Here’s a nice pair to compare what two automotive eras have offered as daily transport. One more chapter in our ongoing saga of “The Changing Shape Of Cars”. This time, a 1974 Dodge Dart, and a 2011-2014 Honda CR-V, captured in El Cerrito, California. As proportions show, quite different interpretations of what sensible family transportation means. Or meant.
These Dodge/Plymouth A-bodies have received their praises in quite a few previous CC posts. They were the non-exciting purchase for a sensible family man of the era; a known quantity with modest style, decent handling, and mid-range performance for the era. Leaving aside Dodge’s captive imports, the entry-level range for the division in the early ’70s.
But one didn’t need to come across as a cheapskate if one chose this type of automotive practicality, as can be seen in today’s find. Not a lowly base model, since it carries the Broughamy touches of the era. As such, it’s likely a Custom model.
And while the Dart won’t compete in space utilization with a modern FWD/AWD people hauler, from the crop of the ’70s, it was one of the better RWD people haulers. At least, in 4-door sedan version.
These A-bodies may have spoken to the unpretentious and practical back in the day, but who do they speak to nowadays? Someone is certainly giving this Dart some use. The Bart mooning sticker in the vent window suggests a young adult. Maybe even a hipster?
If so, the ironies of time. But I get the feeling. Back in the ’90s, I thought of getting a stodgy 1960s Corona as the ultimate anti-cool expression around my college classmates.
The CR-V is, of course, today’s interpretation of the family vehicle. Hipster guy may prefer the Dart’s counter styling statement, but most folks I know would certainly pick the CR-V for its accouterments, passenger-friendly cabin, and cargo capacity.
Now, these SUVs carried in their lines and marketing the idea of active lifestyles. A concept so common now that few pay attention to the matter, even bordering on dull.
I won’t suggest the CR-V suffers from the stodginess once associated with Darts of the ’70s. But the point is, a modern-day HR-V can get as easily lost in a parking lot as a Dart did back in the day. The typical family car to glance over and not think about twice.
That said, there’s no way to tell if at some point youth of the future will embrace CR-Vs as the hipster-mobile of the 2030s. Right?
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1974 Dodge Dart Custom – “A Body” In Motion Tends To Stay In Motion
Curbside Classic: 1976 Dodge Dart – A Car Of Few Words
So true. Below is a similar pairing for the Cadillac Men amongst us, located in Eaton, CO.
I love El Cerrito, “Berkeley without the Baggage…”, clearly a prime CC hunting ground.
There’s a great song called El Cerrito about this town by one of my favorite bands, Cracker, that sums it up perfectly. The fourth line “I don’t give a shit about your IPO, I live in El Cerrito” sums it up perfectly. And then goes on to capture the working life in the area very well.
When at grad school, at Cal, besides always being in Berkeley, I was also in and around Albany and El Cerrito. Most everyone in my class lived in those three cities. If going out in the evening for something it was never College Ave near the school. It would usually be University in Berkeley or Solano Ave in Albany. Solano more mellow if you will. Haven’t set foot in Albany or El Cerrito since my 1981 graduation. Drop by Cal for photography and have to say Berkeley isn’t in the news as much anymore and I live 15 miles away.
However, Kips in the afternoon, always had cheap pitchers of beer after four so a lot of us would show up being two blocks from campus.
I suspect we may have crossed paths at Kips; I spent a lot of time there between 1977 and 1981or ‘82. Wasn’t their beer $1 a pitcher during happy hour? A pitcher or two, their half chicken dinner with French fries. Good times. EDIT: If the lighter colored Civic between the Rabbit and the RX7 is in fact the yellow color common on Civic 5vspeeds, it might be my roommate Ron’s. And the Westmore Rabbit could easily be another roommate’s. The cars on the street are very typical Berkeley 1980. My Vega GT was a bit of an oddball.
As for El Cerrito, a generation or two of local kids were taken by their parents to practice driving in the El Cerrito Plaza shopping center parking lot. Sunday mornings in the time when stores either were closed on Sunday, or didn’t open until “after church”. And of course, the nearby Golden Gate Fields horse track (and occasional motorcycle race) parking lot in Albany was even bigger, both for learning and for skid pad and 0-60 runs. Sans parents of course.
Interesting, I associate Cracker with Santa Cruz (where I live now) as they had some relationship with a Santa Cruz band, Camper van Beethoven. But growing up in Berkeley the real local stars were Creedence Clearwater Revival from El Cerrito. John Fogerty went to Catholic elementary school in north Berkeley not far from my house, but probably before I was even born.
They pretty much WERE Camper van Beethoven back in the day (some of them went to UCSC) and then sort of morphed into Cracker in around ’91 along with other bands (Counting Crows), we used to see Cracker in SF regularly. Johnny Hickman (Cracker guitar) now lives near me so they play here regularly which is convenient and sometimes get their old lineup together and play as CvB 🙂 Lowery and Hickman have a very interesting sound and do a wide range of stuff.
