Junkyard Find: 1963 Dodge Dart

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

For the entire time I’ve been on this planet, Chrysler A-bodies have been a constant presence in American wrecking yards, and they’re still quite easy to find today, 33 years after the last Valiant Charger rolled off the assembly line in Australia. I don’t photograph every Dart and Valiant that I see in junkyards, but this series has included this ’61 Valiant, this ’64 Valiant wagon, this ’67 Valiant, this ’66 Dart, this ’68 Valiant Signet, this ’73 Valiant, this ’75 Duster, and this ’75 Dart, and today we’ll admire a non-rusty California Dart two-door that I saw back in December.

The last official year of CONELRAD was 1963, and here we can see the official CONELRAD frequencies of 640 and 1240 kHz marked on this Dart’s fancy factory radio. How much was the optional AM radio in your new ’63 Dart? $169, which comes to $1,296 in inflation-adjusted dollars. Not only that, but you’d be hearing pretty much nothing but terrible hit singles and ugly news stories on that shockingly expensive staticblaster, back in ’63. Think about that the next time you’re enjoying your $300 Bluetooth-enabled aftermarket car stereo.

This car has the look of one that sat exposed to the elements for a decade or two. The biohazardous trunk contents include some icky-looking time-capsule stuff.

The car was running as recently as 1987, when a student commuted in it to the stoniest junior college in California.

If the car had a hood (or at least an air cleaner) during its long-term abandonment, the engine innards might have stayed dry enough to remain unseized. Not that anyone is going to bother with rescuing a tired 170.

Being a two-door gave this car a slight chance of being saved by an auction buyer and restored, but the late-60s Darts tend to be more highly prized. Some of its parts should live on in other A-bodies, though.







Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

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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  • Doug-g Doug-g on Apr 14, 2014

    I loved the skating shoe picture and it worked (or so I thought) great for a thread going on with my FB friends. I copied and pasted it. This is how damned involved something simple can become. It went to PMs: [me] 5:23pm Thanks, I have S.O.B. on VHS. Now I have to drag out the VCR, hook it up and watch that movie to see that house... LOL! [redacted] 5:24pm its also in a 1978 edition of architectural digest, lol. i have the floor plans from the edwards reno, but theyre probably indecipherable to anyone esle. it was debbie reynolds house for a very long time...and one of my favorites in BH. [me] 5:27pm I LOVE that movie. The dialog was a bit contrived, but I still use some of it. "If you want to highlight the sins of prostitution corrupt a virgin, not a whore". [redacted] 5:29pm my dad used to work with blake before moving over to norman lear. i havent seen SOB since it opened...i didnt 'get' a lot of it. 5:34pm [me] I have always loved that film. Sort of real life in a way for Edwards. Oh, see you liked your "prize". I found those on one of my car blogs today and was going to put them in Alison's thread about finding her skating shoes. Then, as often happens, they inspired another piece of business. [redacted] 5:35pm good, cause she would not have 'got' it, lol. she's a little "linear" cause her heads going in so many directions, these days. [me] 5:38pm LOL. I sometimes wonder if Alison gets my humor at times, I hope she realizes that I am often kidding about things. Seriously, what a gem she is, her folks hit a home run with her. [redacted] 5:41pm i dont think she has a frame of reference for you, so it may not compute. she tends to link with people who live or lived in the LA she understands. then again, i'm always surprised when she doesnt know certain things we take as givens, such as "Shampoo" being set on election eve 1968. she tought it was just 1975 with a 60s look. dont give it too much thought. ok, its clearly nap time for me -- i'm rambling.

  • Mechimike Mechimike on Apr 15, 2014

    I love that the pushbuttons Chrysler used for the radio presets were the same ones they used on the automatic transmission (for those cars so equipped- I realize this car's a manual).

  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
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