The infamous Oil Embargo Of 1973 and concerns about the environment triggered a pivot in the automotive industry. In short order, large and thirsty vehicles fell out of style while the government began reining in automakers on emissions. Diesel engines, once largely reserved for large trucks and heavy equipment, became a beacon for those wanting to save the most money possible. America placed diesels in a lot of unexpected places and one of them was the Dodge Dart. Yet, while you could have bought a new Dart with a diesel, it didn’t come from Dodge that way.
It’s fascinating how many automotive stories can trace their roots back to those events of the early 1970s. Astronomical fuel prices and fuel shortages sent Americans scrambling for smaller, more efficient vehicles. Engine horsepower ratings switched from gross to net, erasing the glorious power numbers from the turn of the decade. Then, emissions regulations further delivered a gut punch, ensuring you could buy cars with sizable 350 cubic inch V8s that made all of 125 HP on a good day. Of course, safety was also a huge concern for the day and vehicles found themselves adorned with the automotive equivalent of old dental braces.
There was also a flood of interesting ways to beat high fuel prices from the rise of cheap three-wheel vehicles to an abundance of cheap, but crappy electric vehicles. It seemed like saving money was on everyone’s mind from the executives of Detroit’s automakers to the handyman in his shed.
The Dart existed as one of those smaller choices for Americans eschewing full-size rides for something a bit more thrifty. But there was a way for Dart buyers to save even more cash than just by going smaller.
A Perfectly Cromulent Compact
As Hot Rod Magazine writes, 1959 was a hotly competitive year for the domestic automakers. Interest in low-priced cars was rising and robbing sales from the mid-priced market. Dodge’s solution to the popularity of low-priced models was the introduction of its own low-priced car, the Dart. The 1960 Dart was a full-size, but cheaper model designed to take Chevrolet’s, Ford’s, and even Plymouth’s lunch money. The new Dart didn’t do anything revolutionary but had enough changes from the 1960 Dodge to make it identifiable, including a 118-inch wheelbase.
Reportedly, the full-size Dart wouldn’t last long as Dodge realized the strength of the compact market. It responded in 1962 by shrinking the Dart onto the firm’s intermediate body platform. Over the years, the Dart continued to ride on a compact platform and receive updated styling as well as larger top engines. You were even able to get your Dart with a chunky 440 cubic inch V8!
The Dart we’re talking about today hails from the early 1970s to about the mid-1970s. In 1970, the Dart was given a comprehensive facelift which made it look like a scaled-down full-size Dodge. Later converted Darts were victims of the early days of the Malaise Era, which meant they were adorned with the era’s infamous impact-absorbing bumpers. As Curbside Classic notes, the Dart had also been riding on the same basic platform it had since 1967. It wasn’t all bad, however, as Dodge gave the Dart Chrysler’s electronic ignition, and models equipped with disc brakes got single-piston calipers that were easier to work on. The Dart also got an improved HVAC system plus optional cruise control.
The Dart wasn’t flashy, nor was it a status symbol, but Americans seemingly didn’t care. Dodge sold 78,216 Dart and Dart Custom models in 1974, handily beating other vehicles in Dodge’s lineup that year. Sadly, Dodge never released sales data for the Dart SE that was introduced that year, but there was even a chance that the Dart could have beaten its Chevy Nova competition.
In 1974, you could order your Dart in a variety of trim levels ranging from the Dart Custom four-door sedan to the Dart “Convertriple” coupe. Something interesting in the brochure was the fact that a Dart could tow up to 2,000 pounds thanks to a factory-installed trailer package consisting of a hitch, heavy-duty suspension, wider wheels, and a trailer wiring harness.
The hottest Dart in 1974 was the Dart 360 Sport, which sported a 245 HP 360 cubic inch V8 with a four-barrel carburetor, dual exhaust, a sportier suspension package, and power front disc brakes. If you wanted to save some dough, your engine choice was likely the 198 cubic inch slant-six, which made 95 HP.
While Dodge advertised economy as a selling point for the Dart, I did not find a claimed MPG figure in the documentation. Individual owners reporting in seem to suggest that mpg in the mid-20s should be achievable with the slant six. But, what if that still wasn’t enough for you?
Saving Money At The Pump
A number of companies and individuals converted Darts through the 1970s, but we have been able to find a decent bit of information about one particular conversion that is still talked about on forums today.
As the August 1974 issue of Motor Trend reports, there was once a time when Americans thought the diesel engine was the future of clean, inexpensive energy. Maybe one day we’d all be driving cheap diesel cars and living in impossibly tall skyscrapers. Of course, the reality was that Detroit’s automakers weren’t fully invested in diesel passenger cars just yet.
