How could anyone that loves cars not love a Plymouth Duster?
Those of us of a certain age remember them well when they were just cars on the road. They were the Corollas of the ’70s. Any shopping center parking lot would have had several of them within its confines, and if you were wandering around that parking lot trying to find your green, brown or tan /6 Duster, chances are when you heard that majestic Chrysler starter, it was bolted to an engine under the hood of a Duster or one of it’s Valiant or Dart A-Body counterparts.
And they did come with the best engines. The rugged, reliable, economical, and may I say, as car engines go, somewhat loveable, slant 6s and 318s that most of them were born with from the factory had their own personalities, and if you ever had the opportunity to drive one of the factory 340 cars, well then you’d know that not only was it a monster on a drag strip or in a street fight but it was also probably the best balanced performance package car of the muscle era.
Sure, looks are always subjective, but while many may not judge it to be a gorgeous design in the likes of say, a Duesenberg or a Miura, but, for a high-volume, mass-produced vehicle, is there a bad line on it? They are quite pleasant to look at, aren’t they? And that little Tasmanian Devil-looking character. To coin the late, great Bob Ross, you might call them Happy Little Cars.
But they all have a dark side.
Welcome to my next COAL, which is actually the story of 3 Dusters (and a doppelganger Dodge Demon) I have had over the years.
I love Dusters. While they may have been the Corollas of the day, and no offense to anyone that loves them, but I have never paid any attention to Corollas, and old Corollas aren’t exactly setting the collector car market on fire. But I love Dusters, and even back in the day, I knew that even a /6 Duster was just an engine swap away from becoming a street beast.
How did I know this when I was in my single digits?
Ive written about how many cheap, used up musclecars there were around my neighborhood in the late 1970s and early 1980s and I made it a point to know them all. There was a guy in the neighborhood that had swapped some kind hot rodded V8 (Im guessing a small block) into a yellow ’70 or ’71 Duster (I vividly remember the split taillights and how mean they looked) and after he swapped the V8 into it, the exhaust dumped in front of the axle. It was so loud and fast and obnoxious. My 7 year old self was euphoric when I saw and heard it.
It was also the same time that Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” was a hit on the radio, so this would have been the summer of 1980. In the song, there is the reverse guitar effect that reminded me of the sound of that loud yellow Duster when it drove by. Then a couple of years later, a band that I was already big fan of, The Cars (RIP Ric Ocasek,) released “Heartbeat City” and look what was on the cover…
The late 1970s and early 1980s; great music, great cars, and a great time to be a car kid.
1991 rolled around and I was a senior in high school. I had my ’77 Grand Prix that I still have (and wrote about it) and the ’80 Firebird that I mangled that year. I loved (and still do) my Pontiacs but at heart, Mopars are and will always be my first love. So, after I wrecked the Firebird, I came across an ad for a ’71 Dodge Demon 340 4 speed for $1500.
Yep, that’s what a $1500 musclecar looked like in 1991. Originally, it was a factory 340/4 speed, FY1 Top Banana yellow with a black interior and stripes and few options. The seats were all torn up and covered with cheap black fuzzy seat covers. It was loaded with ’70s leftover performance parts; an old Edelbrock LD340 intake, rusty old headers, an MSD ignition, a ’70s-vintage Sun tach attached to the steering column with a pipe bracket and a Hurst T-Handle shifter. I never found out how it ended up with grille and hood scoop from a ’72 Dart but it was definitely a ’71. But by the time I got a hold of it, it was a tired, used up, 20 year old musclecar that was too much for a high school kid; too much power and it needed too much work but I didn’t care, I picked it up on a Saturday morning and that night, took it out cruising on Deer Park Avenue. Even though it was tired, it had no problem dusting off 5.0 Mustangs one by one.
But that didn’t last long. Within a couple of weeks, a wheel bearing went bad and I almost lost a wheel; luckily I was in my buddy’s driveway when that happened, the transmission continually bound up and would get stuck in 3rd gear until I actually had to get under the car and wrench the shift rod loose, the rear end howled so loud, it drowned out the stereo, the valves all floated over 3000 rpm, the header collectors were so low that they continually bottomed out and when one of them completely blew out, I noticed that it had been sloppily welded back together several times over the years. But it was fast, looked cool and it frightened all the rich preppy kids.
Anyway, it lasted maybe 4 months before I sold it. Hopefully it got the restoration it deserved so if anyone up on Long Island knows of any 340/4 speed Demons that were originally yellow, that was probably my car and I would love to see what became of it.
Onward to 2008.
A green Duster with a Slant 6. Is there anything more Mopar than that?
In 2008, I got orders to Camp Lejeune, almost 4 hours away from home. At the time, my drivers were my 2004 and 1996 Ram pickups, my recently resurrected 1977 Grand Prix first car, and my 1968 Coronet R/T. Obviously, none were mileage masters; the Coronet got all of 11 mpg with its hot rodded 440 Magnum, the ’96 pickup was starting to have transmission issues, and I didn’t want to put all the miles on my late model Ram pickup.