CCR was already well into the classic rock genre when I was in college. Still quite popular but older. Green Day’s probably the most famous Berkeley (or at least Gilman area) band these days, no? My old college roommate lives in North Berkeley right off of Gilman…
This song is crying out for a good video…..
-Nate
A little bit of rear sag on that ’74 Dart. But it has the broughamy touches as you mentioned, including the fender mounted turn signal indicators, the vinyl roof, and the bumper guards. Maybe a right side view mirror there as well The hood many be a bit askew as a result of the fender bender on the left front. Otherwise a 50 year survivor in not bad shape at all. Still wearing the factory wheel covers too. Better get a wiper blade mounted soon.
Great comparison of every day drivers.
It seems the leaf springs always sag on these older cars, over time. Sort of like how people generally stop standing up quite so straight as they age.
We have a 2017 Honda Accord to go with the family’s 2020 CRV. The Accord’s lines and proportions mimic those of the Dart fairly well, in a more rounded and organic way (though not as charming to modern eyes, IMHO). The carrying capacity and versatility of the cargo space in the CRV dwarf those of the Accord, and the “sitting up” in the CRV, along with the ease of entry and exit, are far superior to the attributes of the Accord.
Given that new low-profile sedans (outside of the sporty ones) seem to be going extinct, it is not a surprise when one does an A-B comparison with a CUV.
The rear leaves are sagging, but someone seems to have found the height adjustment bolts for the front torsion bars.
Some rear sag, but I’m also thinking that Dart may have no one at home under the hood.
Oh, for goodness’ sake, who hasn’t got some rear sag as age encroaches? Be kind.
Will the Honda still be running at age 50? Or will it succumb to Unavailabilitis of one of its many electronic modules?
The Dart has one: the electronic ignition. Keep a spare ballast resistor in the glove box and you are all set.
In my experience, the popular cars that end up being long-lasting will generally have parts available. The aftermarket likes to serve the needs of the older cars when there are still many of them on the road, many years later.
However, the quality of the electronic aftermarket stuff appears to be rather hit-and-miss at times (just as it has been for old-style condensers for many years now).
How many 50 year old Darts do any of us see regularly? Clearly there aren’t a significant percentage of survivors today no matter how easy they may be to repair with only a rock and a scrap piece of angle iron or else they wouldn’t be interesting to look at here on CC. The Honda, like the Dart, will get driven into the ground and eventually rust away but while it does will likely start every morning and pull out smoothly from its parking spot while dead cold without coughing, spluttering, or belching smoke.
As with most cars, the ones that succumb for whatever reason will help to keep some of the rest of the herd alive. Darts, like CRVs are, were disposable. The CRV at age 50 will be just as good a curiosity and reminder of the good old days for some that grew up in them as the Dart is today at age 50. The first generation CRV is more than halfway there already.
Oh, ab-so-bloody-lutely (as we say hereabouts, and, yes, folk of my age really do).
Modern cars are often a bit dull to look at, but old cars are crap. They’re poisonous, dangerous, and unreliable. We have wonderful memories of them, and they look good, and time just increases that, but they’re still crap.
And the Dart, which I like, and which to me looks better than 90% of modern SUV’s, was just a dull old recent-ish Honda SUV in its day.
Cars last longer now. So the practical car buyer has to ask themselves if the car they’re considering not only makes sense for them now, but also will it make sense for them 5-10 years into the future.
I recently bought a used compact crossover. I’m 60 now and don’t have trouble getting in and out of cars, but it’s easy for me to believe that in 5-10 years I might. So I chose the CUV over the (essentially very similar mechanically) 5-door hatchback from the same manufacturer.
Yep. Who would have thought back in the seventies that the Dart (or anything else, for that matter) would make it to the 25 year mark, let alone double that? But it’s pretty much infinitely repairable, given the continued availability of ballast resistors.
I have a few more years on the clock, and I totally agree on the just-plain-common-sense of crossovers. I’m happy to trade a little potential cornering force for ease of access these days.
Never found the CR-V’s attractive in any way. That black one comes from what I feel is the worst looking of all.
Between that blob of a black thing and the Dart, I’d take the Dart all day.
I was just talking about this topic to friends of ours last week, since they just replaced their aged Honda Accord with an HR-V.
Our friends are moving to Europe with their two kids, and wanted something smaller than the Accord, and newer. They’ve never had SUVs/CUVs before and are very much the “sensible family transportation” type of buyers, but remarked that “nobody seems to buy sedans any longer.” After test-driving a few CUVs, they settled on the Honda.
