Now, to my mother, cars are nothing more than mere transportation devices, and the Dart filled the bill perfectly as a no-nonsense, bulletproof, reliable car that got her wherever she needed to go without protest. We took it on many family trips, and my sister and I learned to drive in that car - it pretty much became a member of the family. Mom never knew much about maintaining a car and rarely did, but I kept it washed and waxed whenever I could. I finally inherited the car in 1985 when it had 193,000 miles on it.
The fact that Mom hardly did anything mechanical to the car and the engine rarely cried uncle is a real testament to that slant six. Unfortunately, all of you that have owned Darts (or any Mopar, for that matter) know how susceptible they are to rust if you don't keep up on them, and ours was no exception. The driver's side floorboard was pretty much gone - if you lifted up the floormat while driving, you would see road passing under you. Plus, the rear leaf springs were starting to sag and come up through the trunk floor, so we made the hard decision to scrap the car, since there was no way it would ever pass Pennsylvania state inspection. It was sort of like deciding to have the old family dog put to sleep after it could no longer live a good life.
The saga continued, however, when by sheer dumb luck I came across a 1970 Dart Swinger with only 78,000 miles, the exact same lime gold paint, slant six, black vinyl top, no rust - eureka! A truly worthy successor. When I got Mom's car, I had always wished it was a 2-door instead of the four- door, and now I had one. I REALLY wanted a '69 Charger, but anyway I got this Swinger in October of 1985, and before I junked the 4-door, I stripped every piece I could off of it in case I ever needed them. So I drove the Swinger through the rest of high school, and we became quite a pair, since mine was the only one in town like it. I entered the Air Force in November of 1986 and drove the Swinger from Pittsburgh, PA, to San Antonio, TX, for boot camp. After boot camp and tech school, I was sent to Germany for 2 years. I decided not to take the Swinger over there, so I drove it back home to Pittsburgh in March 1987 and sold it to a good friend of mine who had always liked it. I hated to part with it, but I felt better knowing it was going to a good home.
Sadly, one fateful night in the winter of '88, it got T-boned at an intersection by a Ford LTD station wagon, which unfortunately put it out of commission for good. I almost cried when I heard the news, but, like the saying goes - easy come, easy go. That ended my history of Dodge Darts. But it's now 1999, and if there's a happy ending to this saga, it's that I now have a mint-condition 1969 Charger SE in my garage that looks and runs like new. After all this time, I now finally have a worthy successor to my beloved 1970 Dart Swinger.