One Saturday morning I was at one of my Mopar buddy’s houses, and he had just picked up this little gem of a Duster from someone he knew at his job-a one owner, 40K mile /6, 3 on the tree 1973 Duster.
And it was green with a green plaid interior.
I was in love.
I told him if he ever wanted to sell it to let me know. He told me to go to the bank and get $2000 cash. Well, yeah, of course I did, and I drove the car home. Even though it had low miles, it had been neglected and it was far from perfect. The right rear quarter panel was rusty with a huge dent in it, the right front fender was crunched. Mechanically, it needed a water pump and it had an annoying exhaust leak. I got it home, fixed the broken exhaust manifold stud and put a new water pump on it (I think the water pump was about $10 at the local Napa.)
The car came from the West Virginia mountains and it had one old lady owner before my buddy’s buddy, who was some kind of relation to her, got a hold of it. Except for factory undercoating, presumably due to its location, there was not one single option on the car. For those that know Mopar fender tags, it was blank except for its VIN and sequence numbers and engine, transmission and color codes, which was F3 Sherwood Green with matching green interior. There was no factory radio but someone did install a 1990’s vintage Kenwood head unit with a couple of speakers when I got it. By 1973, most Mopar A-bodys came with front disc brakes but this one still had drums at all four corners, plus a foot pump windshield washer, but in 1973, Chrysler went to across-the-board electronic ignitions and this one was so equipped.
What a great car!
After working the bugs out, the Duster became my primary commuter to the base and I put about 30K on it in the 3 years I owned it, which is a lot since I spread my routine driving out among multiple cars. It routinely got 25 mpg on the road and I remember my personal best was 28 mpg.
This was mainly what my drive looked like on the backroads of VA and NC. One of my ‘happy places.’
I picked up a set of vintage Keystone Klassics and a Mopar twin snorkel hood scoop to give it a period-correct street machine look.
I had the car for 4 years and the only repairs I made in that time, besides the initial water pump and exhaust, was a faulty brake light switch (which almost caused me to be rear ended by an MRAP,) and a set of universal joints. The manual steering was slow even by 1970s manual steering standards and the 9″ drum brakes were frighteningly bad; luckily most of my driving was on those rural highways, if I had to drive the car around town with any regularity, a disc brake upgrade would have been a must. As miserable as that car was to drive, I loved driving it, especially on those low-traffic roads. Accelerating, turning and stopping were all challenging but cruising at speed was no problem. Since owning that car, a V8, power steering, and disc brakes are must-haves in my old cars.
The car became well-known on base and I would frequently be greeted by the MPs at the entry guard shacks by name when they would see me approach the gate. But that wasn’t always a good thing since it was hard to keep a low profile in a pea green 35 year old Duster so trying to leave early on a Friday afternoon was a challenge.
Not long after I bought the car, I was talking with one of my senior enlisted Chiefs, a very squared away and intimidating-looking guy that spent most of his career in marine law enforcement and was a boot camp Company Commander and definitely looked that part; he looked like he had stepped out of a recruiting poster. He was a few years older than me and was a teenager in the late 1970s and had joined the Coast Guard in 1980. When he saw the car, his eyes lit up and smiled and said “we used to do a lot of partying in a lot of cars that looked just like that!”
I got the bug to build it. Normally, I like leaving nice, original cars as nice, original cars but it was banged up pretty good and would need a new fender and quarter panel and a resulting paint job to make it nice so I thought, why not? Besides, they built hundreds of thousands of /6 A-Bodies and nice, original ones aren’t hard to find if you know where to look. I found a complete 340, a complete 4 speed, and a bigger rear end, and I wanted to do a lacey ’70s vintage bass boat paint job.
But, like so many of us know, classic car dream builds don’t always become reality. I never did do the bodywork but I did pick up a used fender for it that went with the car when I sold it. I finished up my orders in 2011 and went home to VA and sold the car to young guy who wanted a cool vintage car to drive. I really liked that car and its one of the few that I regret selling, but now I didn’t need a mileage master anymore and stumbled across a real ’71 Duster 340 so now I wouldn’t need to build the green car.
I sold the car, the 340 and the transmission that I had picked up and bought this ’71 in 2012, which had been sitting for a long time. It was complete, had a non-numbers matching 340, the original 4 speed and a 3.55 Sure Grip rear end and it was a rare color, Winchester Grey. Other than the passenger side floor board, it was pretty rust-free if I remember correctly. It was quite the street beast back in the day but it wasn’t running when I got it. I found the culprit to be a bad starter relay and a tune up and fresh fluids got it running again and it was indeed, a street beast.
I don’t know what the history of the car was but the engine had a very rumpity cam in it but it did have a slight rod knock at idle. The interior was also beat up pretty bad so, just like my Demon from when I was in high school, the car essentially needed a full restoration. Here we go again….
