(first posted 3/28/2011) You know those anti-meth ads, which graphically show the physiological effects of speed—lots of bad skin and rotten teeth? Well, this car is the automotive equivalent of the tweaker. I found it sitting forlorn among the dust bins in a dirty alley, complete with lumpy, flaking yellow skin, bald tires revealing their cords, and exuding the smell of cold, stale tobacco. And desperately awaiting its next hit of cheap crank. The Duster 340 is the speed freak incarnate.
Recently, I spelled out my Curbside Classic check list. Here’s the fail list: perfectly restored Duster 340s and all the other vintage cars, rods and exotics tucked away in their cozy garages only to come out on warm Sundays. There’s plenty of places to see them in the flesh, in print, and on the web. I’m looking for unvarnished street-side authenticity. And this Duster is dripping with it.
No polished Cragar S/S’s with big fat rubber here. Just two pairs of mismatched el-cheapo Pep Boys wheels and original-sized threadbare shoes. And check out that interior: all business (and butts). I wouldn’t want to meet this tough customer in a dark and dusty alley—oh, wait, I just did.
And not for the first time either. My traumatic stress-inducing encounter was in a purple-colored doppelganger of this car including a bald tire (right rear in this case, couldn’t help but miss it as I walked up to the passenger side door)). Once again, a hitchhiking story or, rather, nightmare. Heading to Baltimore to visit the folks, I got picked up by a crazed-looking human counterpart to our featured Duster, right down to the yellowish tint to his skin. There wasn’t much doubt in my mind about the role amphetamines were playing in his metabolic processes.
He drove like an utter maniac (it was probably the most terrifying ride ever). I couldn’t relax enough to enjoy the 340’s heavy-metal glass-pack shorty-pipe solo. At nothing less than 95, the trip from Hagerstown to the Beltway was at least mercifully quick. I’m sure we exposed one more layer of polyester cord on his baldest tire. Good thing it wasn’t the last.
In every way possible, it was the polar opposite of my earlier hitch-hiking ride , a slow and steady chuff through swirling snow in a 1951 Plymouth Cranbrook. But then, the Duster 340 was the yang to the Cranbrook’s yin. Exactly what Plymouth needed in 1970.
When the ChryCo big-wigs decided to split the Barracuda from the Valiant A-body for 1970, it created both a legend (in the ’cuda) and a problem (for the Valiant). Through 1969, the mini-Marlin had been the sporty Valiant variant. Now, Plymouth was looking at a 1970 compact line-up of nothing but boxy sedans—Cranbrooks reincarnated. And right during the nexus of the youth and performance-oriented sixties-seventies carmonic convergence.
Something had to be done and quickly as well as cheaply. And so it was. Out of new-car development dust (a mere fifteen million bucks and six weeks from sketches to tooling) the Duster was created. Obviously, it rode on Valiant underpinnings and shared its front end sheet metal. But the transformation from the boxy donor to the bumble-bee shaped Duster was a neat trick, especially that first application ever of 45-inch radius curved side glass. It put your head mighty close to the window, but then Duster 340 drivers were more likely to be wearing mullets than fedoras.
The Duster was an instant hit: almost a quarter million sold in 1970 alone. How’s that for ROI? Thanks to the little tornado that could, Plymouth reclaimed the number three sales spot in 1971 and 1974. The Duster really was the anti-Cranbrook (and the anti-Claybrook), if not the exactly the Demon himself; that would be Dodge’s badge-engineered Duster equivalent. As usual, Dodge muscled into Plymouth’s action—when it had any.
Speaking of muscle, the 340 had more than plenty. Advertised at an insurance-friendly 275 horsepower (in 1970), the informed-user consensus had it pegged at more like 325+. Maximum revs: 6,000. Weight: 3110 lb. Good to go for a six second zero to sixty, and the quarter mile in 13 something @ 100+ mph. That’s with the pathetic bald little tires of time. Good enough, too, to dust 350 Novas and Camaros all day long. It would take a hemi ’cuda or a healthy 427 Chevy to make the pesky twister eat dust.