That didn’t stop Tony Carpanna of the Wilcap Company of California. Wilcap was a supplier of flywheels, transmission adaptors, engine mounting hardware, and more for hot rodders and classic car owners. It’s a company that’s still around today, though Carpanna has passed. Carpanna saw a future in diesel even before the Oil Crisis. Diesels of the era were noisy, heavy, subjected drivers to heavy vibrations, and lacked power compared to their gasoline counterparts. However, diesels were also known for longevity and fuel economy. Carpanna started custom diesel car conversions in 1969.
In 1974, Motor Trend noted that Carpanna put diesel engines in all sorts of vehicles from the Ford Pinto to the Dodge Dart. To achieve this, he went over to Nissan Diesel, a Japanese company that was once known as Minsei Diesel before Nissan acquired it in 1960. Nissan Diesel was not directly Nissan-Datsun, but a subsidiary.
Compacts like the Pinto got a Chrysler-Nissan four-cylinder diesel good for 64 HP. Thankfully, the Dart got the bigger option.
The engine Carpanna used for Darts was the Chrysler-Nissan CN6-33, a diesel straight-six made by Nissan Diesel for Chrysler. What was one of the primary uses of the CN6-33? Boats! Also stationary industrial equipment, but it’s far more amusing to think of tossing boat engines into cars. A relative of this engine, the SD33, was used in the International Scout.
Carpanna’s conversions, which Dodge dealers handled, offered Dart buyers and owners a choice of two versions of the CN6-33. The base model was a 198 cubic inch naturally-aspirated straight-six diesel making an unspecified amount of power. If you opted for the optional turbocharger, your output increased to 92 HP and 137.5 lb-ft of torque. The second of the two options sounds close to a modern Volkswagen TDI, but Motor Trend would say not so fast.
The conversion included the engine, the labor to install the engine, the optional turbo, and a conversion kit for the air-conditioner. The rest of the Dart, including the rear gearing, was as you bought it as a gas-powered car. Motor Trend said the turbodiesel Dart was a “slug” when accelerating and if you owned a Dart with tall gearing, you had to slip the clutch for a very long time just to get the darn thing rolling. Worse, if you chose a new Dart with an automatic transmission and 2.37 gearing, the magazine doubted the car would even move under its own power.
But, once you did get moving, Motor Trend said the diesel-converted Dart got 31.7 mpg with the air-conditioner on and an impressive 34.9 mpg with the air-conditioner off. While Motor Trend said that the car’s noise levels were acceptable at expressway speeds, there wasn’t much passing power in reserve. So, I hope you were happy staying in the slow lane.
Despite the downsides, Motor Trend concluded that the diesel Dart was a fine way to combat inflation. It was outrageously thrifty and in the magazine’s opinion, the quality of Carpanna’s work was probably better than what Detroit could have done on its own back then. The icing on the cake was that diesel was cheaper than gasoline at the time, too.
For another example of a converted Dodge from the Malaise Era, check out the diesel-powered Aspen in the photos above. It also houses a Chrysler-Nissan straight-six!
Twice The Price For One Car
Unfortunately, repowering a Dart wasn’t cheap. A Dodge Dart Sport was $2,842 ($19,229 today) in 1974. The purchase of the Nissan diesel engine plus the labor to install it was $3,000 ($20,298 today) all on its own. Then you had to pay another $500 ($3,383 today) for the turbo if you wanted to have any chance at keeping up with traffic. Restoring the function of your air-conditioner was another $250 ($1,691 today) fee. If you went the full ride, that was a $6,592 expense ($44,602 today) to save money at the pump. Even if you already owned a Dart you had to spend more than the value of a new Dart to save gas money.
It’s not known how many Darts were converted to diesel through Wilcap, but they’re so rare that they barely even exist. Wilcap wasn’t even the only company doing conversions, either. Other firms that did diesel conversions in the era included Economy Systems and American Automotive Engineering, which also converted everything from pickup trucks to vans with SD33 engines.
The car I’m showing you today is a 1971 Dart that was converted by a dealership. It was listed for sale on Facebook last year for $12,000. The documentation provided with the vehicle suggests it may have been an early Carpanna conversion, but this hasn’t been confirmed. Sadly, it sold long ago, but the ad is still up if you want to look at some seriously cool photos.
A person who claimed to be the former owner of American Automotive Engineering said that part of the reason why the conversions were so expensive was due to Chrysler. The conversion companies could have imported diesels from Canada for cheap, but allegedly, the only way Chrysler was okay with the diesel conversions was if the conversion companies sourced the engines from Chrysler Marine in the United States for roughly $2,400 ($16,238 today) per crated engine.
How rare are these conversions today? The pictures you see here are from the only listing I could find archived anywhere. Of course, even if there were a lot of these vehicles converted, the march of time is unbeatable. Who knows how many have been lost to corrosion or just typical use.