Those taillights.
I got the car running and streetable and I put maybe 1000 miles on it in the time that I had it. Boy, was that a fast car. I never took it to the track but it outran a late model Camaro SS on the street one night and it was just a blast to drive. Its smaller than a standard mid-size musclecar so it felt less cumbersome than the ’68 Coronet I had at the time. It had cherry bomb mufflers and the carpet was ripped out so it was obnoxiously loud and that was OK with me since it fit the car’s personality.
But, just like with the Demon 20 years earlier, it needed more work than I was willing or able to put in to it and I sold it after about a year and from what I’ve heard, its being treated to a full rotisserie restoration, of which it was certainly well-deserving.
Now it’s today. In the pecking order of my favorite musclecars, 1970-73 Dusters are my close third to ’69 Chargers and ’71 Road Runners as my Greatest Of All Time. The problem is, Dusters have appreciated in value at a greater rate than my salary and I have seen some very nice, original 340 cars sell for over $50K.
https://www.gatewayclassiccars.com/FTL/670/1970-Plymouth-Duster
A $55K Duster. I never would have guessed that day would come. Now, granted, that’s an exception, not a rule, and that’s a dealer asking a full retail price, but nice, original 340 cars are routinely selling in the $30K range now. Up until recently, the 340 A-Bodys were the cheap entry point into the Mopar musclecar world and it wasn’t hard to find a good one at a reasonable price. Remember, these were the Corollas of the ’70s and I remember when $500 would get you decent, running Duster. Just for grins and giggles, I did a quick internet search for 1970s-vintage Corollas and, well, there just aren’t many out there. But, the Corolla is still in production and most Dusters are car show poodles now, living mainly in the memories of those that remember them as regular cars, so I guess the Toyota won.
Anyway, I’ve been wanting to get back into a nice Duster for a couple of years now, and by nice, I mean one that does not need a complete restoration and can be driven reliably like a ‘normal’ car. Sure, I would love a 340 car but they really have become prohibitively expensive. A 318 car would be great but it seems like most of them have either been converted into 340 clones or poorly hot rodded with questionable workmanship. No six cylinders; BTDT and sorry Slant 6 fans, but I just don’t love them, and at this stage in my life, I don’t want any projects to convert one to a V8.
As I have since I moved back to the east coast, this past summer, I attended the annual Chryslers at Carlisle megashow and swap meet and I was on the prowl for a 1970-73 Duster. There were quite a few, and as expected, they were either expensive show cars or rusty basket case projects.
This great looking ’70 340 wasn’t for sale but if it was, I couldn’t afford it anyway.
But then, I came across this little sweetheart:
A 1973 Duster with a 318, original FE5 Rallye Red paint, disc brakes, a factory sunroof and 61K original miles, and as a bonus, it had all of its original dealer paperwork.
It also had an affordable price tag.
I was miserable and sick for the show, having come down with a virus that kept me down for most of the summer, but this little red Duster instantly made me happy. The owner and I talked and I made him an offer on the car. He declined, as it was well below his asking price and understandably, was hoping to get more at the show, but we exchanged information and I told him if the car didn’t sell at the show that my offer would stand.
He contacted me about a month after the show ended and asked me if I still wanted the car. I said absolutely! I sent him a check and made arrangements to have the car shipped as he was about 500 miles away on the West Virginia/Ohio border and I just didn’t have the time to go out and pick it up anytime soon.
If you read my COALs, you’ll remember that I bought my ’69 Charger in exactly the same way.
The car was delivered on the day before Hurricane Dorian was supposed to hit us head on, but when it took a last minute turn after hitting the Outer Banks head-on, it almost missed us completely and all we had was some wind, rain and a high tide for a few days. But, since I live in a flood-prone area, I made sure to keep the car on high ground anyway, just in case.
I got all of the original dealer paperwork with the car including the bill of sale and window sticker, plus it had the assembly line build sheet and fender tag, verifying the options and build date. I’m not sure of the progression of ownership between the original owner and the gentleman I purchased it from, but it appears to be a two owner car; I need to call the guy back and get the ownership history. But I do know that the car was sold new in Beckley, WV, which is not far from the VA border in the Shenandoah Valley. Gorgeous country out that way but they do salt the roads in the winter and thankfully this car seems to have been spared; it must have been garaged its whole life and certainly, it appears to have been loved, as it will be under my ownership as well.
The car is not perfect and I don’t want it to be; although its a nice survivor, its not going to be a pampered show poodle under my watch; cars are self-lubricating machines that need to be driven and I will expect it to serve first and foremost as a car to do car things, just like the others. Relax, relax; it wont come out in the rain or snow and it will be garaged.
In my daily-driven classics, I require disc brakes (check,) an electronic ignition (check,) a decent stereo, (check-its a late 1970s-vintage Radio Shack cassette deck receiver that still works great) and working air conditioning, if so equipped (not applicable but it does have that nice big hole in the roof).
