That and a four speed stick shift would have turned it into a…real GT!īack to the real world: this lovely Dart GT has graced a nearby street for several years now. Whoa! Now that would have really helped my dad’s real Dart, whose slow manual steering could be a handful in the fast tight twisties of Northern Baltimore County’s back roads. In perusing the 1969 Dart brochure, I came across an unexpected tidbit: an optional fast 16:1 ratio manual steering gear. Why there were two hot Darts is a good question the same reason there was a Dodge RT and Super Bee, obviously. The GTS and the Swinger 340 were the hot stuff. And what was the case in 1963 was still very much the case in 1969: the 170 inch six was still standard. The raised expectations of its standard 170 inch six are a reflection of the GT’s role as a trim package with bucket seats, and no more. And a ’59 Studebaker Lark V8 was certainly a legitimate sports compact, even without the buckets.īut the Dart GT does have the distinction of being the first American car to use the “GT” acronym, if we agree that Studebaker used the full name “Gran Turismo”, but not the letters “GT”, especially as a suffix to a line of cars. Obviously it wasn’t this bucket seat pretender like all the others of its ilk were of course trying to keep up with that runaway success, the Corvair Monza. And the deception was there right from the get-go: “America’s First Sports Compact”. The Dart GT goes right back to its first year as a compact, 1963. But I like to listen to news and talk radio in the car, and now I don’t have to take my little portable radio in the car anymore.Īnd it came with bucket seats, Paul! Very European! A real Gran Turismo! But I did get a radio!īut the underground, I mean classical music station is on FM. I’m quite comfortable in the summer without it I just take off my jacket and one of my two sweaters. You’re right, I need to be able to enjoy my drive to Hopkins more. So I got one with the optional Charger 225 cubic inch six. They said I’d have to order one, that no dealer would have one in stock. Oh, not the standard engine, the 170 cubic inch six, Paul. Paul, I took your advice and got a Dart GT!Ī GT? But that’s missing the key ingredient, the “S”. This 1969 version will have to stand in for what my father proudly came home with in that alternate scenario: It’s time for you to have something a bit classier. And the GTS comes standard with a Rally suspension which will make it handle so much better. I have a better idea! I can attach a little (easily removable) piece of wood on the back of the gas pedal so that you’ll never be able to worry about accidentally having all that power on your hands. You could just not decide not to open the throttle all the way. Anything more than that is grossly superfluous and possibly dangerous in the wrong hands (mine).īut Papa that’s only an extra 25 hp. The most horsepower a car should ever have is 250. In an alternate scenario, what if he had taken up my admonition to buy a Dart GTS? You know, the one that came standard with the highly underrated 275 hp 340? Or the optional Magnum 383? And slick black vinyl seats to enhance that summer time experience.īut my father was also surprisingly impulsive at times, and on rare occasions even highly suggestible. It had the base 170 cubic inch slant six, three balky gears on the column, slow manual steering, and little 9″ manual drum brakes. I’ve written up that mostly dismal chapter here. He bought a baby-shit brown stripper Dodge Dart, with absolutely no options, like this one but certainly without the white wall tires. You might think that he might have gotten something with a wee bit of comfort for that drive, which included lots of stop and go traffic and Maryland’s famously sweltering summer heat. In 1968, he traded in his Opel Kadett A for a new car, for his twice-daily 45 minute commute to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was a professor of Neurology and the head of the EEG Clinic. It was an eye opener for her.Īlthough he was quite status conscious and always easily impressed with others’ nice automobiles, he denied himself brutally, insisting on wearing his automotive hair shirts proudly. Of course, that’s just the automotive ones as Stephanie will attest, his many eccentricities and personality characteristics are impossible to convey readily with words you either experienced them, or you didn’t. By now, many of you are undoubtedly familiar with the automotive eccentricities of my dear departed father.
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