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Junkyard Gem: 1964 Dodge Dart station wagon

The Chrysler A Platform, built from the 1960 through 1976 model years for the North American market (and for a few years beyond that in Australia and Latin America), was one of Chrysler's greatest hits, if not the greatest hit. We know these cars best as the 1963-1976 Dodge Dart and the 1960-1976 Plymouth Valiant, and they established a reputation for reliability matched only by the likes of the Mercedes-Benz W123 diesel. I still see many of these cars during my junkyard wanderings, but A-Body wagons have become very rare. Here's a tattered '64 Dart wagon that I spotted in a self-service wrecking yard in San Jose, California. 1964 was the first model year for factory-installed V8 engines in the Dart and Valiant (and the Valiant's sporty sibling, the Barracuda), and the 273-cubic-inch pushrod V8 was a sturdy powerplant indeed. The slant-6 engine, though less powerful, went into most of these cars, and for good reason: It was harder to kill than all the world's cockroaches and rats put together. This car would have come with a 170- or 225-cubic-inch version of the slant-6, optimistically rated at either 101 or 145 gross horsepower (probably about 55 horses at the wheels), but I didn't feel like scraping sludge off casting numbers to see if it's on its first or 11th engine. In any case, slant-6 Darts were on the pokey side but would get you to your destination every time. This one has a lot of rust for a California car (in New Hampshire or Wisconsin, it would be considered pretty solid) and the interior is more or less obliterated, so even dedicated station-wagon lovers wouldn't have been motivated to take it on as a restoration project. So another early Dart is poised to be stuffed into The Crusher, for reasons that make good economic sense. This still makes us sad, though. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Here's the compact you've been waiting for!

We cruised Woodward in the 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat [w/video]

We were definitely rock stars at the 20th edition of the Dream Cruise.
The yell came from somewhere in the crowd: "Hey Hellcat, push it!" We obliged with a jab of the throttle, and the 707 horses of the 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat roared to life. It went on like this. All weekend. It's one thing to attend the Woodward Dream Cruise, it's quite another to star in it.

Junkyard Gem: 1991 Dodge Monaco LE

When Chrysler took over the American Motors Corporation in 1987, the hot-selling Jeep brand was the big prize of that deal. At a stroke, Iacocca's company got the XJ Cherokee (which remained in production into our current century) plus its Comanche pickup sibling, the Wrangler, the Grand Wagoneer, and the AMC Eagle as bonuses. The Eagle gave its name to Chrysler's new marque, which worked out well for quite a few years, and of course the PowerTech V8 engine began life as an AMC design. Yes, Chrysler made out like a bandit on the AMC purchase, but one of the most important acquisitions that came with that coup ended up being a Renault design from the last gasp of Kenosha: the Eagle Premier. Genetic material from this car made its way into Chrysler products for decades to come, and the Dodge Division got the opportunity to slap Monaco badges on the Premier for the 1990 through 1992 model years. Here's one of those super-rare cars in a Denver self-service yard. Dodge sold plenty of Detroit-designed Monacos from the 1965 through 1978 model years, and so the name seemed ripe for a revival in 1990. We rated the 1974 Dodge Monaco "Bluesmobile" #3 on the Best Movie Cars of All Time list, and Monacos may be found in countless cop movies and TV shows over the decades. Did the name belong on a Renault design? Absolutely! The radical-looking and big-selling Chrysler LH cars were built on a modified Eagle Premier chassis, enabling Chrysler to print money from a 1980s Renault design all the way through 2004. After that, Mercedes-Benz engineering (with a dash of Mitsubishi thrown in for good measure) got stirred into the mix, but I'm told by a Chrysler engineer that you can still see the Renault 25 structure beneath the dashboard in modern Challengers and Chargers. All of this comes thanks to Lee Iacocca's score of that advanced European car way back in 1987. One thing from the Premier that Chrysler dropped like a monkey dropping a red-hot penny once production of the Premier/Monaco ended: the PRV V6, a sophisticated-but-flaky overhead-cam V6 originally developed by a partnership between Peugeot, Renault, and Volvo (hence the acronym). This engine achieved its greatest fame as the powerplant that went into the DeLorean DMC-12. You could get the chugging AMC 2.5-liter straight-four in the Eagle Premier, but all the 1990-1992 Monacos got the 3.0-liter PRV, rated at 150 horsepower.