Mechanically, the car is sound. The 318 starts right away and idles smooth and quiet. I’ve never driven an A-Body with a 318 in it, only 340s and /6s, and its quite fun to drive. Its not as brutally fast as a 340 but its not too far behind; I would guess the car is capable of a 15 second quarter mile and I don’t have an obnoxiously rumpity camshaft to deal with in traffic. It drives nice and straight, there are no odd behaviors or noises and its just an overall nice car to drive.
You can see the original paint is still in good shape and the original tape stripes show just the right amount of patina to match the parking lot dings here and there. The original dealer tag is on the tail panel. There are only a few tears in the black bench seat but otherwise the interior is in great shape as well. Like I said, this car has been loved.
I had to lose the factory hubcaps. I know this is CC and its generally frowned upon here, but they remind me of all the grandma brown Valiant sedans from back in the day, however, they will live as garage art. I had a set of ’70s Appliance slotted mags on good tires in my garage that look oh-so-perfect on the Duster, completely giving it the straight-out-of 1975 vibe. It even still has a “CBers Do It Better” and Montgomery Ward owners club bumper stickers.
I put about 200 miles on it since I got it. The weather has been absolutely perfect the last couple of weeks here; sunny and in the low 80s. I was sitting at a red light the other day all the windows and sunroof were wide open, and “Baker Street” was on the radio. The older guy next to me in the late model Silverado, also with open windows, looks over and says to me “that’s the right car with the right wheels and the right song!”
So, that made the Chevy guy happy, that made me happy and, at 46 years old, the Duster is still a happy little car.
Until next time, Enjoy The Drive.
Major flashbacks here. I had a 71 Scamp in college and my roommate had 3 different Dusters – a 71 six/3 speed, a 72 six/auto and a 73 318/3 speed on the floor.
Your experience matches mine – a 318 Duster was nothing to sneeze at, even bone stock. You picked up a real sweetheart there.
I am with you on the wheelcovers – I am normally a stock kind of guy but that was one of the most awful wheelcover designs to ever come out of Mother Mopar.
Beautiful cars. Now, if I could find a copy of that WV stripper in the same condition as your latest red model . . . Yes, I prefer to show bottom of the barrel ordinary transportation cars. Probably the re-enactor in me. There’s too much emphasis on muscle cars, and nowhere near enough on those vehicles that the “cars are nothing more than transportation” crowd drove at the time.
Awesome! I always looks forward to these Lt Dan COALs; They’re epic!
All the featured Dusters were cool ones, and I’m not sure which I like the best.
I’ve got an interesting Duster story that I don’t think I’ve told on CC yet. In the 70s, my mom had a yellow Duster as her first car. One day in LA, she ran it out of gas on the highway. She got the car onto the shoulder and hoofed it to the next exit to get the gas can filled up. By the time she got back, she was greeted with the wreck of what used to be her Duster. Someone had plowed into it, wrecked it, and disappeared without leaving a trace or a note. She was bummed, of course, but I think she had a love/hate relationship with that car and was fine moving on from it.
Besides the obligatory ballast-resister crapping occasionally, has anyone ever had a bad experience with a pre-smog A-body? They were the cream of the Chrysler crop and, with the miminum of maintenance, the slant-six was impossible to kill.
One note on those first two year Duster 340 cars: you can tell if it’s an original 340 car if it has the earlier A-body Barracuda dash with the three round binnacles. The same applies to the Swinger/Demon 340 cars, as well.
In 1972, the Duster and Demon lost the good, full-gauge dash (tachometer optional) and got the standard, rectangular speedo instrument cluster that the A-body kept for the rest of its life.
It’s funny, everyone always talks about ballast resistors crapping out, I’ve been driving and still drive several 60’s & 70’s Mopars and in 49 years, I’ve only had ONE to go bad on me! 🙂
Same here. 30+ years of driving and had a dozen or more Mopars and I only only one ballast resistor go bad in a ’68 Valiant, and still made it home by holding the key in the start position. Not the best thing for the starter and flywheel but I needed to get home
Nice car, er cars … all of your Dusters. The 1973 was an interesting spec at the nexus of old and new: 3 on the tree, drum brakes, no P/S, but electronic ignition. The Winchester gray color of its successor looks unfamiliar to me, and very handsome – not typical of that era.
I love this car. Mine was a 74 Dart Sport with a 225 cu. in. slant six.
I still remember the little door to open for fresh air down under the dash.
Congrats on your purchase and thanks for these great photos. LBT is in the background happily welcoming another Mopar to the yard!
The fresh air doors were awesome! My college roommate found out that if you hid a pack of cigarettes there the pack would eventually get sucked into the heater ductwork, resulting in shredded tobacco blowing at your feet when the weather got cold again.
I preferred my 71 Scamp that added functional vent windows to the air doors down under the dash. That was about as good a non-a/c car I ever had for all around ventilation ability.
The 9 inch drums, however, were truly awful. I am on record here as defending drum brakes as being perfectly fine in normal use. But those little 9 inchers sucked.
