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Final Parking Space: 1965 Dodge Dart 170 Wagon
Last week, this series featured a classic compact Detroit station wagon. I’ve decided to make it two wagons a row with an example of one of the best-selling small Detroit longroofs of the 1960s. This Dart currently resides at Speedway Auto Wrecking, a family-owned yard in Dacono, Colorado.
I have a 1941 Plymouth Special Deluxe project that always needs a few bits, but mostly I visit Speedway to shoot photos with my collection of ancient and/or cruelly modified film cameras. This shot of a Dodge Gyro-Torque shifter was a 45-minute exposure with a 120-year-old Ansco folding camera with a beer can-derived pinhole lens, using NOS 1971 X-ray film. As one does.
I’d taken a shot of the late-1970s-vintage Rocky Flats Action Group bumper sticker on this Dart (which now lives directly in the path of the plutonium contamination plume from the 1957 Rocky Flats fire) and used it in the FPS article about the 1946 Pontiac Streamliner of a couple of months back, then realized the Dart itself was worthy of its own FPS honors and went back for more photos.
This car appears to have been in this spot for many years. It’s in a remote corner of Speedway (which must be at least a square mile in total area), in a section that’s mostly 1930s-1960s Chrysler products and Chevrolet Corvairs.
Chrysler introduced its A-Body compact platform to the world under the 1960 Valiant (which got Plymouth badges a bit later), and it went on to be one of the company’s most spectacular global success stories.
Chrysler first used the Dart name on a Ghia-built show car in 1957, then applied it to a couple of iterations of low-priced mid-size cars during the 1960-1962 period (the death throes of the DeSoto brand during this time were causing some Dodge-versus-Plymouth turmoil). Dodge got the A-Body with Lancer badges for 1961 and 1962, then moved the Dart name to a slightly stretched version of that car for 1963.
A-Body Dart sales started out very strong and stayed that way until the model was replaced by the Aspen during the 1976 model year. For decades, Darts roamed every road in North (and South) America. It’s no understatement to say that the A-Body Dart/Valiant and their spinoffs are among the most iconic American automobiles ever made; if you are an American who was of driving age between the early 1960s and the early 1990s, it’s a near-certainty that you have at least some time behind the wheel of one.
The Dart wagon took the place of the Lancer wagon and stayed in production through 1966. In 1965, your local Dodge dealer offered three sizes of wagon (A-Body, B-Body, and C-Body) plus the Sportsman passenger version of the A100 van (which, as was typical at the time, was marketed as a station wagon).
This being a base-model Dart 170, it was built with a 170-cubic-inch Slant-6 engine rated at 101 horsepower. Like the Toyota 20R/22R and Mercedes-Benz OM617, the Chrysler Slant-6 is regarded by those in the know as one of the most reliable automotive engines of all time.
To a frugal Dart shopper taking the base wagon, the $140 automatic transmission (about $1435 in 2025 dollars) would have seemed like a foolish squandering of funds. Therefore, this car has the base three-on-the-tree column-shift manual, which got the job done just fine.
The MSRP for this car was $2375, which comes to about $24,343 after inflation. The closest thing to this car’s 2025 Dodge-branded counterpart is the Alfa Tonale-derived Hornet, which lists at around $30k (but which appears to be available with real-world prices closer to that of the inflation-adjusted ’65 Dart wagon’s cost). Sure, the Hornet is bigger, safer, faster, better-equipped, more fuel-efficient, quieter, more comfortable, and better in the snow than the Dart… but is it six decades better?
Speaking of Italian Dodges, I was one of the people who thought that the Dart name was too sacred to slap on a cheap Alfa Romeo for 2013 (despite thinking that generation of Giulietta was kind of a cool car). This real Dart was assembled at Saint Louis Assembly in good old Fenton, Missouri.
The homely Dart wagon didn’t get any screen time in this “Young Dodge” commercial featuring convertibles and hardtops.
It would be nice to see this one back on the road. The body looks ok but the interior is a wreck.
I watch some of these ‘car shows’ where they take perfectly intact classics, butcher them up, and turn them into 800 hp low riders. There are plenty of these somewhat intact cars floating around that are probably a bit beyond the cost-benefit of a restoration but would be prime candidates for a ‘restomod’
I’ve owned half a dozen A-bodies over the years, including a ‘69 Barracuda I still own. I learned how to (and unfortunately how not to) wrench on those cars. They were simple and durable, and I still keep my eyes open for a nice, low option 4-door.
I remember me and my brother and sister roaming around in the back of dad’s black Dart wagon; occasionally being dusted by the parent’s flicked cigarette ash. Ah, the good old days.
I would love precisely that version of that car in decent condition. That one, however, is beyond saving except maybe as a restomod, because who would spend what would be needed, or do the work, to restore it to its original condition? I guess that is why even ok examples of mass-market cars of that era are starting to cost big money…
Perhaps a far more interesting story would be how an individual came to acquire some 400 vehicles. Did he own a towing company that purchased cars from unfortunate travelers that had major breakdowns on a desolate roadway, and could not afford repairs necessary to continue travel? Or did he seek out the low buck junkers from every corner of the United States? What has caused this wonderful legacy to come to an end? Did the patriarch pass on and the kids want to cash out?
How many times have late 50s or early 60s parents received a phone call like this:
Dad I’m calling you from the diner, since we changed drivers about an hour ago this red light came on the dashboard and the gas station attendant says we shouldn’t drive any further….
I was a bit surprised to realize that, not only did I never drive a Dart/Valiant, I do not recall ever even riding in one – even though I once rode in a Dodge flat-nose pickup from the 1960’s, which obviously was much less common.
Too bad it wasn’t saved. Can’t tell about driver’s door, but all the rest of the glass looks intact. Strip the interior, recover the front seats, put in a 225 with a 4-speed (I imagine the shifter linkages wouldn’t be a huge problem, or simply make it a floor shifter), and call it good. The grille shouldn’t be terrible to find, but the taillight lenses could be a problem.