Given the power of hindsight, we know the dreams of a diesel future have been foiled numerous times from GM’s infamous failure with the Oldsmobile Diesel and Volkswagen’s failure with its TDI “Clean Diesel.” Still, it’s awesome to see that at least some people tried. Diesel power was, at least, seemingly the right fuel at the right time. So, if you happen to find a 1970s Dodge Dart with a diesel engine in it, the car was likely one of these weird diesel conversions. I’d love to drive one of these one day.
(Correction: The original version of this story called a Dodge Aspen an early Dodge Dart. I regret the error and have corrected it.)
(Images: Facebook Seller, unless otherwise noted.)
I’ve owned over 55 vehicles in my 77 years. Never more than 3 at a time. One was a slug, which I ordered…line by line on the order sheet: 1980 Pontiac Catalina wagon 9 passenger 350 diesel dead slow ogot bored at 150,000 miles (changed oil every 3k. I ended up putting police package sway bars with nylon bushings. Monroe Magnum truck shocks ( modified mounts) at 12, 000 miles after factory-installed failed. Nice handling,, NO speed. One other was again special order Pontiac Firebird Formula 350. Max suspension. With 2:70 rear. Couldn’t spin the tires, BUT on the Maine Pike I went 75+ mph (3-4 miles at 100-110 mph)…got 23 mpg on the trip!
I wonder how many life times it would take to pay off such a conversion?
I’ve often run the numbers for hybrids and EVs and the math is just starting to break even, excepting that the prices of all cars have risen to the point were ICE, hybrid and EV are stupidly higher than they should be.
Guess I’m stuck with the existing fleet until things normalize.
It will be interesting to see what the interest rates do in the coming year or so. Have to keep an eye on falling used car prices and speculate on Loan rates I suppose.
yes unfortunately. I expect that I can continue to drive my Honda for at least another 7-10 years. Going to dump the Subaru in the spring.
As to interest rates who knows. The randomized in chief is at the helm now do anything is possible until that changes for ‘reasons’.
I am not old enough to know but did people blame the gas prices on the president back then like they do now?
Author Meg Jacobs put it this way:
“Most Americans didn’t know that we imported any oil at all because that was a relatively recent phenomenon. When Nixon saw that we were reaching our peak of production, he decided to repeal a ban on imports. Between 1970 and 1973, the number of imports doubled—by 1973 we were importing about a third of our oil. But Americans didn’t know any of this, so who do they blame for the crisis? The number one villain is the major oil companies, known simply as Big Oil. The idea is that these all powerful oil companies are imposing an artificial shortage to protest environmental regulations and price controls. Everyone starts going after Big Oil, from Ralph Nader to an emerging consumer movement to liberal Democrats. Politicians in turn get blamed for not coming down harder on Big Oil. Scoop Jackson, who is an ambitious Democrat from the state of Washington, realizes that he can make political hay over this shortage. He calls all of the leading Big Oil executives to Washington and accuses them of charging obscene profits. This is the popular mentality at the time.”
It’s an interesting article:
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/booked-1970s-energy-crisis-changed-american-politics-meg-jacobs/
Thank you. I will read that. I was very curious based on the bullshit I have seen the past few years.
But also: politicians can only do so much about the price of fuel. There’s the strategic petroleum reserve now, which is why my fuel has cost $2.89-$2.97 for at least a YEAR. High cost of gas, my foot.
Yeah based on that article controls on gas prices where taken away a long time ago and never returned so no president can do much for the price of gas besides the strategic reserve which I have never been able to find out if it did much besides maybe as a card play to get opec to bring the prices down. Interesting stuff but just furthers my idea that people who think the president gets credit for gas prices are morons.
people…..are morons.
FTFY.
As they collectively prove every election cycle in every country that allows elections going back to the dawn of time.
That’s because you’re asking the people least qualified to assess a person’s fitness for the job, to decide who should have the most important job. It’d be like asking the fry cooks who they think should be the CEO of McDonald’s.
The opposite I suppose is cronyism though so each method has its drawbacks.
‘ democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’ – Churchill.
If one head of state calls two other heads of state of oil producing countries and asks them to slow down production, I’m sure the resulting dip in supply would keep prices up a little. And then when demand increased and supply was still restricted, the price would surge to record highs.
If somebody were to do that right before his rival took over, he could even blame the high gas prices on his rival.
“Biden did that!” LOL.
/S
The second time around, in 1979, people mostly blamed the Ayatollah. And, also,a bunch of truckers blocked the roads and rioted at a major intersection in Levittown and damaged or destroyed a lot of private property.
Exactly!
Why let the facts get in the way of a good story…
Same as it ever was.
When it comes to Congressional grandstanding, some things never change.