Yes I found out that the front drums on mine had a mind of their own, at the worst possible time (or two). That and the 13 inch tires, as I recall (6.95X13?), didn’t help on the highway one day in my relatively inexperienced hands. Just a tap mind you, but the Camaro with 7 (yes 7) passengers) was another story.
I know somebody who opened that door and came face to face with a mouse.
the fresh air door is actually missing in the red car on the drivers side. Its not an issue right now since its still in the 90s here but come December, Im going to need to find one
Another awesome Coal Lt. Dan. I too remember when Dusters were thick on the streets, before they suddenly disappeared. My aunt and Uncle had a ’74 Duster with a 318 in refrigerator white. It was a pretty plain jane car, but I still thought it was great looking. My Uncle loved the car, and it was pretty peppy for the time.
Your latest purchase is an awesome car, I am sure it will serve you well. Your list of requirements is pretty much the same as mine when it comes to old cars. Although I have yet to own a classic with A/C, as Canadian market cars still more often than not came without A/C even well through the 1970s.
I agree that the 318 Dusters moved out well for their time. The 318 always seemed to punch above it’s weight class for most years, able to keep up with or beat a 350 Chevy or 351 Ford. I dug up some old road tests. Motor Trend tested a 1973 Nova 350-2bbl, 1973 AMC Hornet 360-2bbl and a 1974 Dodge Dart Sport 318-2bbl. Here are there performance times:
Nova: 0-60 9.7 secs, 1/4 mile 17.4 secs @ 79 mph
Hornet: 0-60 8.6 secs, 1/4 mile 16.52 secs @ 84.66 mph
Dart Sport: 0-60 8.8 secs, 1/4 mile 16.7 secs @ 81.59 mph
I also found an old High Performance Cars article testing the 1974 Dart Sport 360 against a 1974 Nova SS. The Mopar again was considerbly quicker than the Chevy. The Dodge ran the quarter in 14.68 secs @ 92 mph (coparable to many high compression muscle cars) while the Chevy ran 15.14 secs @ 88 mph. In the end, both were deemed great performance buys for 1974 at bargain prices.
The Nova times are pathetic. I have a March 70 MT comparo of big cars
(No scanner, can’t post, sorry) where the 4000 pound 350 Impala hit 60 in 9.5
and quartered in at 16.1 @ 81. I know smog controls made a difference, but geez!
Well, yes the smog controls made a difference, but don’t forget the big reduction in compression ratios, and camshafts were also altered. While smog controls often get the blanket blame for performance loss, it really was the loss of compression, poor combustion chambers and cams that killed the power. The smog controls really had more effect on the poor driveability and part throttle operation. That 1973 test was also done by MT and which meant that it was a CA emissions car, which wouldn’t have performed as well as a Federal Car.
I have that same road test with the Impala, which ran a fantastic ET for such a large car (I remember the Ford 390 being a stone). That said, note that the Impala trap speed was only 81 mph which was not much faster than the Nova’s 79 mph (the Dart was only 81 mph). IIRC, that Impala had pretty aggressive rear gearing, which was likely the real result of the quick ET. Trap speed is more indicative of the power to weight ratio, while ET is often more effected by how well the car launches. I am pretty sure that Nova had some pretty tall rear gears, which would have really killed the ET.
I also forgot to mention that ’74 Nova SS was also a 350 powered car, but was the more powerful 4-barrel L48. It was also a Federal emissions car, but at the hands of the aggressive driving Joe Oldham. Both the Nova and the Dart had probably about the best 1/4 mule runs they’d get being tested by that magazine, that is if Oldham didn’t “guess at the numbers” like he did with many of his tests from that era.
the seat of the pants feeling in the 318 Duster feels like it could be a 15 second car, maybe a low 16, so that article is probably accurate. Im getting 16 mpg in it.
These are great COAL stories.
I had a bought-new 1971 225 slant six w/3 speed on the floor Duster in that same green with the green/yellow plaid seats. It ran well, stopped poorly (Consumer Reports, who initially like the Duster, would re-rate the car unacceptable without the front disk option), and could leave a single strip of rubber on dry roads if I tried.
There was a steering column collar that had to be rotated downwards to remove the key and lock the steering. Putting the key back in and turning it to unlock resulted in the collar clunking itself upward to unlock the steering wheel.
The rear end would eventually develop an increasingly worrisome whine and the exhaust manifold would crack (both at low mileage), but I had other things to worry about (long story – see my COAL #7) so I carried on regardless and so did the Duster.
It ended up with my ex-wife and who knows what happened to it after that.
The recent Liberty Mutual Insurance ads make me smile as the car star is a yellow Duster, apparently seen by the ad agency as questionable a quality as its driver and Emu partner.
https://alltvspots.com/2019/liberty-mutual-limu-emu-doug-dealership-commercial/
(I kind of liked the 71’s wheel covers).
