I saw this 1973-74 Duster at a recent Quad Cities Cruisers show. Nice old Duster, right? Sure. But it was a little different. Maybe you can tell already…
Yes sir, this car had a very interesting color combination. Yellow with black stripes, blue seats and green dash and door panels. You see, there really WAS a lot of color choices back in the 1970s!
BUT THE RESALE VALUE!!! -Everyone that sees his car as an appliance.
That people bought a Toyota already.
It looks to me like he bought a body and put whatever interior parts he could find in it.
love the hubcaps.
How easy is it to change out the dashboards in these cars? My Scamp had a steel, body color painted dash. I tend to think this car started out green. Someone painted it yellow at some point. The seats are probably just the best set of used seats that were available. I had a set of these hubcaps after I’d mailed all the original ones into the woods outside of corner exits. They suffered the same fate.
Either the car was originally white or blue, or that’s a salvaged interior, but I doubt it. Looks to me like a cloned “340 Duster”, just like all the fake Camaro, Chevelle, Nova & Impala SS that crop up.
Phonies all.
I hate flat black hoods… Just TRY to get errant wax off one!
An application of vinyl paint might improve the interior of this car quite a bit. Black would look good with yellow exterior although warm in the summer.
No way are the seats and paint factory orginal, LOL. 😉
Sure, the 70’s color combos were nutty, but not this nuts!
Based on the grille, that is a 1973 or ’74 model. That style of side stripes would be correct for a 71-72 Duster 340, but not a ’73 or 74.
1973 was also the last year for the 340 (replaced with the 360 for 1974).
Those are 1972-only wheelcovers, too. I have also never seen a Mopar A body with matte black wipers. FrankenDuster.
Maybe but those hubcaps got another life in Aussie on the VK Valiant 75/76
Was just going to say this.
Either he is pretty proud of it regardless of what others think or he just got lost while looking for the parking lot. I’d be happy to tool around in this if it is a slant six or 318.
Make mine Panther Pink(not sure if the hi impact colours were still around when this car was built),340 4 speed.
You’d go nuts over the Duster Id regularly see coming down Murray Ave in front of my old apartment: Panther Pink with AAR stripes, no hood at all and a big nasty blower with hi-rise manifold. Drag-lite wheels all around but steamrollers out back. You could hear that guy coming for a good minute before he went past. Im no fan of pink, but DAMN that car was hot business!
Even though it’s not correct for the year, the guy did a good job imitating the matte OEM black hood treatment. It was done in the same manner for the 1972 and earlier Duster 340 with the matte black extending back around the quarter windows. They were also the cars that invariably had the huge ‘340 Wedge’ engine call-out decal covering the driver’s side front quarter of the hood.
I find a V-8, larger rear tires, rally wheels, and a back end rake completely transforms the Duster, into something much more… contentious. Otherwise, I found most of them on the road at the time looked, stylistically, so short of their potential.
+1 on that. These cars respond to a rake and big-n-littles like no other.
This frankenstein’d look is what my mini trucking friends used to call ‘under construction’ back in the late 80s and early 90s. This guy isn’t done with this Duster, from the looks of things.
Agreed. The 45 degree curve of the side glass could really mess with the looks of lower end models. Chrysler stylist John Samsen in his own words sums it up perfectly:
After some study, I drew lines on the clay that curved the door shape upward and forward into the roof, and carried the lower character line into the quarter panel, making it rise and suggest a big rear wheel.
It’s Fall 1981 again! This looks just like the many darts, valiants and dusters that were in my high school’s student parking lot. The only thing that outnumbered them were Ford F-100 pickups.
I have some idea where that guy is coming from. My red on red 1969 Valiant Signet had a gold front seat. During the entire time I owned the car I never saw another one at all – let alone in a wrecking yard – with a red interior. Not even a 4-door sedan. Of course I could have reupholstered the seat but then it would have been necessary to do something about the gold-colored molded plastic covers on the outsides of the metal frames on which the seat backs folded forward.
I remember a friend who bought a new Datsun 210 about 1981. The car had this kind of pale red clay/adobe color inside and out. It looked as if the car had been fully assembled and the interior installed before it was rolled into one of those paint baths.