1965 Dodge Dart

I am offering for sale this 1965 Dodge Dart 270, in good condition.
This is an original Mopar, with a 225 slant 6 engine, four door sedan. In its day it was promoted as a “compact” car, but of course now it seems rather large and roomy, with two full bench seats and a huge trunk. Three speed automatic transmission. Neither the brakes nor the steering are “power.” Mechanically, it is solid; starts reliably, runs well. Cosmetically, it’s fair. The exterior looks nice; up close there are plenty of blemishes. The interior is rough and grubby. The odometer reads 66,000+, but who knows how many times it’s turned over.
I bought the car four years ago and drove it home that day, 500 miles, nice and smooth. In the four years I’ve owned it I have not put another 500 miles on it. I hoped to make it into an occasional day tripper, but I haven’t made the time or had the money to invest in improving the interior. Ultimately I have decided it doesn’t make sense to keep a car I don’t use parked on the street, with insurance and registration running several hundred dollars a year. So it’s for sale.
Let me go into detail on what’s good and bad here. I’m not going to gloss over anything – I am going to try to tell you exactly what you’ll get. If you come and look at it after reading here, you should have no surprises.
When I bought it, it hadn’t been used much for several years. I invested about a thousand dollars in addressing some mechanical needs, including repair and upgrade to the differential and the cooling system, and a new battery. At the time my mechanic evaluated the major systems in the car and found nothing else needing immediate attention.
The car starts every time on the third try. Whether it’s been a day or a month since the last time I started it, it’s always the same story. Turn the key, crank it a few times, it doesn’t catch. Do it a second time, it doesn’t catch. Do it a third time, and voila, it’s up and running. The engine always runs fast in park when first started; it takes a long time for it to throttle down.
A couple times I have not been able to start it, and the conditions were the same in those instances. I had been driving the car for a while, then parked and turned it off, then five or ten minutes later tried to start it up again, but it wouldn’t catch. In each case, after the car cooled off (20-30 minutes), it started up as expected.
I know of no mechanical issues – everything works. I haven’t driven it enough to know how much oil it goes through. The gas mileage is not good, of course, probably in the 10-12 MPG range, though I have not measured it carefully. I’ve not done a compression test, but the engine “feels” right when I’m driving it. It can idle a little low and threaten to stall; sometimes at a red light I keep a little pressure on the gas with one foot while I’m holding the brake with the other foot.
The tires are not new but they don’t need to be replaced, either.
The exterior is mixed. The car looks sharp when it’s clean. I believe the cream-colored paint is original. I’ve seen other Darts of this vintage with the exact same color. Mostly the paint is in good shape. It has worn off beneath the gas cap. There are a few rough and rusty spots. The antenna is missing and there’s some rust around the opening in the fender where the antenna used to be. One of the taillight lenses is broken; I have the broken piece in the trunk. The trim is all there and pretty good overall, though on one side it’s popped loose and wants some repair. There are some dings on the front bumper. Overall the exterior is not perfect, but it’s really in good condition for a car this age that’s had only the minimum of care.
The interior is very rough but salvageable. Please see the photos. The front seat vinyl is cracked and open. The back seat is worse, ripped wide open in spots. With covers, both the front seat and the back seat are serviceable. The carpeting is ragged. The headliner is torn wide open and old grubby insulation is falling down into the interior. The front dash is in good shape. The rear deck is ripped open and in very poor condition.
The car is not watertight. I don’t have a garage, and park on the street. In the winter the interior gets damp. It smells musty and there is some staining from mold on the insides of the metal doors. The controls on the dash are sticky; it is hard to pull out and push in the knob for the headlights. Like many of the issues listed here, this would be easy to address for someone who knew what they were doing, but I am not that someone.
All the exterior lights work fine. The horn works and it’s full and loud. But the ring on the steering wheel that you push to blow the horn is broken in half and taped together. The turn signals work. The turn signal arrows on the dashboard do not light up. In fact the electrical system on the dashboard is flaky overall. Sometimes the dash light come on, sometimes not. Sometimes the gas and temperature gauges report correctly, sometimes not. The original radio is still in place, but it doesn’t turn on. I tried plugging a USB adapter into the cigarette lighter so I could charge my phone, but there was no sign of life there.
It’s a 50 year old car and is missing many things we take for granted in modern cars. For instance, the windshield wipers have exactly two settings: on and off. The turn signals do not turn off automatically after you turn. The seatbelts in the front are only lap belts; in the back there are no seatbelts. In those days we kids just tumbled around back there. These days people may not know why we say “roll down” the windows, but in this car you roll them down. Call me sentimental, but one thing I love here is that there are vent windows in the front. The heat and defrost work well.
The car is registered here in Washington and has tabs valid through September 2019.
I am starting the bidding at $3299. Winning bidder must pay $500 by Paypal within 48 hours, non-refundable, and pay the balance when taking delivery of the car. If you’re not local, you’ll need to make arrangements to collect the car. I will drive it to a local (Seattle area) shipping location if you’ve made all the arrangements and the car is paid in full.
I am happy to answer any questions. If you love slant six Darts like I do, and you want a car you can drive immediately, and you have the time to invest in overhauling the interior, I think you’ll be pleased with this one. Good luck and happy bidding!
Mark MacKenzie

Also published at eBay.com