I recall these ties very well being 14 at the time. Not fun. At all.
In our very small town, under 2k, the station who was open and had gas was not only packed with a huge line, but the owners were considered heroes as well.
A different time, and world then.
Thanks for the read link, and the memories. lol.
I would say to an extent. Pretty sure I recall Jimmy Carter getting replaced by an actor.
Part of that was Stagfaltion, the other part was the 1979 Energy Crisis. I would say many blamed him for the OPEC doubling of the price of a Barrel of Crude. It was Jimmy Carter’s phased deregulation of oil prices that started that crisis, so yeah I would say he was blamed for it.
Have you ever seen or heard of the 84 Lincoln Continental Mark VII diesel with BMW 2.4 sixes in them. they were rare, but I wonder if that performance in a 2 door sporty coupe was most of the reason for the rarity and discontinuation of the option?
Yes. Ford didn’t have a passenger car diesel and they struck a deal with BMW for whatever reason.
The performance sucked, but also, it was an expensive option, service cost more, and the downfall of a LOT Of passenger car/light-duty diesels turned out to be dealer service. It was really hard to find anyone who understood diesels and could properly maintain, diagnose, repair, and tune them.
And they’re a different beast than a gas engine – more finicky at low temperatures, more care is required with even the purchase of fuel (old fuel from a station that doesn’t sell much diesel could have lots of moisture and even mold in it, not great)
The consumers weren’t ready for diesel, and diesel wasn’t the 1:1 solution it was seen as
The Plymouth Feather Duster supposedly got mid-30s for highway use, mid 20s in town. That seems like a better idea than this thing.
Put that in a ‘64 and I’d buy it.
My family had Mercedes-Benz diesels from the early 60s until the mid 2000s, and they were utterly reliable, other than confusing the hell out of valet parking attendants. Everybody else’s attempt to sell diesel automobiles in the United States seemed to result in a total cluster fuck, and ss my girlfriend said “not the fun kind.” It never made any sense to me.
This on the other hand makes a certain amount of sense, since boat engines and stationary industrial engines are both designed to run at full power for extended periods of time and most automobile engines don’t like that.
Indeed, there are also different classes of diesel engines–low speed, midrange, and high speed–for different applications. As the range of options would suggest, each class of engine is designed to be most efficient at a certain operating range. This especially applies to marine diesels that have considerably larger displacement than the little boat motors they were putting in the Dart.
Re your girlfriend, sounds like a fun sort.
I remember how truly bad these diesels were. She is right…
So I’ve been a Mopar nerd since… ever. I grew up watching the Dukes of Hazzard, and started subscribing to Mopar Action, Mopar Muscle, Mopar collectors guide when I was about 13 years old. I’d go to the local library and check out Haynes repair manuals for Chrysler B-Bodies and read them cover to cover, and priced out different builds of engines/parts combinations for different scenarios, because I couldn’t even drive yet.
When I turned 16, I channeled my inner Bo & Luke, and my first car wound up being a clapped out 68 Charger with a 383 and hurst 4spd. I’m rambling a bit but the point is, obscure Mopar stuff was pretty much all I thought about for quite a while (until I discovered fun FWD and AWD vehicles, anyway).
But… despite all this automotive OCD that used up a good 30% of my brain power at any given minute…. I’ve never heard of this before. Ever.
You guys are doing a fantastic job. Instead of constantly showing us the highest performance, most expensive, & best restorations like magazines did for decades, you’re actively hunting the obscure, weird, and bizarre. It’s some strange mixture of taillight obsession, rust particles, and hot takes from actual engineers and designers that make this place so incredible.
Keep it up!
“You guys are doing a fantastic job. Instead of constantly showing us the highest performance, most expensive, & best restorations like magazines did for decades, you’re actively hunting the obscure, weird, and bizarre. It’s some strange mixture of taillight obsession, rust particles, and hot takes from actual engineers and designers that make this place so incredible.”
I could not agree more!!! Excellence in weirdness with this article Mercedes!
(and yes, that is a compliment!)
Came here to say this!
I just love the abundance of the weirdness and quirkiness that the Autopian provides, (As user “ADDvanced”, has mentioned in his post above)
The Autopian truly is a unique website and the cost of my subscription is money well spent!
The rest of those hacks are just riding on my coattails, tbh.
Yep, they all learned from their favorite Goth Uncle! 😉
YES! It’s all so interesting and well written. I read it all the time and think this is the best site on the net!
This was where Toyotas and Hondas got market share….their value for money and fuel economy was second to none…and also they were very durable aside from rust issues…..
“their value for money and fuel economy was second to none”
Are you kidding ???
