(First Posted October 22, 2013) What really separates the hard core car freaks from the semi-pros is in what mental image they conjure up when you say “early Dodge Dart”. Even those of us who were around in the first Dart incarnation, the full-size low-end ugly space ships from 1960-1961, have largely repressed them. The real Dart started in 1963, when it and the Valiant got a major fare-well restyle by Virgil Exner, and went on to eventually dominate the compact class with its stablemate. And although they eventually ended up looking almost indistinguishable from each other, they didn’t start out that way.
Our featured Dart is a 1964, but it was only subtly restyled from the 1963. The main differences were a different grille, and some trim changes.
Of course there’s obvious family similarities with the rather cleaner and tidier ’63 Valiant (CC here), but the stylists did a pretty effective job of differentiating the two.
That started below the skin, even. The Valiant sat on a 106″ wheelbase, while the Dart had an extra 5″, all of it right behind the rear door, as is rather obvious. The wagons shared the same 106.5″ wheelbase, but the Dart sedan was decidedly stretched out back there.
That played itself out in rear seat legroom, which was…5″ longer, I presume. It certainly was generous for a so-called compact, which with 111″ wheelbase was stretching the term a bit. The Dart was to the Valiant what the Comet was to the Falcon; it was a successful strategy for Ford, so why not repeat it?
The front was valiant but not very successful effort to distinguish itself from its slightly cheaper Plymouth stablemate. In 1963, the Torqueflite push-buttons were making their farewell appearance here.
That tufted rear seat upholstery was thanks to this being the top-tier 270 model. Consider it the pre-Brougham era Brougham of Darts. Of course there was a model above the 270, but in that sporty era, that would be the GT. We did a CC on a mighty hot one of those here.
The 170 CID slant six with 101 (gross) hp was standard in the Dart, but I’ll make a substantial wager that this one is packing the optional 225 inch version (145 hp). Most automatic Darts, especially with anything other than stripper trim level, tended to come with the 225, which made a much more harmonious package with the automatic than the 170. And for 1964, the new 273 CID LA V8 was also optional, rated at 180 hp.
Leave it to hardcore cheapskates like my Dad to drive a Dart with the 170 and three-on-the-tree; Dr. Niedermeyer’s drive to Johns Hopkins Hospital every day, where the cafeteria there had his beloved baloney sandwich awaiting him for lunch.
The major 1967 re-style for both of the A-Bodies in 1967 gave the Valiant two extra inches in wheelbase, but the Dart stood pat with its 111″. The gap was thus narrowed down to 3″, and it wasn’t quite so obvious anymore, unless you knew where to look. Otherwise, they looked substantially closer related, with their refrigerator boxiness. But in 1963, the Dart was still reflecting some of that Dodge-premium, which in this case was not all that insubstantial. This 270 was $300 dearer than the comparable V200 sedan, or right about 15%. By 1968, that difference shrunk to $50, or 2.5%. It was all part of Plymouth and Dodge become co-equals, in the new Chrysler (non) hierarchy.
The Dart getting cheaper probably explains why it didn’t rate unique sheet metal anymore; there’s a price to be paid for abandoning higher ground, shaky as that sliver of semi-premium compact ground was. The Comet morphed into a genuine intermediate, and the Dart became a Valiant. Fortunately, everyone else pretty much abandoned the true compact corral, and so the Dartiants romped in their heyday, from about 1968 through 1975, until Chrysler decided to join the party one notch higher too. That didn’t work out so well.
My folks had a ’64– 273 V-8, three on the tree– with which my brother could make copious amounts of rubber smoke (one tire only), even with six of us in it. Good times.
An improvement looks wise on the strange looking first Valiant and the big Dart but still not as good a looker as the Falcon and Comet from 63.In my opinion the 67 & later A bodies got it just right,looks,size and engine options with the later Demon/Duster pick of the bunch.
The grille looks like a 64, which was also the last year of the typewriter transmission (not 63). The 63 grille didn’t have “Dodge” inserted into it. Rather, the grille had only vertical bars in it.
Good eye…
It’s funny how these things happen: I “knew” it was a ’64, as I had memorized the difference as a kid, but when I sat down to write it, I had the ’63 in mind, and that just took over without any kind of reality check. I wanted it to be a ’63 and thus it became one. The mind is a curious thing…
Whoooops. This is what happens when you start banging out a CC before bed-time. My bad; will change the title.