This is the actual car when new.
that’s a great looking car and that’s definitely 1970s Long Island
I had only one Duster but two Valiant four-doors. The Duster was a 1972 Gold Duster, optioned up, with a 318. My brother had a 318 in his 1974 Duster, too. In the light Duster body, they were quick. Both had optional front sway bars so they cornered flat. They felt lighter and more agile than the A-body four doors, and their more streamlined upper body and windshield greatly reduced air turbulence noise at speed. Dusters were designed on the cheap by Chrysler (there is an Allpar article about how the whole redesign hinged on getting the more-curved window to fit in the door) but they were clever and good-looking remakes of the 1967 A-body, and phenomenally successful.
And I am NOT posting comments too quickly.
Great read to kick off my Friday! One of my all time favorite muscle cars…right behind the obvious choice ‘68 Charger. We’re on the exact same wavelength with your choice of wheels on these cars. Stones are never a bad choice, slots and RWLs were absolutely MADE for all Mopars of this vintage.
I fully agree that these are some of the best all around cars of the era with a balanced mix of raw performance, good handling, and solid styling. And A bodies represented a perfect example of how a solid and well sorted platform could satisfy anyone from Grannies to hot rodders and anything in between.
I gotta disagree with the Corolla comparison though. Corollas have been appliance grade sedans for almost 30 years with no role outside basic transportation for the car-apathetic. The Civic is almost a direct modern equivalent to the A bodies. Ubiquitous, affordable, well built…check. Diversity of body styles…check. Everything from basic sedans to cheap speed….check. Extremely popular for modding and hotrodding….absolutely. And both the Civic and A body always offered that little bit more personality and sportiness vs the only-an-appliance nature of many competitors. Just my take on it.
Can’t complain about the Duster as I have always liked them also. Never a problem with the car and the 225 slant six is a great engine. Mine kept the wheel covers since at the time I had my 68 Cougar so no need to go down the muscle car route by dressing up the six cylinder car. To be completely honest I do think the hood scoop was over the top some but them you were young and probably way over the top.
Word press wins, I give up…
tbm3fan – You are not alone.
I have found that if the system seems to not be taking one’s comment, just close the laptop and go on about the day. Someone (moderator) or something (the System?) eventually finds the comment and does the right thing.
Sometimes.
It may help to be logged-in and to also select/copy the comment before hitting “Post Comment” as a backup.
I’ve been working with computers since 1966 and in some cases like this, not much has changed. But then again, my iPhone 5S (uh oh – no more IOS updates for me!) is slightly smaller and a bit cheaper than the IBM 360/50 MFT of the good old days.
Great write-up! Perhaps it’s just a generational thing, but I instantly think of Al Bundy whenever I see a Mopar A-body. I really like the Sherwood Green ’73, particularly with the original steelies & dog dishes. Simplicity personified. That’s a car with zero pretense. Gotta respect that. In my dream universe, that is exactly the car I’d own as a fail-safe vehicle for post-apocalypse use. It’d start and run long after the cockroaches gave up (as long as my supply of spare ballast resistors held out)…
Great story, and an excellent choice Dan. A beautiful Duster. Thanks for sharing this. Yes, most everybody loved Dusters. I thought they were far better looking than the Maverick, and Nova. Around 1974, the Duster, Javelin, and Matador coupe were my favourite domestic sporty coupes.
Probably my favourite car ad as a kid was the famous multi-page ‘Where We Go From Here…’ ad that promoted Plymouth performance for the ’74 model year. Multi-page spreads were still rare at the time. This one was pretty impressive as you flipped the page from steel bodies in B&W, to the stunning full colour image on the next page. I was floored the first time I saw the ad, and it helped fuel my interest in Mopars. The ad also proved to me, the Duster more than held its own in the styling department with the Barracuda and the Satellite.
Spread on the next page…
that’s a cool ad! Never seen that one before
I vividly recall that ad as having a sort of tie-in with Chrysler’s racing program in that it was possible to buy a body-in-white of any of those cars, effectively offering the basic shell for building a pro-stock or circle track racer to anyone who wanted one.
I’ll take one of each, please!
Chrysler hit a major home-run with the 1970 Duster. Done on the cheap off of the Valiant platform, one of the major defining features was the sharp inward angle into the roof of the frameless door window glass which, at the time, was the most ever on a domestic car. Practically speaking, this ‘did’ have a detrimental effect on front headroom but was one of those cases were the terrific styling won out; no one seemed to notice the decrease in headroom over the stodgy, bolt-upright, framed side glass of the Ford and GM compacts.
The only true quibble with the sporty A-body was simply economics; as a compact, the profit margin was much less than larger intermediate and full-size cars, classes of which Ford and GM dominated.
And one of the best bang-for-the-buck musclecars, ever, had to be that first year Duster 340. For a very low base MSRP of $2547, you got a car that was into the 14-second quarter mile. That was hundreds less than even the original bargain-basement musclecar, the 1968 Road Runner, which had similar performance but had been priced at $2870.