My stepfather’s Toyota Corona lasted 18 months and died mostly due to rust, but had issues with everything electrical, gear shift lever pulled out of the transmission, engine compartment fire, when I slammed a rear door the window fell into the door and shattered, etc. etc. Yes, Michigan winters killed it but it was the worst car my stepfather ever owned and would have still died at less than 30,000 miles on it…
I bought a customer’s Honda Civic 1200 with 4k miles on it after it blew the second aluminum engine because I knew I could put a prelude engine in it. Most early Honda’s were horrible cars, and had a worse engines than GM’s Vega, that they rusted out in just a few years was only one issue they had…
That seems news to me. Sorry to hear that. I will assure you that I am not Toyota/Honda loyalist- I was repeating facts that I heard.
Never knew- the only thing I know is the 5.7 diesel turd by Oldsmobile, the V8-6-4 and etc.. The loyalists and Toyota/Supporters keep telling me that Honda and Toyota of the 80s and 90s were perfect and had no issues…..
My main Oil Embargo memory: After waiting in my VW in a line that stretched around the block, I got my turn at the pump, discovering only premium gas was available. Oh well. So I added a few gallons, flipped the pump lever to the off position and, as is my habit, gave the nozzle another squeeze to get the last bit. (Insert your sexual joke here.) To my surprise, the pump was still pumping even though the dials weren’t moving. Ethical dilemma time. Would honesty triumph over the need for gas? Hey, I was a broke-ass college student, so of course I chose free gas.
Well my dad bought a new Dodge Dart Sport in 1974, and the Slanty certainly DID NOT offer good fuel economy. He was lucky to get it into the 20’s.
The cost of this conversion is so far out of whack, you’d never make your money back. And if you really liked diesel, you’d have been way better off just buying a Merc.
Diesel Mercs were all over the place when I was a kid in the early ’80s. And Peugeots. (Southeastern CT was apparently a hotbed for these things)
Brooklyn was full of diesel Peugeot‘s in the 1990s – early 2000s. There was a mechanic/dealer named King of the Lions in Park Slope that apparently not only sold and serviced older Peugeots, but would buy them up from other parts of the country when they were sold because they were “orphan cars“.
When I first moved to Park Slope one of the things I noticed was “Gosh there are an awful lot of Peugeots around here. What’s up with that?”.
Apparently that part of Brooklyn has the largest French ex-patriot community in the United States, so that may have had something to do with it as well. Excellent pastries too!
Oh yeah when dad went on his diesel kick back in 1980, he wanted a Peugeot wagon, but it was crazy expensive, like 15 grand. So he spent 9 grand on a Cordoba instead.
But at least he got “rich, Corinthian leather.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAsP3ljOHhU
Nope, maroon crushed velour, and it was kick ass.
Cheap diesel for sailors/workers at the sub base?
Probably some of that, but it was more than just the labor force at General Dynamics. It was just a popular thing. Everyone had wood stoves, too. Or those gnarly Kero-Sun kerosene heaters that are now banned in a lot of places.
That was pretty good for the time, most cars were a lot worse. The Beetle was mid 20s average
That depends on which year of beetle, but yes, a Rambler could get better fuel economy…
The 1990s and 2000s Mexican market ones could get an honest 40mpg highway, with modern fuel injection, but my 1971 Super Beetle averaged a consistent 25-26mpg per tank no matter what I did or how I drove
I remember the first time I checked the mileage in my ’79 Duster Volaré with it’s leaning tower of power and single-throat carb. 16.5 which seemed… low. Never even managed to beat 18 with it.
Yup, my dad’s had the 3-speed manual, which probably didn’t help. At 75 MPH that poor Slanty was wound out like an F1 car. No wonder it threw a rod.
We had a ’65 Dart with a 225 slant six and three on the tree when I was a kid. The car got excellent mileage, but at the eight-year mark it was starting to rust significantly. My folks liked the ’65 so much that they went down to the same dealer and bought a new ’73 Dart Swinger with the same 225 slant six but with an automatic transmission.
It was a bad move. The ’73 was a piece of crap and we traded it two years later.
My dad’s cousin bought an identical ’65 when my folks bought theirs. He still has it.
To get good mileage(and better performance) from the inline smog era Darts, They needed work.A lot of it.
Had to get a new intake manifold so you could be something better than the one barrel, minimum.Then paint to match the motor, so it looked sorta stock
Then disable the emission controls, while leaving them looking intact, to pass the new visual inspection.
Adjust the distributor curve, cheap way to start tuning was with different springs. New Timing gear set at minimum, and a better cam.
With a decent tune on the carb, would pass the tail pipe test even without the smog gear working.
So better MPG, mid ’20s _and_ moar Power.
Not a lot, but wasn’t as nearly as sluggish. It was better
Now for more $$$, could get better mileage with the aftermarket overdrive, but the parts I listed, around $400.
