Whither 1966 D Darts for Stock

[bill dedman]

'Scuse the hijack, but I saw that "Butch Ball" Pinto run at a points race in Marion South Dakota and it was virtually as fast as Buddy Ingersoll's car; 9.80s @ 134 mph, pulling the wheels on every shift of the Doug Nash 5-speed. I THINK Butch had the NHRA AA/MC record at that time. Impressive car...

Too bad NHRA killed those cars; they were among the most exciting and fun to watch I've seen in my 54 years of watching drag cars do their thing! If I were ever going to build a "nostalgia" car, that would be my choice...


Bill

[ddartdude]

Bill,
I know that Paul Canizzaro wrote that there were about 25 D/Darts built.

This is what I've dug up on the car so far. When my first one was registered with Galen back in 2000, it was one - of - six in his registry. He sent me a list of the VIN's and S/O numbers that were registered. The last number he had listed had a VIN ending in 937. In 2002 I bought "The Politician" from Al Adam. It had a VIN number ending in 888. So, 888-937 would be a 50 car build. The 417 in the S/O number indicates that the cars were built on Sunday, April 17th.

Since 1998, I have collected VIN and S/O numbers from 5 other D/Darts. All the VIN's and S/O's fall between the 888 and 937 cars. The number that I didn't include in my previous post was the Porach Dodge. The original owner had the paperwork from the car when he bought and raced it. The car is long gone now.

So I have 10 VIN's of cars that currently exist. I'm not sure if they were race cars or not.

D/Dart Race Cars of that time were:
The Politician (*)
The Bounty Hunter
The Coronet Dodge
The Suburban Dodge Boys
The Baby Goat
The Little Ram Charger
The Mount Vernon Dodge
The Porach Dodge (*)
The Newcomer
The Sam Brown Dodge
The "Big Bad Dodge" Jr
The Yakima Dodge

Plus -- A D/Dart owned by John Bedell - Pictures on the D/Dart website.

(*) -- Have the VIN numbers of these 2 race cars.

That's a total of 22 cars.................please feel free to add to the list of race cars. Please include stuff like car names, driver names, tracks raced at with - city and or state. ----- thanks in advance.

dart4forte,
Been following the build of your 64 Dart on FABO. Nice looking car. Still have the PM from that site on the D/Dart. Any help with the numbers would be appreciated.
Alan

[Mopar Steve]

I didn't know Al had the "Politician". He also has another '66 that Ronn Eroh helped him build.

[ddartdude]

Al had "The Politician" stored at his mother's place in Reading for many years. That's where it was when I got it from him. I think he still has a purple 66 Dart that he races.

[Mopar Steve]

Originally Posted by ddartdude

Al had "The Politician" stored at his mother's place in Reading for many years. That's where it was when I got it from him. I think he still has a purple 66 Dart that he races.

Yeah, I was referring to the purple car. He just got the motor back together in it and plans on running it the summer. Al & Carol are great people! I have the '64 Dodge he used to help with and occasionally drive for Ken Lau.

[bill dedman]

That's a pretty convincing argument RE the 50 D Darts and how many were actually built.

I would like to see:

1. NHRA put these cars in the classification guide.

2,. Factor them down to the point that they can be competitive in Stock Eliminator.... probably a factor somewhere around 250...

Do I think this will happen?

If a Thunderbolt can run in a Stock Class, logic would say, "YES."

But then I have been watching NHRA since 1955, and I have yet to see them do ANYTHING that was even remotely logical...

[ddartdude]

Bill,
I'd like to see them put the car in a stock class also. It was never ment to be run in a SS class. I'll have to get more info from Chrysler Historical on the cars and then approach NHRA on it. Maybe Chrysler could verify the numbers in between the ones that I have. I'd like to get then to verify that they were all white.

If I ever take mine to the track, I'd just run it at a test and tune night. It's only got about 370 miles on it and I'd hate to destroy it.

Alan

[Myron Piatek]

Originally Posted by ddartdude

Bill,
I know that Paul Canizzaro wrote that there were about 25 D/Darts built.

This is what I've dug up on the car so far. When my first one was registered with Galen back in 2000, it was one - of - six in his registry. He sent me a list of the VIN's and S/O numbers that were registered. The last number he had listed had a VIN ending in 937. In 2002 I bought "The Politician" from Al Adam. It had a VIN number ending in 888. So, 888-937 would be a 50 car build. The 417 in the S/O number indicates that the cars were built on Sunday, April 17th.

Since 1998, I have collected VIN and S/O numbers from 5 other D/Darts. All the VIN's and S/O's fall between the 888 and 937 cars. The number that I didn't include in my previous post was the Porach Dodge. The original owner had the paperwork from the car when he bought and raced it. The car is long gone now.

So I have 10 VIN's of cars that currently exist. I'm not sure if they were race cars or not.

D/Dart Race Cars of that time were:
The Politician (*)
The Bounty Hunter
The Coronet Dodge
The Suburban Dodge Boys
The Baby Goat
The Little Ram Charger
The Mount Vernon Dodge
The Porach Dodge (*)
The Newcomer
The Sam Brown Dodge
The "Big Bad Dodge" Jr
The Yakima Dodge

Plus -- A D/Dart owned by John Bedell - Pictures on the D/Dart website.

(*) -- Have the VIN numbers of these 2 race cars.

That's a total of 22 cars.................please feel free to add to the list of race cars. Please include stuff like car names, driver names, tracks raced at with - city and or state. ----- thanks in advance.

dart4forte,
Been following the build of your 64 Dart on FABO. Nice looking car. Still have the PM from that site on the D/Dart. Any help with the numbers would be appreciated.
Alan

I've never been really into restos, numbers, etc., but I'm under the impression that consecutive production numbers don't usually mean that they would have been similarly equipped. In other words, there could have been regular 6 cyl and 273 Darts mixed in with that particular group of numbers.

[bill dedman]

Myron,

Your point is well taken, but if they had a run of 50 IDENTICAL cars, (like a "fleet" order) wouldn't it just make sense to assemble them all at one time, since they had to bring that specific accessory/equipment package to the assembly line, anyway.

I'm not disputing what you say, it just makes me wonder why they'd choose to split up an order for 50 cars that were exactly alike in terms of equipment.

I'm just asking...

Bill

[bill dedman]

Alan,

Good luck with this quest!

I'd love to see it happen, but if they don't come off this 275 HP figure and assign a realistic (250?) factor to these cars, it will all have been for nothing... My 2-cents.

Bill