I've spent most of the morning researching the 1956 Chrysler Dart concept car. My search was spawned because of a story I recently overheard at a bar in Detroit, Michigan. Three men in suits sat in lounge chairs and drank what looked like sophisticat... <BR><BR>To read the rest of this blog entry from The Jalopy Journal, click here.
Appropriately named, as it looks like a giant Lawn Dart! Cool dash layout, until they got to the center console. Bet they paid a whole $5 for that design.
I have no idea if that story is true or not, but man does it add some to the allure of the car. I love stories of legend like that.
"At the time, the car had less than 1/3 the air drag of any production car on the road." I guess I'll give you some poetic license... Saab 92 drag coefficent in 1947 was .30 Tucker Torpedo drag coefficent in 1948 was .27
Cool story. On a side note, a read in a book about the life of Virgil Exner that the aerodynamic design arrived by splattering ink on paper in the wind tunnel. It was an aerodynamic's study that started in 1955 in cooperation with Ghia.
The car looks like Alfa BAT cars.If they did work with Ghia on the design ,then the similarity is entirely understandable.The fastback roofline(from what we can see) is amazingly close to that of a fastback Baracuda.
Ghia built the Dart for Chrysler in 1957. A bit later Ghia recycled the design for the Ferrari 410 Superamerica.
Being the MoPar nut that I am. I noticed some of the things that they used in real production cars such as the emblem on the tail fin, the inner door handles and the seat upholstery plus some of the dash bling. Cool stuff I do wish you would have expanded more on the powerplant and it's time trials. I did like the quickness of explanation of how the soft panties buffed the finish so well.
Here are a couple of factory color photos of the Dart. It had a sliding roof and was a "hardtop convertible" of sorts. And the interior. The Dart became the Diablo show car less than two years later with the top totally removed and replaced by a regular scissors bow convertible roof. They also chose to trim considerable height from the fins. The car exists in Diablo form to this day
Wow I worked for dodge dealer and we put panies in the parts mans glove box and his wife was not so understanding !!
That's incredible - I loved the 50's - women were classy, dizzy, lacked some common sense sometimes, and were real sexy. Today they are too smart, too bossy, and do as they dam please!
will the effect of global continental hopping travel wear off and reign in your wildly exotic writing?
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