Which was still a lot to put into a fairly new car at the time.
My Dad, he did actually get a 300D at that time. Benz was nice, but no speed demon, but was geared well. and he loved driving it.
When he sold it, he had the 500k km badge on it.
That’s so cool about your dad’s MB. When I was a young punk working at a quick-lube, there was a regular customer with a late-60’s oil-burner Benz with 1.2 million. He was a high-priced lawyer in downtown Chicago and drove in from Barrington every day instead of taking the train.
This is pretty cool, I’m not going to lie. That said, my ‘68 Dart had a 225 slant 6 and Holley 390 4-bbl, and I could still consistently hit low-20s mpg when I daily’ed it. When I get it back on the road I’d like to do an efi swap.
I must have been lucky. My 1971 Duster got over 20 easy with the auto trans. Stock.
But I was a broke ass kid in 1980 and as such rarely put the fast pedal down hard or to the floor.
We also had a 69 Dart with a 383 my Dad drove new. That thing hauled major butt. Good luck with your project.
“It responded in 1962 by shrinking the Dart onto the firm’s intermediate body platform. Over the years, the Dart continued to ride on a compact platform…”
Dodge did sort of switcheroo. In 1963 they moved the Dart name down to what had been the Lancer (the corporate cousin to the Plymouth Valiant) which had been introduced in 1961.
My ’76 Mustang II had a 4-cylinder engine in a space designed to hold a small V-8. I’m pretty sure the 4-cylinder engine came from Ford’s tractors.
Came from Lima, OH.
In the UK that engine replaced the crossflow and Essex fours and was colloquially known as ‘Pinto’ because that was the car it first appeared in, even though we didn’t get Pintos here.
The VW magazines used to have an ad in the back for the “Pinto Beans” conversion kit that would adapt a “Lima” engine from a Ford Pinto (lima = bean, pinto…etc…get it?) to the VW transaxle.
The problem was that the pinto engine had too much vibration for the VW’s three transmission mounts, all that held the drivetrain in the car…
Changing one crappy engine for another crappy engine. Genius.
At least the VW casting is a masterpiece
But what did you think of the play, Mrs Lincoln?
“While Motor Trend said that the car’s noise levels were acceptable at expressway speeds, there wasn’t much passing power in reserve. So, I hope you were happy staying in the slow lane.”
No problem. With the passing of The National 55 MPH Speed Limit Law of 1974 ALL lanes were slow lanes.
$6600 for the diesel Dart in 1974, $8700 for a Mercedes 240D in 1974.
You save $2100, but you’re still in a Dart. I can’t imagine what the ROI is on a $3700 conversion, I’m also guessing you couldn’t finance the conversion or convert a financed car?
W115 FTW
My old roommate had a diesel Nissan of some sort that he bought used in about 1992. I always wondered about that thing, this fills in a hole nicely.
The amazing part about it is that he bought the thing in Traverse City, Michigan. Even “down south” here in Ann Arbor it didn’t like starting in the winter. My mind boggles about the decision-making of the person who first bought it in Traverse City.
Next thing you know, our own Mercedes Streeter will have located a vehicle with a diesel rotary engine in it. I really hope that happens. It’s a ludicrous idea, taking a low-rev high compression thought and pairing it with a high-rev application. I just wonder if a Wankel would ever be able to do that much compression.
Looks like liquidpiston did make such a concept.
To make diesel work in a Wankel, the prevailing wisdom is to follow the old Detroit Diesel 2-cycle practice; a supercharger to pressurize the charge first and aid scavenging. The long, narrow Wankel combustion chamber is never, ever going to make an efficient diesel. It’s cold at the corners, too, so it’s gonna be filthy.
Other rotary, liquidpiston isn’t a wankel. Their website raised my eyebrows a few times… strange stuff!
That’s a nice looking engine compartment and swap. But at new Corvette pricing I can see why it didn’t sell. And you have to remember fuel was 50 cents a gallon in the US then so you have to calculate your payback with some pretty small incremental numbers.
Doesn’t look too bad.
My boat has a 800cc one cylinder 9hp Volvo.. And sails.
Love the sounds that engine makes.
And one of the best sailboat engines in the world too.
Still going 37 years later, so I guess you are right 🙂
This before diesel pumps were sized differently than gas pumps, yeah… I recall a neighbor in the 80’s had a diesel Rabbit and one of the kids on their first solo drive took it to a gas station and put regular old gasoline in it.
I’m wondering how many of these cars met their demise at full-service gas stations.
This was also when diesel was still somewhat harder to find away from truck stops, so you had to do a little planning on your trips.
That silver wagon is not a Dart.
It’s a Dodge Aspen from 1976 or later.