The Chrysler Turbine Car-inspired front end (whose headlight pods somewhat resemble those of BMC’s Landcrab), slightly curved beltline, and small tailfins add up to a fairly well balanced and attractive design, in my opinion. The two tone treatment on the roof and tailfins is not stock, I am guessing, but it looks like it should have been.
The 1963 Dart may be best remembered among non-enthusiasts in the US for the ridicule that it has drawn from the Car Talk show duo (http://www.cartalk.com/content/1963-dodge-dart-convertible), but it probably deserves much better. This car with a Slant Six would be a fairly stylish and reasonably economical vintage daily driver.
After my deep dive into Exner and Engel last week, your comment on the similarities between the 63 Dart and the Turbine raises all kinds of questions. Engel is widely considered to be solely responsible for the Turbine, but Exner is said to be almost solely responsible for this Dart. Did Engel pick up the front of the Turbine from this Exner design? Actually, the front of the Turbine has always struck me as its oddest aspect.
Or, did Engel make late changes to the front of the Dart? A question and another styling mystery to ponder.
The basic look was used almost across the board in 1963, so you could just as easily ask who styled the front of the mid-sized Dodges.
I don’t think it has to be either/or. Car design is a pretty collaborative sport.
I was wondering if you were going to ask that pithy question….I did a comparison of the two front ends once before; they’re obviously very related. And if you look at Exner-era designs from his last years, the prominent outboard headlight show up in a number of the them, in one way or another.
I think the problem is that we tend to imagine these Design Chiefs doing a lot of their own designing, which largely was not the case. They saw what was being done, and encouraged it or discouraged it, or bent the direction it was going. There’s little doubt in my mind that the Turbine car was already being worked on when Engel got there, and because it didn’t have a very long development time line, he could affect more changes. But I’d bet that front end came off the drawing board of one of the Chrysler designers.
I can certainly see Elwood Engel looking at those big drawings on the walls done by Ex and his staff and deciding that those big round headlight nacelles would be just the thing for the front of a turbine-powered car. They look like jet engine intakes. You are right, Exner had encouraged that huge headlight look, including on the 62 Plymouth. That look would even stay around long after Exner’s departure with the big pie plates around the lights of the A-100 van and the mid 60s Sweptline pickups. Ex also favored that weak, receding ‘chin” under the front bumpers which shows up in the side profile of this Dart, on the 63 Chrysler and on the Turbine.
The transition between those two leaders and the cars that came out of that period are quite fascinating.
Rear of the Dart shows a heavy influence of the Dodge Flitewing. Does anyone know if that car survives ?
I didn’t know about the Flitewing. You are right.
I have always known that this series of Dart and Valiant had differences, but had never really paid attention to the extent.
That rear 3/4 view is really attractive. The roof sail panels that ease into the rear quarter and conclude in a teeny fin is really nice design. I have always considered the 64 Valiant to be the best looking of these, I am now reconsidering whether the 64 Dart is even better.
That rear seat is quite luxurious for the era, especially for something out of Chrysler in that era. Great find. I’ll bet one of these with a 273/pushbuttons will really scoot. Have I ever mentioned that I really love pushbutton Torqueflites? . . . . . .
Allpar gives the 1963 sales figures as approx 130K for Darts and 225K for Valiants. So the perception of greater value for the more expensive Dart seems to have worked in the market. So why move the two cars closer in size and price?
It happened in stages – first the short wheelbase was stretched for ’67, then the ’70 Duster hit a sweet spot in the market and Dodge dealers wanted one so a coupe exchange program was started so that both brands got both short (Duster/Demon, later Dart Sport) and long (Scamp and Swinger) coupes.
Finally, in ’74 the Valiant sedan migrated to the 111″ WB Dart sedan bodyshell. Some sources say this was because the Valiant sedan body tooling had worn out.
