We looked at a variety of small Plymouths earlier. Now it’s Dodge’s turn. But unlike our earlier instalment, this time there’s just mostly one car: the Dart. Specifically, the ’68-69 hardtops. And even more specifically, the GTS. You know, the ones that ran big-blocks. The 383.
’69 VF Valiant hardtop, photo from the net
The Dart hardtop has a special place in Aussie Mopar-lovers’ hearts. We got the local Valiant sheetmetal bolted onto an imported Dart body, to make a Valiant hardtop. Not a great seller, but Chrysler Australia seemed determined to persevere with it, and educate us to the delights of hardtop motoring. The first one I saw was at the Royal Melbourne Show soon after it was announced.
Now, we never got big blocks in the A-body down here. To Aussies, a 340 was a big engine. And a rare one at that, only appearing in the later Charger R/T E55. Usually we only saw the 318. And not a whole lot of people bought those. The Valiant name had been made on the back of big, powerful sixes; even a small V8 seemed like overkill.
But back to America.
In 1995 Revell released a kit which modellers had been wanting for ages – the 1969 Dart GTS. A well-detailed kit, with a good representation of the 383, it was soon flying off the shelves.
The first one I built was an approximation of the test car pictured on the cover of Modern Motor back in ‘69. This may have been the one I saw at the show. I used a lighter blue, with a white vinyl roof. No tail stripes; we didn’t see them here. Yet.
Of course I had to build another, right?
An orange one followed – and I hit a snag. The stripes on the early kits had an incorrect white segment between the central wide black stripe and the narrow ones. This should have been clear to let the body colour show through. This was soon revised.
Here’s a shot of that packed engine bay.
And a darker blue one followed. Chrysler Australia introduced the Hemi Six with a facelifted range of Valiants, the VG series. A hot version of the 245 hemi found its way into a special model of the Valiant Hardtop, the Pacer (previously only a 4 door). This came in some startling colours, like a stunning dark teal with red stripes. I got the main colour right, but couldn’t get the stripes to stand out against the blue, so I left them off.
Somewhere along the way, Revell decided to backdate the kit to a ’68 – different taillights, grille, and stripe pattern. No problems with the stripe decal this time.
A more conservative one followed: dark green with a black roof, no stripes. But wait, what’s that sticker on the rear? Someone’s been to see Mr. Norm! Better watch out at the lights, then. But this one was tame…
You see, there were these hemi-powered drag Darts. Revell changed the tool again for a replica of these. By this time, I really had the Dart bug, so to speak. And so this happened….
Have to show that Hemi. The rear fenders were supposed to be cut wide for slicks to hang out, but I had visions of the hemi twisting that bodyshell up like a pretzel, so I did a bit of research and made up some underfloor stiffening members (scale 3” square tube ought to help) joining the front and rear suspensions as well as side to side. I narrowed the axle to tuck the wide-ish street tyres inside the body.
So, had I got all the Darts out of my system? Not quite. I had one more kit left over, so I thought I’d go for the ‘plain white wrapper’ approach.
Pastel yellow, white roof, parchment interior. Sleeper.
Back at the start, I said we had mostly one car to look at. Very significant, that word ‘mostly’. Because two other A-body Dodges come to mind, one of which I’ve built. Or one under two names.
In part 1 we looked at the Plymouth Duster; there was also a model of the ’71 Dodge Demon from MPC. Remember the Demon? That was Dodge’s Duster-clone. Released as an annual, it fell foul of the naming police just like the real car did, and didn’t reappear for ‘72. After years of modellers griping at them, finally it was re-released in 2024. It seemed to sell out almost immediately. I don’t have one of these.
MPC ’76 Dodge Dart Sport
But it was renamed Dart Sport. And I do have one of those. I think this one is a ’76. MPC released a lot of kits capitalising on the whole truckers/CB radio/police-as-bad-guys thing – I guess that was a reaction to that 55mph speed limit. Anyway, this Dart Sport was a (very) faux police car with all the lights and aerials, but kept all the good bits from the annual kits. So I left all the police stuff off and made a nice street machine out of it. It’s based on MPC’s old annual Demon tool, which has reappeared as the Demon, which is based on the old Duster tool, which –
Enough. This Dart Sport is back in MPC’s lineup currently as the ‘Weekend Warrior’. Complete with Hemi.
I think I like the red ’68 GTS the best, but the engine detailing on the ’69 is amazing. People always ask me where I keep my fleet of cars, but you must field that question regarding models all the time! 🙂
Thanks Aaron. That engine detailing is tame compared to what some folks do with added wiring, fuel and brake lines and carb linkages! It might look busy, but there’s actually nothing there that doesn’t come in the kit. I usually just work with what’s there, painting things carefully, to show them to best advantage. I’ll add bits if they’re obviously missing, but this kit’s good. There’s about 70 on display at the moment; the rest are packed away.
You do very nice work.
Thanks Evan.
Enjoyed this selection, Peter. Though the transfers are technically wrong, the white in the stripes on the ’69 really stands out, the whole looking very sharp. Better than life? I think though that my favourite is the one in Teal.
Thanks Bernard, Youlre right about the white standing out; I just mentioned it for when our Moparmates take a look – they’d be sure to spot the error!
I wonder if there’s also some Brazilians Darts in scale as well as their Argentinian cousin the Dodge GTX?