Compared to that kind of big-block metal, the Duster 340 was a steal: $2547; that’ll buy you an Aveo in today’s dollars. It was the best dollar to performance equation in the land. Fast fun was dirt cheap in 1970!
But the fun wouldn’t last. Although plain-Jane Dusters stayed hugely popular right to the end, the 340 had its best year in 1970, with over 25,000 sold. It morphed into the de-smogged Duster 360, and by 1975, a mere 1400 were sold. The vortex had dissipated, but not before it became a legend—or a living relic—like this one.
This is a great find! Love the cigarette butts in the ashtray. They are somehow very appropriate.
When I was a boy in the 1970s, Dusters – every version – were very common. If there had been a 1972 version of The Fast and the Furious, I’m sure that a Duster 340 would have somehow been a featured car.
Interestingly, the Duster wasn’t even supposed to have happened…Chrysler gave Plymouth money to restyle the Valiant, and the division instead used it to whip up the Duster. Top brass weren’t all that pleased, but the car turned out to be the corporation’s biggest success for 1970. Chrysler needed it – the corporation had hit a rough patch in 1969-70, as the all-new 1969 fuselage-body full-size cars weren’t that successful in the marketplace.
The Duster was basically the same concept as the original Barracuda – a pedestrian Valiant front was mated to reworked greenhouse and rear quarter panels. In 1964, this combination was left in the dust by the original Mustang, but the 1970 Duster actually outsold the Mustang, if I recall correctly.
Meanwhile, the much-ballyhooed 1970 Barracuda and Challenger had mediocre sales for one year, and then their sales collapsed for 1971, and never recovered. The cars that were supposed to be Chrysler’s big news for the 1970 model year were gone by the spring of 1974 (just in time for the Camaro and Firebird to begin their 1970s sales climb – another case of bad Chrysler timing).
It was the Duster and the sober Valiant – the perennial favorite of Consumer Reports – that carried Plymouth in the early 1970s.
History kind of repeated itself with the Duster in that it was almost exactly the same formula used to create the original 1964 Valiant Barracuda. As it turned out, although the resulting sales easily eclipsed the ’64 ‘Cuda’s, those sales turned out to be something of a mixed blessing, and the reason the front office brass were less than enthusiastic about the Duster.
The issue was that the profit margin wasn’t all the great on the (then) compact-sized Duster, at least not in relation to Chrysler’s other sporty products introduced in the same year. This wouldn’t have been that big of a deal but Chrysler found out, to their misfortune, that all those big Duster sales numbers weren’t the result of conquest sales from GM or Ford. Rather, they were sales cannibalized from their own, higher profit E and B-body cars.
Instead of buying a Barracuda, Challenger, Roadrunner, or Charger, people were instead buying the nearly as fast (but a whole lot cheaper) Duster 340. So, while the Duster was a huge success, it was at the expense of Chrysler’s other, more profitable cars, and that’s what hurt.
hey ..these plain jane 340 mopar babes are COMING BACK!! …just look at the classic car prices for them ..a rotisseried one is easily now 30k! ..a ruff one you can still get under 10k, just! ..an average to neat daily driver is now mid-teens, esp with the 340 and manual box (for some reason the 318 pulls them back, although to drive would you even notice, especially when the 318 produces the same torque but at 800 fewer rpm.. ..
(some kind of metal eating enzyme seems to be their worst enemy)
People who like to get places quickly may cry foul at this, but I still want the Feather Duster variant…a Leaning Tower of Power under the hood attached to what is possibly the most simple vehicle sold since the VW Beetle…yes, that would do nicely.
I’ll bet a Hyper Pak-equipped Slant Six would make the Duster a pretty fun economy ride.
First time looking at one and I like it. Somehow it escaped being hit with the ugly stick. Those seats are pretty unusual too. Are they standard?