Lynn Townsend, the accountant who was running Chrysler in those years, was all about volume. Volume gains were easy in the mid 60s as Chrysler recovered from weird styling and awful quality. But by 1966 those volume gains got harder to come by and he started resorting to cost cutting as new product was being planned. The new 1967 cars were dialled in during fat years, but things were getting lean around 1968, and this is when planning was underway for cars like the 71 Scamp that was identical to the Dart Swinger. By 1974 the merger of the two cars was complete. Townsend probably felt vindicated as the cars were selling very well with very limited differences in sheetmetal and trim, making for great manufacturing efficiencies. I am sure he would have loved the K cars.
I don’t know if it is fair to say that 1968 was a lean year for Chrysler; sales were actually quite good. For the 1971 model year Chrysler spent a boatload of money differentiating its mid-sized sedans/wagons from its coupes — and the Dodge Coronet/Charger from the Plymouth Satellite/Sebring. For example, front-door sheetmetal was no longer shared between the two brands as it was during 1966-70.
I’d guess that the A-bodied Chryslers became so similar in the 1970s because branding was no longer considered all that important in the compact class. Just sell ’em on price and reliability.
(Also note that Chrysler didn’t have a U.S.-produced, direct competitor to the Pinto/Vega in the early-70s. This may have increased Chrysler’s motivation to keep A-body production costs — and thus price — down.)
It’s ironic that Chrysler largely ignored its compacts during the early-70s yet they turned out to be the company’s most successful cars. Meanwhile, its splashy pony and mid-sized cars didn’t do all that well. Nor did the fuselage full-sized cars. Once again, an emphasis on styling backfired on Chrysler.
Going from memory here, but in the book Going for Broke (written about 1981 about Chrysler history up to and into early Iacocca), sales volume in 1968 was decent, but gains were getting hard to come by. The years of easy 100K and 200k unit volume increases were over. Townsend had been upping capacity and was hooked on volume increases. 1968 had been an uptick and a very good volume year, but some decent amount of that volume had been through some channel stuffing and costly spiffs to dealers for taking extra cars. Sales were getting harder to come by as quality was starting to drop again (after big gains in the 1963-67 era) and it would keep dropping.
If you look at the money lavished on the innards of the mid 60s cars (65-8 C body, 66-70 B body and the 67- up A body), that stuff was cut from the next generation of all of those cars. The 69 C body, and especially the 71 B body felt thin and cheap where the earlier cars had felt solid and substantial. Chrysler would have a major financial crisis in 1970 (that most people have forgotten about) and was starting to rot internally even before that. Chrysler had a very high break-even, and was like a shallow pond – any kind of economic yawn would churn up a big financial shitstorm at Chrysler.
I think that one reason the compacts were never redesigned between 1967 and the Volare was that Chrysler cut the program due to costs. A new platform should have been out in 1972 or 73, but money for new car development got pretty scarce in 1969-70.
Why Chrysler did not develop a subcompact by 1970 is an interesting question to me. Why they did not update the A body after 1966 is another.
Were their bigger cars more profitable? Chrysler developed new muscle cars, but they couldn’t figure out how to have those developments trickle down to the A bodies?
Good Lord, even AMC took a compact and chopped it off and sold a half million Gremlins. Why couldn’t Chryster?
And what was with all that mess about the Duster? The car had to be developed secretly. WTH? The Duster saved Chrysler’s short rear deck after everyone had a subcompact car to sell. What were these guys thinking?
I feel that the A bodies were deliberately abandoned, then when the Gas Crisis hit, Chrysler rediscovered them. Then, when Chrysler had the big chance to replace the A body – gave us the biggest turds on wheels. It is as though Chrysler couldn’t save itself, from itself. By 1977, it seemed that Chrysler had no respect for it’s own legacy and the Market seemed to have sensed it as well.
Chrysler was doomed for these moves and they lucked out when Henry II fired Lee, making Lee seek revenge through Chrysler.
Chrysler was indeed working on a subcompact in the late ’60’s, but abandoned the project. I’ve been unable to find much information on the car.
And these new platform was the birth of the 1971-81 Aussie Valiant and spin-off models like the Aussie Charger with the Hemi 6-pack. An opportunity lost… Maybe Chrysler should had built the 1971-up B-body on a single wheelbase.
In this era, Chrysler appeared to like playing around with different wheelbases or different sheetmetal on otherwise similar cars, in cases where you wouldn’t necessarily expect the models in question to have those differences. This rarely seemed to result in two cars that looked different enough or sold well enough to make it worth the cost and effort. The only possible exception that comes to mind is the Duster.