Some regard the 1971 Duster 340 as the pinnacle of the model line, primarily because it was the last year before emission controls, reduced compression ratio, and included the new Thermoquad, plastic body (cooler) carburetor. But the 1971 also had a big jump in price, too ($2703).
So, simply based on price, the 1970 Duster wins the race.
While the Duster restyling may have hurt headroom compared to the Valiant, it actually created quite a bit of extra trunk space by making the deck lid higher.
Nice find, enjoy!
I do think these are a good looking car, but do prefer the Demon’s taillights.
I never had the typical muscle car fan’s obsessiveness with how the car was born; I’ll happily take one with the small engine and swap it out for a big one and so what if it doesn’t have matching part numbers. If I wanted a GTO, I’d just buy a cheaper Tempest or LeMans and change the badges and the go-fast parts and turn it into a GTO myself. Much cheaper and it looks and drives the same way. Anyway, I can’t believe Dusters are selling for $50K now.
Never underestimate a Boomer’s willingness to pay thru the nose, just so he can lie that the car is identical to “the car I had in high school.”
When he was actually driving mom’s station wagon – on the rare days he was allowed to.
I only get it if the car is unrestored and never touched through the decades. If you dragged the car out of a field, replaced almost all sheetmetal except the roof and vin tags, I really don’t see the point of matching chalk marks and all that nonsense. And I greatly suspect liberties are taken anyway, I think more muscle cars rolled out of the showroom with full wheel covers(not dog dishes) and whitewalls than enthusiasts and restorers care to present.
I’m with you, but I’m sick of cloning. How much better looking is a
GTO over a Tempest, really? If someone with a numbers matching GTO gives you crap, tear him down at a stoplight with your incorrect engine. Built not bought
If I went to a car show, a well preserved Tempest or LeMans would be much more interesting to me than an actual GTO or “GTO” clone. Same with pretty much any other non-musclecar.
Funny that you mention that, because last month I went to a car show, and this ’64 LeMans and the neighboring Tempest sedan were the highlights of the show for me:
If you scroll down, there’s a much nicer 318/3-speed floor-shift car with buckets and A/C for $35k.
I’m willing to bet that the green ’73 is a 198 /6. My dad bought one EXACTLY like it for $2175 out the door.
I’ve owned many Mopars from a ’73 Valiant with a 198 /6, to a ’69 Fury police interceptor, and all the late 60’s – mid 70’s engines except the 426 hemi. My all time favorite Mopar was a 1970 Duster 340, 3-speed stick 3.91 rear gears. I “dusted” many a big block Chevelle, Camaro and even a ’73 SD455 Trans Am in my 340.
I also owned a ’74 Duster 318 A/T and it was no slouch either, but nothing like the 340.
I LOVE Dusters too!
Pity the poor 198 slant-six. It was devised by using the 225 block with a different crankshaft. It only lasted for five years (the exact same time frame as the E-body ponycar). It was supposed to be a better, more modern engine than the 170.
Then, two years later (the last for the A-body), Chrysler comes up with the Feather Duster fuel mizer package! Seems like a 198 version of the Feather Duster might have come off quite a bit better.
According to this guy the 170 is the hot ticket for hopping up.
Those of us who are a certain vintage can remember when the Duster (and its Dodge cousin, the Demon) were thick on the ground. It is rare to spot one in the wild these days; the ones that haven’t succumbed to terminal Mopar body rust, have fallen down the food chain to the point where they are disposable if anything breaks. An Air Force buddy of mine had an early seventies Duster with the 340 when I had my Nova SS. The Duster was handicapped by only having a three speed manual transmission and a 3.55 rear end, compared to the Nova’s four speed/3.73 Posi combo. The Nova was quicker off the line but by 60 MPH or so the Duster would be even and gradually pull ahead. We were stationed at Travis AFB then which has two 11,000 foot runways; we (jokingly) talked about trying to sneak onto a runway for some top speed running. Of course it was just talk, if we had tried that we would probably still be in jail, or maybe under the jail. I can tell you that the Nova would just about reach 120 MPH, which was plenty fast enough given the bias ply tires and overall condition of the car.
I guess you might enjoy that vintage film strip comparing the Duster against the Ford Maverick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5nWUvROYF4
Interesting trivia, the Duster was also sold in South Africa as the Valiant Charger.
http://www.africanmusclecars.com/index.php/valiant-plymouth/valiant-charger
https://www.africanmusclecars.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=7094
I really missed the window on buying one of these, they were really the last attainable Muscle car bodystyles from the golden era, but people were so blinded by 69 Camaros, fastback Mustangs and B bodies their values remained very reasonable. I would find super clean examples and even the occasional 340 for the same as what I paid for my Cougar at the time online, but being 17 it wasn’t exactly realistic for me to fly out of state to get one, and local ones were too rotten to mess with, so I settled. A few years later when the muscle car well got tapped dry the investment collectors caught wind of Dusters and my prospects of buying one went from “someday” to, “ugh, screw these 5 figure asking prices, I’ll just soup up the Cougar”.