No, aftermarket. The Duster came with a bench seat, unless you ordered the extra-cost typical Detroit-style buckets.
Posted elsewhere on the blog, it shows I have a little experience with these cars. Well, more than a little, actually. I owned it’s smogged cousin, a 75 Dart Sport 360 for a short while back in the very early 1980’s. But I got most of my experience helping to build and race this style of car. The basics of these cars were great, good room, easy to work on, cheap to buy, cheap to insure (generally) and cheap to maintain. Even with the small block in them, they weren’t too thirsty, but the slant six was the champ there. With the V8, they kicked *ss, as noted in the posting. In my neck of the midwest they rusted out far too soon. Again, this is another example of a car I’d love to own, if it weren’t so far away. I’d take it in it’s exact state (minus the butts of course), and make it a play day car. What fun!
I had a 63 Dart and a 73 Duster, both fine cars, but neither would reach operating temperature on a very cold day. I had to put a card board in front of the radiator. Never understood why this was necessary.
My 71 Scamp was the same way. It was the coldest blooded car I ever had, even with a 195 degree thermostat in it.
Very adaptable platform, the 3rd gen A body.
Anything from a 6ix to a 440 will fit.
You still see a great many of these on the strip. They go like stink!
Its not a factory 340 car, it should have the shark tooth grille. But it reminds me of every redneck I used to know that had a jacked up Duster (or Nova) in the 70s and 80s. All it needs is a Hi-Jackers decal in the window and a roach clip on the mirror
I pulled this Winchester Grey 71 Duster 340 4 speed from out of a barn last year and now its a daily driver.
Love it! It would shorten my commute considerably, but make it more expensive from the tickets I would certainly rack up. 🙂
Dan, who says that the original grille wasn’t swapped out after the original one rusted out?
Occam’s razor: what’s more likely, reproduction stripes were added to a regular Duster, or the grille was swapped out? (The sharktooth isn’t steel, so no rust).
Also it’s missing the tail stripe, and I’m relatively certain 340 Dusters all came with the round gauges
I redact my assumption about the gauges, I should have googled first
great car you have there . Did it come with the 340 4 speed or was it a 3 speed with 318 you converted ? Good luck trying to find a shark tooth grill , very hard to find . I have a 4 speed 340 dart and an auto 30 dart , wold like to add a Demon or Duster one day
Hey man I am about to purchase this car. Me and my dad found it in virgina beach virgina at a local car shop the guy is asking 3k. I think it’s insane that I have your car I was looking through Google and thought thy looked similar but upon closer inspection. It’s the exact same car
God bless the 340 duster. God please bring it back. Love u ma mopar
Fits the template of what I always had when I wasn’t driving beetles except for the missing post and the V8. Always avoided hardtops. A design that served well and long was the two door post with the straight six. In those days I needed enough power for a Uhaul. Anything more was a bonus.
When the A Bodies were redesigned in 1967, Plymouth lost the Signet hardtop and Convertible, arguably because those models were now included in the expanded model range – if memory serves, the Falcon lost the same bodies in 1966. With the move upscale to the E-body, Plymouth needed a car to fill the gap, Ergo, Duster.
Also, while it’s true Plymouth had to surrender their coup to Dodge a year later, they got the Dart hardtop in return, aka the Plymouth Scamp.
“As usual, Dodge muscled into Plymouth’s action—when it had any.”
No. Dodge agreed to let Plymouth use the Dart Swinger body to create the Scamp, in exchange for the Duster body. I’ve owned two 1971 Demons, the first an authentic 340 car and the other a 318 car refitted with a 360 crate engine. I loved them both, and I’d buy another Demon in a heartbeat.
So Plymouth traded a one year old hit body in exchange for a body that had been around since 1967… Yeah, I suspect Plymouth still got the short end of the stick. (not a knock on the Demon, I like the looks a tad more too)
Anyone have the sales breakdown for the Scamp vs the Demon/Dart sport?