According to Chrysler insiders, the company had an excellent year in 1968 (market share hit 18.9 percent, which was a post-1957 high), but it was increasingly using profits to shore up its weak international operations. The company was not reinvesting in its core business – the North American operations.
The company did not expand its engineering staff, even though the full-size, pony cars and intermediates were set to be completely restyled during the 1969-71 timeframe. Engineers were also trying to meet the new federal safety and emissions standards. The result was rampant corner-cutting and declining quality. The company was skimping on the basics.
As one insider put it, “The trunk on the E-body leaked because the trunk on the C-body leaked.” The company was not using its resources effectively, and even simple problems were being swept under the rug.
Chrysler also neglected its facilities. They were in deplorable shape by the time Iacocca took over in late 1978. This had a very serious impact on build quality.
Regarding the A-bodies, they were originally scheduled to receive a major makeover for the 1972 model year. This would have made sense, given that the full-size cars were new for 1969, the pony cars were new for 1970 and the intermediates were new for 1971. Between the financial crisis that hit the company in 1970, and continued strong sales of the compacts without any major change, it was decided to continue the old car with minor changes.
I also found it interesting that Chrysler kept spending a lot of money to give the Dodge and Plymouth versions of its cars unique sheetmetal, but the results were hard to see. The 1970 Barracuda and Challenger, for example, did not share outside exterior panels, but to most people they looked like badge-engineered versions of the same car! It was the same with the doors of the 1971 Dodge Coronet and Plymouth Satellite. The changes simply were not visible to the average buyer.
Completely in agreement with what I have read as well. Model cycles began to stretch out during this time, quality was dipping, and the only metric being really followed was how many units got shipped this month. I read that at the end of every single month, sales execs would rent hotel rooms and start working the phones, pressuring dealers to make purchases, throwing in all kinds of spiffs and incentives. Of course, dealers started waiting for those EOM fire sales before making their orders, so it became an unending cycle.
For a company being run by accountants for nearly 20 years, Iacocca was flabbergasted at the lack of internal controls and systems after he took over. He was later quoted saying that if he had had any idea of how bad it really was, he would never have taken the job.
In retrospect, it would have been best if Townsend had left the company around 1967.
What’s interesting is how right some of his early decisions were. He knew that something needed to be done about the wacky styling, and ordered the staff to address it.
He realized that there was too much overlap between Dodge and Plymouth, which was one reason why he initially refused to give Dodge a version of the first Barracuda. (Dodge got the Charger instead).
He led Chrysler back into racing, and revived the Hemi for racing and street use. The racing effort, and revived Hemi, really boosted the images of Dodge and Plymouth.
He also made quality a priority, and Chrysler build quality and reliability improved dramatically from 1961 through 1965.
But after about 1967, he seemed to hit a wall.
My reply is to Geeber about Chrysler overseas markets operations.
It’s hard to tell, we could wonder some “what if?” scenarios imagining if they had taken different paths like using some of Simca’s own designs before chosing the current one for the Chrysler 180 http://www.rootes-chrysler.co.uk/simca-cars/simca-929.html or having built the Plymouth Cricket aka Hillman Avenger in a Canadian or US plant instead of Rootes plants could had less quality problems. The Hillman Avenger was also built as the Dodge 1500 in Argentina and got an afterlife as a VW model until the early 1990s when VW acquired Chrysler South America operations. I guess that was a car who didn’t reach its full potential….
As been said, the pushbutton automatics had their swan song in ’64. We had the ’64 330 wagon with the 225 and torqueflite, and it had the pushbutton tranny shifter.
I like these, however, the closest we ever came to owning a Dart or Valiant was the ’72 Plymouth Gold Duster my Mom bought in 1976. I believe it had the more common slant six with auto combo in it. It was a nice looking car.
I will agree that as frumpy as these got by the mid 70’s before being discontinued, they never held a candle to the Volare/Aspen twins that came after it, now THOSE were frumpy, and had little style to offer, and what it did have, you had to go find it.