Its odd how Chrysler treated hot A bodies vs the B body intermediates in relation to other competitors. 340s were reportedly hotter off the showroom floor than a lot of the heavy hitters with their big blocks, yet they never had any cute irreverent name like the Roadrunner or Superbee or even the more serious R/T, it was just Duster 340 and Demon 340, or GTS and Swinger 340 for that matter in the case of the Dart for the performance models. The model names were irreverent enough in their case I guess, but it’s very disconnected compared to Chevy where the SS spanned the lineup.
Another cool car for Lt. Dan!
Can I be in your will? 😎
I’m pretty sure I’ve relayed my sob story about my six weeks with my 1975 Dodge Dart Sport with the 360 and the subsequent accident on here before. No need to go through all of that again.
As a young kid, I was part of a race team that campaigned a 70 Duster with a 340 and TQ that did pretty well at the local 1/8 mile tracks. To this day, my heart skips a beat when I see a Duster, just from the positive experiences and deep memories of I have of those cars.
Every so often, I entertain the thought of getting another A body of some sort. But then, I realize the ones I would like would cost as much as a new Challenger. At that point, I think I should go for the Challenger instead.
Great to read another coal from you, LtDan!
Hope you have lots of fun with the Duster and glad to hear that you have replaced the wheels – these look so narrow tracked at the rear in stock form, but so right with wider rear wheels, like they were designed for it!
Any photos of it on it’s new rims?
just the lead picture for the story for now
I used to pass by a 340 auto Demon, in Petty Blue with white stripes, parked on a driveway all the time. It looked brand new, even well into the early ’90’s. One day it was for sale, and of course, I had no free cash. He sold it for a lot less than it was worth, even in 1993 or so. I’ve seen it quite a few times since it was sold, usually on Sat mornings in the summer and fall. It still looks great and that paint shines like crazy. While I would, and always did prefer a B-Body or E-Body car, the sole A-Body car I would love to have is a Demon/Duster 340.
Here in the salt belt, there’s a reason that Dusters were often called Rusters.
Still great cars for the money.
I don’t believe these had factory-integrated, in-dash AC. I know the one I had as a company car came with one of those under-dash units with no recirculate setting.
Now, could someone please explain to me why those awful Liberty Mutual Insurance commercials with the emu also come equipped with a Duster or Demon from that time period. Every time I see one of those commercials, I stop paying attention to what they’re selling and try to figure out what year and which model that car is. They, I wonder what their ad agency could possibly have been thinking either with the emu or with the car.
Re the AC
You mean no fresh setting, hang on units are recirculaters by nature.
Having said that, if the AC was controlled by the pushbuttons on the dash it was a full function system, with fresh, max and reheat.
The system does appear hang on because there was no place in the old dash design to put vents.
Yep, Dusters used to be everywhere; now they’re rare.
A colleague of mine bought a ’73 (I think) new. I’m remembering it as gold, with similar upholstery. It probably had the 225; I know it had automatic and A/C. It took her through a major career transition, graduate school for her doctorate, and beyond, apparently with a minimum of fuss. Definitely a winner for Chrysler.
Those BEAUTIFUL dished and slotted mags! I had a set of American Racing slots on a 70 Charger and added the three blade spinner caps. I get so tired of seeing the FLAT faced, 6/8/10/12 spoked variations that show up on today’s cars! I also had a red/white Dart Sport, 318/auto. Nice car you found there, LtDan! 🙂
The green duster really brought back memories! Ours was a ’73 with the 225 slant 6 and nothing else. My parents bought it for us as a wedding gift. It came form the factory with all sorts of problems. I remember the salesman telling me it’d have to come in for things and it did so often we called it Schlep because we kept schlepping it to the dealer. Probably the worst initial problem was that the ;three on the tree; gearshift lever hit the dash in 3rd.
After the car was finally assembled correctly it was absolutely reliable. It’d start at 25 below zero although the car was initially hard to shift when that cold.
In ’80 we’d moved to California and it had lots of rust holes and no A/C, so we traded it in for a ;81 Honda Prelude.
I talked my dad into buying a brand new 1973 340 Duster w/auto transmission. This being the first year of the “lean burn” engine (all show and no go). This was the most disappointing new car either of us ever purchased. Got 10 miles to the gallon, wouldn’t outrun a 1970 318 cu in. Least amount of time he ever kept a new car (he hated it. He was 60 years old at the time of purchase). Turned it in at 2 yrs old with 13,000 miles on a 1975 Olds Cutlass Supreme like my 74.
My first car was a 72 Plymouth Duster. I picked it out at the lot for my Grandmother. She gave it to me when I got my license. How cool it was a lot of fun. I guess the little dirt devil on the back interested me as a child. I drove the wheels off of it. Ah the memories❤️❤️