So far they like it – and like you wrote, it definitely fits the category of a “non-exciting purchase for a sensible family man.” I was actually impressed at their HR-V’s luggage room… definitely enough space for family of four to take a trip. And I bet it’s unlikely that they’ll migrate back to sedans in the future.
The Accord’s wheelbase is about the same as the Dart’s, making them good candidates for passenger-room comparison, whereas the CRV’s is shorter, closer to the Civic’s.
Foreign compacts have grown to be in the same dimensional “zone” as Detroit’s compacts were back then. My 2010 Civic, with its 106″ wheelbase, thus has acceptable rear-seat legroom compared to the original subcompact Civic.
The reptilian part of my brain still whispers that the Dart is a normally shaped car, but every other part of my brain shouts it down.
Yep, me too. But for a big chunk of car history, cars looked pretty much like the SUV’s that are “cars” now.
In fact, I reckon your average toddler’d draw that Honda-shape today. If asked. (Non-judgmentally. Non-discriminatorily. Non-traumatically. I shall stop).
In my opinion, today’s 1974 Dart is a new Toyota Corolla, and 1974’s 2014 Honda CR-V LX would have been an intermediate with some brougham credibility, maybe like an Oldsmobile Cutlass.
Between 79 and 82 I owned a 74 Plymouth Valiant and then a fancier 74 Dodge Dart. These were used as work cars. I think back of those cars fondly. Both had the slant 6 with Auto.
The “collapsing” rear end could be problematic. Perhaps something heavy in the truck?
Grandma ?
Most likely the leaf springs rusted loose and pierced the trunk floor, like my wretched ’75 Valiant. A heavy Grandma might have caused it to fail a bit sooner.
P.S. Don’t forget to take a spare ballast resistor with you and pop it in the glove box!
I’m shopping for my 17 year old and we will not consider a vehicle that is a shade of black, gray or white, which tosses out 90% of the dull CU/SUVs on the road. The future will have colored vehicles and the lot of these sad-looking vehicles will be avoided or repainted/wrapped?
The Dart has a COLOR.
It does, though I think the guy who pissed in the paint has diabetes.
Thing is, these old colours just don’t work on modern cars (and personally, that faux-gold on the Dart didn’t work then or now, YMMV, of course). I remember an odd metallic browny-gold turned up about 10 years back, like something from back when, but truth is, it just didn’t work on modern, blocky – and chromeless – shapes.
Go, as they say, figure.
Silver white and black doesn’t work on modern shapes either, which despite the proportional shift towards the crossover shape, are very much still in the jellybean 90s school of car design when cars still had… COLOR. Most of these modern crossovers would look better in primary colors, be it bright red yellow, green blue, purple etc. than these cold lifeless monotone colors. I like that Toyota’s been offering the RAV-4 in that bright(Grabber, to my Ford centric mind) blue, or the Subaru crosstrek in that sort of burnt orange/yellow. I utterly despise the crossover trend, but they are infinitely more palatable if they had more colors to suit them available and a buying public (and dealers) that wasn’t so conformist to only select three basic bland colors for the last 25 years.
It’s actually pretty ironic now that I think of it, the 60s probably had the broadest color palates available ever but cars from that era tend to look most stunning in our boring current day monotone colors, although back then they could be had with interior colors to really set them off. Think C2 Vettes, Rivieras, Dodge Chargers, Cadillacs of the era. Sure they looked nice in the various colors they came with but silver/white/black makes their sharp styling even sharper. The chrome bumpers and trim actually pairs better with these monotone colors.
As someone who daily drives a 1985 Mercedes 300D more for fun than making a counter cultural statement, some people are willing to put up with the lifestyle compromises of an older vehicle in exchange for cheapness. Of course, there’s also an element of adventure, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be being intentionally anti-cool.
I remembered the eastern European trucker that sold it to me was so confused as to why I younger guy like me wanted a slow, smelly, old car like a 300D. I wasn’t able to give a good answer, but I’ve since dubbed my adventure “operation don’t be boring.”
You raise an interesting point with that trucker from the east, which is that what I’ll call the niche Old-Ordinary car hobby is pretty much an exclusive for those who don’t have to rely on old and crapulous cars every day (ie: Westerners).
But as to justification, it’s not possible. You’re a car nut, as everyone here is: there’s no rationality involved.
Good luck with your 300D, and enjoy it. Practically no-one else will!
Changing shape and size never mind the glass area that changed, I must do this shot of my two one has all round vision from all the seats the newer one not so much,
.
This is a good data point for all of us (you can move it forward 4 years).
https://www.hagerty.com/media/market-trends/hagerty-insider/war-of-attrition-insight/
I think ’74 was a recession year so sales were probably 12 million or less but overall about 2 pct of cars from those years are left (probably with a bias towards post-muscle cars or other more unique stuff). I know Darts/Valiants had a very high survivor rate.