Apparently there’s something to these being fast, as my lead-footed loves-to-go-fast father-in-law fondly recalls the two he had, but for the fact that he totaled both of them.
They never sold Dusters and its ilk here though its hard to tell at any car show, plenty about, 340s appeared in the Aussie Valiant Chargers but strangled after the print media super car scare in the early 70s, easy enough to wake up if you need to.
“…Plymouth was looking at a 1970 compact line-up of nothing but boxy sedans—Cranbrooks reincarnated…”
I see the point, but it’s a picture of a Belvedere/Satellite B body 4 door above this paragraph, instead of A body Valiant.
A good buddy in high school drove a hand-me-down ’73 Duster w/ a 318. It was pretty well equipped as a I recall and ran pretty stout, too. God we beat the ever-living crap outta that thing. It sure took a lickin’ and kept on tickin’.
And my granddad had a stripper medium blue ’71 Demon w/ a slant six. A white vinyl top, auto-trans and AM radio were about the only options on the thing. He’d traded in his ’62 Ford Galaxie 4-door for it. I remember trying to talk him into getting a Mustang or Camaro or something sporty instead, but he would have none of it.
Of course, my grandma always got the good car…he bought her new loaded Olds 98 about every other year back in those days. The Demon was his last new car before he died four years later. A conservative banker to the end.
I still love this car. Even more amazing is that it looks like the plastic grille remains intact. My 71 Scamp got bonked in the front when it was in for a transmission repair. The shop replaced it, but I never thought I would find one that was not cracked or broken – and this was in 1982!
I never drove a 340, but one of the 3 different Dusters that my college roommate drove was a 73 with a 318 and a 3 on the floor. That damned thing was *fast*, so I could only imagine what a 340 would feel like.
My good buddy has a 1975 Dart Sport with a 340 in it, used exclusively for drag racing. He used to get consistently in the low 12 seconds for the quarter mile, but I recall he was able to get the car into the high 11’s with some fiddling here and there. Unfortunately he has not raced it for some years now, but he still has the car. A pretty fast machine! It had a 318 when he got it and swapped in the 340. As you know, the 340 was not produced after 1973, Chrysler sold 360s in ’75 as an option.
The parents of one of my high school friends bought a stripper duster in about 1971. Small 6 motor, three on the tree, windshield washer was a rubber bulb on the equally rubber floor mat. At least it had a radio. Brother of said friend eventually totalled it due to tuning said radio then drifting across the centre… line. Those parents wanted to be sure their kids could drive a standard transmission. I got to do the instruction as I was already indoctrinated. The transmission didn’t last very long under this service. It remains the only non-synchro first gear car I have driven. I bet it was substantially cheaper than the 340 auto version featured here. But these cars were CHEAP in just about every way you can imagine. Distracted driving is nothing new.
Correction – I stated above that the featured car has an automatic transmission. The Hurst shifter surely would be connected to a 4 speed. My dollar (guess) says it also has a non-synchronized first gear.
But that wide brake pedal says automatic. What an odd shifter for an auto.
It’s B&M StarShifter, a pretty common “upgrade”, especially if it was converted from a column shifter. That big box is there to cover the automatic selector mechanism. A real manual shifter wouldn’t have that, the boot would be attached flush with the carpet.
I had one of those for a while when I was in college, probably around 1985 or so. It was the cheapest car I could find in reasonable condition, around $500 if memory serves. It had bench seats, a 3 speed floor shifter, and was a rusty fecal-brown color, a pretty appropriate shade for hiding the ever-creeping oxidation.
It was powerful enough to get me into trouble, and I had several near misses due to overly fast driving, insufficient forethought and crappy brakes. It had some idiosyncrasies that I was unable or unwilling to address at the time that were, in retrospect, easy fixes. The instrument panel bulbs were burned out, which I dealt with by carrying a flashlight when I remembered to. That didn’t matter a lot because the speedometer, which operated intermittently at first, ultimately died. It also could be a challenge to start sometimes because of a carburetor adjustment issue. For that I kept a small wooden chock in the car to hold the choke plate open to get it started, after which it was fine.