My Mom hated these cars as they were big and clunky for she drove my grandmother’s 4 door Aspen, I think it was (or was it the Volare?) that was replacing her ’64 Dodge 330 sedan, thanks to my Uncle Ernie, whom was Mom’s brother and he lived near their Mom (my grandmother) so he knew that having a newer car would be a better thing for my grandmother to drive in her later years. He was, and may still have a thing for older Mopars.
However, if you got the sport coupe in either the Aspen or Volare, then these actually looked sporty and not frumpy, but every other body style in the Aspen/Volare twins, not so much. I will say though that the wagons were quite practical. My youngest sister, and her hubby had a base ’78 wagon with a manual tranny that they bought well used in 1989, and the very base vinyl interior. Had very high miles, but ran great. I think they kept it a couple of years. I know these rusted out very badly in their first year or two of production, much like the Vegas did.
That Dart looks like it has more rear seat leg room than a Panther or a B body. Damn…
Probably, because both b-bodies and panthers are surprisingly short on rear leg room! I guess those Chrysler compacts had really good space efficiency.
Pardon my ignorance but does anybody know what the plastic wind deflectors at the vent windows are supposed to do?
Probably to keep the wind noise down when they are opened and the car is in motion. I would imagine the wind howling against the open vent window( and those small deflectors would act sort of like those plastic deflectors that sit over a sunroof) or it could deflect rain, but since the vent window is so big compared with deflector so that might not keep that much water out
Makes sense. Thanks for your thoughts.
I’ve never seen a Dart from this generation in person, and only have bothered to look at several pictures before. “Dodge Dart” always conjures images of Darts from the 1970s, like the Swinger that was technically my mom’s first car.
This one here is very attractive, especially with its two tone paint combination. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that upper color on non-Chrysler/Imperial models from this era. The Valiant’s design is more cohesive, but I must admit I kind of like the extended sheet metal in the rear.
That side profile comparison looks quite weird to me, because I’ve never seen either of those cars in person.
Canadian market Valiants were the Dart body with the Valiant front clip.
For about the past six months, at the same spot on my daily commute, I have seen one of two old cars almost every day (just one car, not both; I assume they belong to the same person, who drives one of the two each day). One is Dart of similar vintage to the one in this post, a four-sedan, aqua in color. It looks like a lower-line model, as it wears dog-dish hubcaps. The other is a red 1952-54 era Ford 2-door post coupe. It also looks like a lower-line model. Both cars appear to be in very nice shape, although the Ford may be a not-quite-completed restoration project. Most of the trim is missing from the car, leaving the attachment holes exposed, and its paint has kind of a flat finish, as if it may not be a final coat. Sometimes I will see the cars parked on the street. Other times they will be in a small parking lot across the street from their on-street parking spot.
If you live in a place like Eugene, OR, or Southern California, your reaction to the above may be, “what’s the big deal about that?” I don’t live in one of those places, though; I live in Massachusetts. Around here, cars that old being used as daily drivers are virtually unheard of, especially ones in as nice of shape as these are. (Note the post from my fellow Massachusetts resident Brendan Saur, a couple above this one, in which he states that he has never seen a Dart from this generation in person.) The place where they are parked is along a heavily-travelled city street in Worcester that is lined with shops and restaurants, many of them catering to students from two smallish colleges located nearby. I am guessing that the cars must belong to someone who owns or works in one of these establishments.
As the weather has gotten cooler, I have been waiting to see if these cars will disappear at some point, but they haven’t yet. I would hate to see winter weather chew them up, as I am guessing that they came from someplace where they never had to see winter (even in the nice weather, whenever I see them parked on the street, I cringe at the thought of someone running into them). I actually haven’t seen the Ford in a bit, and the last time I did, it had a For Sale sign in the window, so it’s possible that the owner recently sold that one off. Maybe s/he concluded that they weren’t going to be to able to get that one finished, or decided to sell it to raise money to buy a beater so they wouldn’t have to drive their remaining CC in the winter. While it’s great to see these unpretenious cars being used for their intended purpose, let’s hope these CC’s have someplace safe to go once the snow falls and the salt comes out.
I’ve been going in to work earlier lately, and I seem to be passing through the area before the owner of these cars gets to work. A few times when I’ve gone by later in the day, though, I’ve seen the red Ford, so it’s definitely still around.