The CUV is definitely the midsize car of choice now. The CRV outsold the Accord 5 to 2 in 2024. Interestingly in 2014 sedans were still way more popular than now.
Cars had gotten so low that they pretty much had to start getting taller again, didn’t they? After all, people aren’t getting any shorter. But haven’t we taken a strange path through SUVs, ‘minivans’ (mostly not very mini), all sorts of in-betweens, various attempts at reproportioning sedans, to wind up at today’s crossovers? (Not to mention all the pickups – bother, I just did). It’s as though people had to try every other possibility first, like Goldilocks.
I know it’s not in the photo, but I’d like to throw in for consideration a 20-year-old Honda Odyssey; the international version, not the American one. On the exact same wheelbase as the Dart, it splits the difference between the Dart and the CRV in length, but is 20mm narrower than the CRV. It’s 135mm lower than the CRV (yes!) but at the same time 170mm taller than the Dart. Despite the extra height over the Dart, it manages to look really sleek. Best of both worlds?
The problem with that Odyssey is that it looks to much like a van.
Which is kind of revealing in the keeping up with the joneses aspect of all of this crossover stuff isn’t it? All I ever hear from the crossover faithful is upright seating position and the virtues of tailgates over trunks. Yet, the minivan did all of it better… “but those are lame!” “Who wants to be seen in a minivan?” and “A sedan? Who still drives those?”
One could say all of the same things about PLCs back in the day, right? Fashion inevitably changes. And practical considerations are not always at the top of the list. And FWIW, today’s minivans are significantly larger than the most popular CUVs.
I think Honda did a superb job of that Oddy, and it does fit here to mention it. Though you’ve chosen an awful pic (sorry!), they really did look sleek for such a shape, and i can personally attest that the seating positions were excellent, and roomy. I drove our one for a bunch of its 120K distance of ownership, and can report it was a better car than the tall Frenchie (Renault Scenic) we also had.
Even if a Dart-shape machine had modern seats and such, there’s just no way six people could be as comfortable in it (let alone the often-used-by-us seven). You just couldn’t sit tall enough.
In real-world terms, it makes the Dart look silly. And yes, it IS an example of the best of both.
Better pic. Happy? 😉
(Seriously though, I just grabbed that one off the web)
I attempted to special order a 1974 Dart Sport from a local dealer (Bloomington, MN.) but after their lengthy wait foul up I cancelled and went back to Ford for a ’74 Mustang II. All these years later I still regret giving up my ’68 Mustang in trade.
I still think the Dart is a handsome car.
Nicest looking of all the American compacts of the time. Which is really revealing, seeing it’s the oldest design.
“That said, there’s no way to tell if at some point youth of the future will embrace CR-Vs as the hipster-mobile of the 2030s. Right?”
Yes, they will.
That very sweet Dart was a very boring-old-fartmobile in its day, bland, dull, and indistinct. It was mum’s car, or dad’s, and the family’s one car-kid wished was something altogether hotter. It WAS a Honda whatsit in ’74.
And as for proportions, the Honda is vastly better suited to use by actual humans, in actual life, and on the actual roads. This very site has long pointed out that the low era was a (long-ish) anomaly, namely, that from birth to about ’60, cars were tall and folk liked it that way.
CC’s a site for nostalgist car nuts, including me, not normal people who rightly consider cars to be transport. But let’s not mistake nostalgia or love of cars for reality: modern cars, which most folk want as SUV’s, are useful in ways a Dart-shape simply can never be, and unbelievably good at what they do.
And the car-nut kid of today – us lot yesterday – can tell them all apart in an instant.
“..modern cars, which most folk want as SUV’s, are useful in ways a Dart-shape simply can never be, and unbelievably good at what they do.”
Agreed. Our last vehicle change (2019) went from sedan to crossover. At least that’s how I think of it (Mitsubishi ASX). Practicality unbounded, or a wagon on stilts? Whatever, it works for us; the trouble I have getting in and out is my legs’ fault, not the vehicle’s.
But isn’t it amazing how adept our folk were at maximizing the amount of luggage they could fit into a shape that was compromised for the sense of style? I think of Dad rearranging all the stuff in the boot several times to avoid having any luggage loose inside the car, in case of a crash. No wagon for him. Was he a worry-wart, or ahead of his time in thinking of safety?
justy,
I know all of what you say is true and I am only proving your comment to be correct, but I would feel so happy and comfortable in that old Dart, with all its endearing but sometimes crude Mopar quirks, just twisting that upside down key and hearing that starter…
I can’t stand SUVs and don’t know what a cross over is and don’t even care enough to find out.
Actually not keen on the Dart 4 door, with its oversized C pillars and obvious stretched wheelbase, make mine a US Valiant, they look a lot more correctly integrated.