The second and last Chrysler product that I have ever spent much time in, it was very different from the 1966 Dart that my family had when I got my license. The Dart had the small slant 6, a three-on-the tree shifter, and was a very sedate, slow-and-steady kind of car. The main thing I remember them having in common was their propensity to rust.
The subject car looks to be in reasonable condition; minor visible rust, no dents, potentially easy to turn into a decent driver. I like its ambience, with the torn seats, hacked steering column and door panel, and tachometer with visible wires held on by a hose clamp. Perhaps the current owner will sign in again and give us an update. There are few, if any, of these things left where I live, and I can’t even recall the last time I saw one on the road.
Don’t want to rain on the parade of a nice article, but reading about Duster 340’s always makes me sad. Back in 1970 a close friend skrimped and saved all his money from summer and part-time jobs to buy a new 340. Three months later he was dead, losing control at high speed on a rural two lane road. I love muscle cars as much as anyone, but they had their dark side. High powered, poor handling vehicles marketed to testosterone fueled young males. What could go wrong? Around 1971 the insurance industry got wise and put the kibosh on these with monthly premiums that exceeded the car payment.
My dad drove a yellow, ’71 Duster for years, and it’s the first car I ever learned to associate with him. I believe it had the base 198 c.i. 6-cylinder engine (not the 225 /6). Dad kept that car in very nice shape, and completely factory-stock.
We sold it an eager young adult around ’83. He seemed thrilled with his find. I’m sure one of the first things he did was yank the 6 and put something else under the hood. Perhaps some Cragars on it.
I loved that Duster, especially the way the rear quarter windows swung out for ventilation. I can still hear the sound of the sliding vent controls on the dashboard, and can almost smell the black vinyl seats.
I borrowed one of these from a friend to impress a date back in 1973 – it had the 340 and a four-speed stick. What a beast, and fairly well balanced for the time – that light motor did good things for handling.
When these Dusters first came out I remember ever seeing one for the first time. It was like a car had been sent from heaven, the shape was beautiful, and the design was eye pleasing coming and going. I resolved I had to get one of these cars, and did with a 1974 Dart Sport. My parents’ car actually, but I was the only driver in the house. That car took me to Montreal, New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Ottawa, and places in between. It’s the car I had when I met my future wife. I have an AMT model of a 1975 Dart Sport in the same brown colour as mine. God, whoever invented brown paint for cars made a killing in the seventies.
An Air Force buddy of mine had one of these around the same time I had my Nova SS350. As others have mentioned it was noticeably quicker than the Nova, even though it was hampered by only having the three speed manual trans while the Nova had the four speed. I haven’t seen one of these in the wild in quite some time; either the tin worm got them or they were beat on until nothing useful was left. Looking back with the wisdom of the ages it is a wonder that any of us survived the sixties and seventies. We drove ill-handling, often over powered cars and never gave safety any thought at all. Now I don’t even like to drive in the rain if I can avoid it.
There was a ’71 Duster 340 in front of a house I passed all the time, in Petty Blue with the white graphics on it. I love Petty blue with white stripes! It always looked new inside and out, and the guy who owned it never drove it in the winter, he had an old Power Wagon for that, and I wanted to buy it so badly. He had an orange Roadrunner that sat mostly under a cover in the garage along with his wife’s cars, so the Duster was stuck outside. When the Duster finally went up for sale, it was at a decent price, but I was in no financial shape to buy it. I still see it a few times a year, and it still looks brand new. Sounds great. The Roadrunner eventually got restored but I think the guy died or they moved because suddenly, both the PW and the Runner were gone, and the house painted a different color. I see a couple of different orange Roadrunners around in the summer, so I would imagine one of them was the Duster’s playmate.