Wasn’t the Aspen sold as the Dart in Mexico? Not trying to “well, actually” here … but could explain how it wound up on an image search. Also, Mercedes is young enough that she might not have had first-hand knowledge of the psychedelic wonderland that was Chrysler Corporation in the 70s.
The referenced photo was someone on another forum asking if it was a 1971 Dart Diesel.
Diesel – Yes.
1971 Dart – No.
Darts never came as wagons – except south of the border, as you say.
That was an error on my part. Weirdly, that appeared in a search for diesel Darts, but that’s indeed an Aspen. Thank you so much for pointing that out. While I was in there, I fixed “Convertriple.” Looks like that was turned into “convertible” during a phase of the editing process, probably by a browser extension that freaks out at what it thinks is a misspelled word.
A new entry into my ‘how the fuck does that thing move?’ file.
Sticking with the stock rear end gearing was a big mistake, at least in terms of driving dynamics. I guess new shorter gears were just too much more money on top of an already expensive car.
Diesel engine max torque rpm and redline rpm are very low compared to a gas engine and tall final drive gearing is appropriate; you wouldn’t get the advantages of a diesel otherwise. However, you’d then need a lower first gear to get going and with no mention otherwise, I imagine they kept the passenger-car transmissions and ratios to keep it simple and suffered from the compromise.
Let’s not totally sell short those diesel max horsepower numbers, they could probably run at that all day whereas gas motors are built to normally run making only a fraction of maximum.
Diesel does like taller gears to pull against, but JFC this thing takes the biscuit.
I wonder how many people bought the conversion only to later think “Dear Lord, what have I done?”
Slowly. Very slowly….
“How the fuck does that thing move?”
Step 1- Buy Aspen with a boat diesel
Step 2- Move to a house at the top of a mountain
Step 3- Roll downward until the engine ugga chuggas enough to move the car
Step 4- Wave goodbye to your house because you’re never getting back up that mountain
“Some place warm, a place where the beer flows like wine, where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I’m talking about a little place called Aspen”
An automobile is a whole-ass system, made up of several subsystems. The power unit is only part of it. This is a great example how it’s an engineering house of cards, in a way; engine power curve has to be met by proper gearing in the transmission and final drive. And it’s really REALLY expensive to customize all that stuff on a car-by-car basis.
Another example of “right idea, wrong pieces” is a Volvo 740 turbo with the M46. Everyone thinks the manual is the holy grail. They’re fun, but the first gear ratio is much better suited to a B18 with a single Zenith carburetor hooked up to a hay trailer. But a run of M46s with different gearsets was probably pretty pricey for Goteborg. They’re much, MUCH better with the AW71.
…which reminds me of piloting a buddy’s new-to-him Porsche 911 Carrera (air-cooled) in Hollywood traffic a few years ago.
Within a few blocks, I realized that first gear was ridiculously low – the car wanted to be shifted into second by the time we reached the far crosswalk. So remembering how Mercedes-Benz 4 speed automatics of that era would start in second, I tried rolling off in second: the car was much happier, and our driving was far smoother.
Drove a few PORSCHE 930s back when they were new.
First gear was pretty useless as well then.
Even the 4 speeds!
This somehow does not surprise me.
At those prices, I don’t see any use cases that make sense. Taxis, maybe?
A fleet buy for a municipal customer or a taxi operator would be almost the only way for it to create the kind of economy of scale needed to justify such a wild conversion.
Yeah, your fuel savings would have to be so good you’d be able to buy a whole Dodge Dart from them. A fleet would be the only way I could see that work out. Or maybe if the buyer thought gas prices were going to get so bad forever that the diesel would work out in the long run?
As an old, I remember the Middle East Gas Crisis. There were some people that were so mad at the Saudis for turning off the taps they would have spent any amount to avoid sending an extra dime to the Arabs. Maybe folks like my Dad were the target market.
A lot of people repeated the same reactionary economic self immolation in the late aughts when fuel prices spiked hard.
The fuel crisis was a catalyzing event. It actually didn’t last all that long, but it made the economic issues much, much worse. Stagflation defined the 1970s, and another fuel crisis right at the end of the decade was an extra middle finger.
One of the BIG reasons diesel became popular was because you could have the local heating oil company come out and fill up your tank with #2 heating oil and, by gosh, that’s diesel. (well, it was then) – but it was cheaper because road fuels have road tax priced in. So, again, tax dodgers always looking for ways to slither out of their responsibility.
But a diesel Dart, even in a fleet situation, makes no sense. One car for the price of two, completely different than everything else in that fleet, that requires a diesel mechanic to maintain (have you seen what happens when people try to “fix” their diesels?) – oh, and maintenance is also not cheaper on a diesel. You have to stay on top of fuel/water separators and filters.