Hey, that would be cool, Stéphane. Some of those South American Dart-derivatives are wild. I don’t doubt that some Brazilian and Argentinian modellers have made such a conversion, but I don’t think I know of any. I have seen a conversion of the Dart to an Australian Valiant, but that was a one-off conversion.
@ Peter: As usual, stunning work! I swear, at a quick glimpse, I thought that the pastel yellow one was real! You continue to amaze me with your color/ accessory combos!! 🙂
Thanks! I’ve been quite taken by people’s reactions to that one over the years since I built it. For a model which I always thought of as rather low-key in appearance, it appears to have something which makes people look twice. Sometimes these things just happen.
(BTW, more B-bodies coming up…)
I had a real 69,340 Swinger all black Torqflite on the column,back in 72. I closed the local bar one nite and headed home. I turned down the street next to mine when some kid on a bike pulled out in front of me,well,I honked and yelled and he flipped me off,so I turn my head to flip him off and when I turn around,there was a parked car in front of me. I hit the car doing 45,lost control,went up in a front yard and hit a house. This woman comes out and yells,”Jesus Christ”,so I backed up and drove home with the hood buckled in half and the bumper dragging the ground,parked in front of my house and went inside..About 5 min later a cop knocked on the door and took me to the station. On the way he asked me if I had full coverage ins and I said yes,why,then he said that was my f##kin house you ran into. True story. Cops name was Bob Roger’s and we remained friends until hi death 16 yes ago. I am now 75
Excellent job. I’ll take the 76. They all look great.
Thanks Moparlee, I think that finishes all my A-bodies!
I’m kind of surprised the original eagerly awaited kit was based on the 69, I’ve long been under the impression the 68 was people’s favorite Dart year, with the round turn signals and the GTS being in its first year.
Great looking models, and I too kind of like the wrong white accented stripe on the orange one, it’s wrong but it looks so right.
I’ve got a 68 383 GTS in 1:18, one of the early Highway 61 releases in what is kind of my favorite color combo that year. Wish I could say I built it myself like you but no it’s just a collectors item. Best I could say is I took it apart once to undust the interior because I don’t use display cases.
Oops pic must have been too big, try again
So the ’68 was more popular, Matt? I didn’t know that. It suited me that they did the ’69 first, because the local Valiant hardtops had the ’69 tail lights; it was the rear end I was used to. It seemed strange back in ’69 that the coupe styling didn’t match the local sedan, same as it seemed odd the coupe was 19cm longer than the sedan too.
I think the ‘wrong’ stripe on that ’69 kind of picks up on the chrome and dark pattern of the lights and tail panel too.
Nice colours on your GTS. Kudos for not being intimidated by pulling it apart to clean it!
I can’t speak for myself being younger than their era, but when I became Dart aware it seemed like 68s were kind of the legends, with the 383 and Hemis in the primer grey fiberglass fender/hood state. 69 did introduce the Swinger 340 though which was cool in its own right(being the unsung precursor to the Duster 340)
Oh I was intimidated! I’ve pulled apart a few diecast models that have literally fell apart in my hands and the more intricate and detailed the worse they tend to be. Highway 61s are decent in that respect for whatever reason, I’ve got a few Autoarts and Ertl Elites that I try not to think about that didn’t come apart(or go back together) so well….
When we got the Valiant hardtops here, as an 8 year old, I couldn’t stand them, thought they were too long for one thing. Boy did my tastes change, a V8 Regal was my first car, the most fun car I would ever have.
The red 68 here is my favourite this time, The 68 bumble bee stripes were the best looking I think, the most bee like maybe. and the cool round side markers.
Jonco, they did look weirdly long to Australian eyes. I never owned a Valiant, but rode in several of this era. My memory of the sedan is how tight the interior was for the size of the trunk – that may have been in part because there were six in the car that day but three of those were teenage boys who could make anything seem tight.
It wasn’t the length of the hardtop that bugged me so much as that weird ‘inside-out’ rear window shape – nowadays I think it looks cool. I would have said the tail stripe looked odd at the time but nowadays the shape and colour would be a welcome sight in traffic – with either stripe.
Great work, as usual.
If you ever feel the itch to do another Dart, you should try to do a convertible GTS as used in the TV series Mannix, where a mildly customised (by George Barris) ’68 and ’69 were used as the hero car.
I have seen pictures of that car. It must’ve been hard for Barris to dial back his ideas for that one, would’ve been a five-minute job for him! Quite a change from the custom Toronado Mannix had before.
Excellent models as usual. I agree that the yellow one stands out as particularly good.
From a real world perspective, I had a ’74 4 door, and I can’t see any need for the big block unless you were actively racing. Mine was a low compression 318 with a 2 barrel carb and 2.76 rear end gears and it never struck me as particularly slow, so I would think most people could get enough performance out of a better set up small block without the extra weight on the front end and the need for a shoehorn to work on it.
Thanks Dan. So often when folk go and fit a bigger engine, it seems they don’t stop to think about these issues. As well as fitting a bigger engine, you’d need to upgrade so many systems to cope with the extra size and weight, not to mention the extra power.
I have to wonder how long it’d take to change the plugs on a big block Dart compared with a small block. Used to be a common chore once! And how hard it would be to park, even with Chrysler’s power steering.