Junkyard Find: 1992 Dodge Daytona IROC R/T
The Reatta we saw in the junkyard yesterday was a pretty rare car (though not so rare as its Hyundai Scoupe neighbor), but California self-service junkyards tend to be full of such jewels. Here’s a long-forgotten, one-of-250-built Mopar that makes those two seem commonplace.
B League Film Society team captain Brandon was in Northern California for the 24 Hours of LeMons race at Sears Point, so I decided to show him one of my favorite Oakland junkyards. First stop: the excellent taco truck that parks in this yard’s parking lot.
From a distance, I thought this thing was a Starion/Conquest. I was right on the Mitsubishi connection, but it’s limited to the engine in this car.
The Mitsubishi 3.0 liter V6 was standard on the Daytona IROC (according to the always-trustworthy Allpar), but the R/T was supposed to have the 224-horse Chrysler Turbo III 2.2 liter engine.
So, either this is a regular IROC with R/T fender emblems, or it’s a real R/T with an engine swap. Either way, there are probably more ’69 Hemi Daytonas extant today than there are ’92 IROC Daytonas.
With a list price of $18,532, the IROC R/T Daytona sold for $2,500 more than the ’92 Camaro Z/28. The Dodge scaled in at 500 fewer pounds and had 21 fewer horsepower. They aren’t particularly expensive today ( this example for $4,900 was the most expensive one I could find), and they’ll be worth that much more once The Crusher eats this one.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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This IS a V6 car with badges slapped on it. Engine compartment looks unmolested, dash has no boost gauge and the huge give away is its an automatic no iroc r/t ever came with an auto. Also the dodge sticker on the nose is in red the r/t's had it in white. There is the possibility that the factory accidentaly slapped on the emblems. Even a lot of mopar people don't know the difference from an iroc and an iroc r/t.
We have a 92 IROC R/T Daytona, 53K original miles, we purchased in 1993 from dealership that used it as an "Executive Car". Would consider selling for a fair price. Has been garaged entire time we have owned it. Ours is the real deal.