Add to that the fact that a Slant 6 is simple, robust, well-understood and cheap to run and maintain; this was just never going to work out financially.
“So, again, tax dodgers always looking for ways to slither out of their responsibility.”
Are they though? Diesel tends to be taxed higher than gasoline:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States
Presumably this is because heavier vehicles tend to use diesel and road wear is highly dependent on vehicle weight. A lightweight road car using diesel is going to be no more abusive to a roadway than its gasoline counterpart and as such is unfairly taxed at the pump. A tank of fuel oil filled at home is only going to get you so far so it’s fair to assume these cars did fill up at the pump sometimes.
#2 (or farm diesel) don’t have *any* road tax included in their pricing (or at least they didn’t then), so yeah, it’s tax dodging. Maybe there are shades of severity to your tax dodge, but – you use the roads, you pay the tax. We live in a society.
I dunno about where you live but I pay a hefty registration fees here in California, some of which pay for CHP, road improvements and other crap. All road driven cars pay something.
Farm diesel usually has been dyed red to visually differentiate it from the fuel that has been taxed. I hear it’s a very steep fine if you get caught on the road with red diesel.
Even without compensating for vehicle weight, the difference could be for the energy density. If the fuel tax is supposed to be based on a per-mile basis for road use, that makes sense.
Based on the energy density difference between the fuels, the diesel tax is actually a little lower than it should be.
It is highly unlikely that fuel taxes are set based on any measurable or scientific basis. Taxes are meant to raise money, achieve some social goal, reward political allies/punish rivals, all without pissing off more than 50% of the population.
Correction – they are designed to annoy 49.99999% of the population. Democracy, yo.
And I was there as well. It sucked.
And after 911, some of us will remain pissed at the Saudi government till our last breath…
Kind of like spending $100k on an electric car to save on fuel.
When the alternative is a V8 S Class or 7 Series – the choice is obvious.
One of the things to remember is that it wasn’t just a matter of gasoline suddenly becoming more expensive, it was more seriously an issue of gasoline suddenly being no longer available in demanded quantities and placed under rationing. Even people who could afford to pay whatever the hell they wanted for gasoline were suddenly in the market for more fuel efficient cars, because of gas being rationed and intermittently not available. Driving an expensive, gas guzzling luxury car when gas is expensive arguably just makes it an even more effective status symbol, but when you can’t drive it at all due to the tank being on fumes and having an odd number license plate on an even-only sales day kind of ruins that and makes you wonder if it’s worth it to see what the Mercedes dealer will offer on your Cadillac
It was concerns over the fuel shortage that pushed people to spend crazy money in pursuit of fuel economy, get the most mileage out of whatever quantity of fuel they could buy
I worked at a Chevron station, my first job in 72-73.
And remember having to limit customers to 10 gallons max at a time. A total of $4.20…(or 27.34 in today’s money. /s)
My Dad’s new LTD wagon with a 460 got 6 mpg.
My 69 Super Bee with a 383 got 6 mpg if I was driving like my Grandma.
So about 60 miles of travel on 10 gallons.
Not remembered as good times at all.
An economy car was one that could break 20mpg, single digits around town and low to mid 10s highway wasn’t terribly rare. If you were lucky enough to have held on to your old Nash Metropolitan from high school, like my dad’s best friend did, then you could squeeze out 30+ miles from a gallon, but there weren’t a whole heck of a lot of those still around by then, especially in any place that used road salt
Right. My Dad traded his LTD for a new Subaru wagon in 74.
And my Mom bought a new Honda Civic in 75, and a Datsun 610 as well.
We lived at an elevation near 8,000 ft then so that also hurt the mpg equation bigly.
Me? I spent most of my time walking or on my bike.
And you could only purchase fuel every other day – based on the last number of your license plate.
Even Days and Odd Days were a thing for many people.
We lived on a military base in Upper Michigan at the time – with our own BX gas station – so we were fairly insulated from all that.
We had to do the odd and even thing as well. Forgot about that too.
Very cool; I was in high school around this time but never knew about this conversion. Interestingly, a few boats where I grew up were powered by Chrysler gasoline slant-6 inboard motors.
Those slant-6 engines were seemingly in everything. Aside from being really hard to start in the cold (some carbureted versions), they seemed to be good engines, from that era.
My grandfather had a wooden cabin cruiser when I was a kid that had a pair of Chrysler Crown (basically the 1930s car engine) sixes in it. Unmuffled. I used to stand on the open transom and get a huge thrill when they fired off.
One of the most durable engines even made. It deserves more than to be mentioned in passing.
I’m pretty sure that the Chrysler A57 Multibank engine, used in WWII Sherman tanks, was based on that engine.
The Chrysler A57 Page | The Sherman Tank Site