The Dodge Dart never appeared here something about Chrysler not owning the name was to blame, Valiants yep we got those mostly from OZ but some Canadian cars have snuck in, different spec to the US models no 170 motors only the 225 was offered which gave Valiants reasonable performance compared to other Aussie 6s quicker though thirstier than a Falcon slower and Thirstier than the red motor Holdens much slower than 3.3 Vauxhalls and nowhere near as comfortable and unfortunately terminal rust traps very few survive today.
“some Canadian cars have snuck in, different spec to the US models”
From 1960 to 1966, Valiants were sold in Canada in identical form by both Plymouth and Dodge dealers, badged as neither a Plymouth nor a Dodge, but just as a “Valiant”. (For 1960 only, the Valiant was also just a “Valiant” in the U.S., but it was sold only by Plymouth dealers, and it was badged as a Plymouth starting in 1961.) Depending on the specific year and model, some Canadian Valiants were basically identical to U.S. Valiants, some were basically identical to U.S. Darts, and some were a mash-up of the two (e.g., the Dart body with a Valiant front clip that Doug mentioned). The Lancer and Dart names were not used in Canada during this period.
Starting in 1967, Canada got basically the same lineup as the U.S., with Plymouth-badged Valiants and Dodge-badged Darts.
It was a real mash-up between 1963 and 1966. The ’63 and ’64 Canadian Valiants used the Dart body with the Valiant front clip. In ’65, the US Valiant was offered as the Valiant 100, and the US Dart as the Valiant 200. In ’66, all Valiants used the Dart body with the US Dart front styling.
The “Vart” caused a bit of head scratching among car spotters when I saw one parked up at a show.
No way was a 225 Valiant slower than a red motor Holden. My father had a 1969 VF with the unique to Australia 160hp 225, and it flew compared to the 186 HK it replaced.
Paul, my Dad worked at Johns Hopkins in the 60’s and early 70’s in cardiology and embryology. I asked him a while back if he remembered a Neidermeyer in neurology and he thought he did. Back then my Dad drove a white vw fastback type 3? Nice lines, I don’t remember it. My folks would fit all 6 kids in that car. Obviously, times have changed.
Being used to the Aussie Chrysler Valiant (this is an AP5), both the short tail Plymouth and the long Dodge look weird.
BTW An Aussie fansite says “Surprisingly the AP5 only shared 6 common body panels with its US cousin, the left hand drive cowls being initially imported from the US with wipers sweeping to the left.”
and this time for the photo…
I learnt to drive in one of these. It was the upmarket Regal model with push button Torqueflite and I loved it. Right up to the time an elderly driver in a Hillman Hunter pulled out of a side street in front of me. Both cars were write offs.
The first red car pictured is a 1963 Dart GT hardtop. The 64 sedan appears to have 63 taillights. I have several 63s and 64s, including two 64 convertibles. My wife’s daily driver is a 64 GT hardtop. The 225 is an ample engine for the 63 through 66 A body. Starting in 67 the widening of the body to put the bigger B block engines in caused it to gain sufficient weight to make the slant six struggle a little in performance. Still, it was the engine of choice for most buyers. I’ve had a 67, 71, and 74, all with the 225. I also have a first year 60 Dart which sits on a 118″ WB. Originally a 318 engine, the early wide block, it now runs a 383. I think Dodge was wise to drop the Lancer of 61 and 62, slight upscales of the same year Valiants and downsize the Dart in 63.
I have a cream colored 1964 Dodge Dart 270, and it does have the push button transmission. It’s the same color as the body of the one you’re focusing on here, but the top is not a different color. Interestingly enough, the top on your featured Dart matches the metal paint interior color on mine, which makes me wonder if the original owner had it painted a solid color for economic reasons…? I LOVE my Dart. 58k original miles and it runs so smoothly you can barely even hear it. One problem. I’m 6’3 and there is no leg room in the front. I’ve been thinking about having the seat moved back in some manner, so I can stretch out a bit. Any suggestions? Thanks! 🙂
Here’s a pic of mine…
At first, very quick glance, there was a reminder in this photo of a 1963 Ford T-bird. Round taillights, some fin work atop the fenders, flat chrome rear bumper.
Nah, it can’t be…..