn’t initially get a version of the A-bodies’ FWD successor, either, with Olds oddly given two different versions, the cheaper A-Class and more expensive Cutlass Ciera. Chevy finally got a version in 1985, as the A-Class was replaced by the Chevrolet-badged Celebrity.
By the 1980s, it was becoming increasingly common for any large, upscale or sporty GM offering to be sold in Pontiac- and/or Olds-badged versions, but not Chevrolet. Those models that Chevy did sell were invariably just badge-engineered Pontiacs. By the early 1990s the largest sedan sold under the Chevrolet name was the Corsica, which was of course just a badge-engineered Pontiac Tempest.
By the mid-1990s, people were beginning to wonder if it made any sense for Chevrolet to continue to exist. In 2001, not long after the GM-VW merger, the plug was finally pulled. The merger would ultimately prove unsuccessful, and Chevy fans would wonder about what might have been. When Chrysler brought back the Plymouth Barracuda to compete with the Ford Mustang, GM responded with a revived Pontiac Firebird. With the Chevy brand gone, though, there was no Chevrolet equivalent to the Firebird.
Those wheels are perfect. A couple of years ago At a local car show a fellow was selling a pontiac of this vintage with what apeared to be fresh bondo doors and alot more of the stuff freshly applied most everywhere else his asking price, $5000. At least this old girl has her own complete panels, painted with a roller or not.
I actually like the dodgy paint job- it would be good in period movies and T.V shows as an old car!
I mentioned on another post a long time ago, but I owned a 1936 Dodge D2 sedan for several years. My grandfather bought it in August 1950 and drove it until 1961 when the brakes went and he couldn’t get replacement parts. He pushed it into his shed, and there it stayed until 1994 when I bought it from his estate. Well, okay, it had changed sheds twice. It needed full restoration, which was beyond teenage me, and was unfortunately becoming a millstone around my neck (it had been the millstone around my Dad’s neck for decades!). Sadly it’s not easy to cart a large heavy car around when it doesn’t go – the motor turned over and the electrics worked though. I sold it in 1999 to get part of the deposit to buy my house. It’s now been stripped for restoration and is living 15km from me. The forestry town my Grandparents lived in, and where my Dad grew up, was bulldozed in the late 1970s, the car was one of the few family belongings and memories from that time and I regret selling it every day.
Oh – and I can confirm my grandfather rolled it down a bank in the early 50s, like the ad shows. Dad, who was 6-7 at the time reports that they hit a large rock in the road, and that the experience of rolling down the bank was like being in a washing machine. The car didn’t sustain any major damage and was fine when towed out the next day.
My second car – in 1958 – was a 1935 Dodge sedan, in its original paint: dull black enamel on the fenders and shiny black lacquer on the rest of the body. I bought it for $50 after returning home from college for the summer, and my father sold it for the same price after I went back to college that fall.
I thought it handled better than the 1947 Chevy that was my first car, and the only real problem I had with it was that it was difficult to start at times. I was told that it should have a new ground cable, but with the 6-volt system and the battery under the seat that was a long, expensive cable. The car had an automatic choke that worked well most of the time, but conferred on the car a tendency to flood the carburetor.
A ’36 Dodge sedan was the first Mopar of my grandfather’s, in a line that was unbroken until he passed in 1989. That Dodge lasted well into the ’50s, a humble, solid workhorse.