Here’s a rare look inside the Chrysler Proving Grounds in Chelsea, Michigan as the all-new 1960 Dodge Dart is put through its paces.
Located just outside Chelsea, Michigan, around 60 miles west of Detroit, The Chrysler Chelsea Proving Grounds was one of the most extensive automotive testing facilities in the United States when it opened in 1954. And it still is today with nearly 4,000 acres of road and test facilities, including a 5.0-mile high-banked oval track. Here we get a rare look inside the top-secret complex for the introduction of a new Chrysler product for 1960, the Dodge Dart.
The Dart is better known as the Dodge brand’s compact-class entry, but it was originally launched in 1960 as a low-priced, full-sized car. (See our in-depth feature on the 1960 Dart here). Long story short, Chrysler decided to phase out its dual Dodge-Plymouth franchises for 1960, leaving the Dodge-only dealers without a low-priced model on their lots. The Dart, which featured Dodge styling on a shorter Plymouth wheelbase, was designed to plug the gap in the product line. And the plan worked all too well, as the Dart comfortably outsold the top-line Dodge models in 1960, and the Plymouth division, too.
As we will soon learn, there were plenty of new developments at Dodge for 1960, including Unibody unitized construction, the Slant 6, Chrysler’s first new inline six in decades, and ram-induction intake manifolds for the V8. And though it’s barely mentioned here, 1960 was also the debut for the Torqueflite 904, Chrysler’s first all-aluminum automatic transmission. We can check out all this stuff, including the giant high-speed oval, in the video below.
Dodge sure got their money’s worth from that announcer! Get that guy a glass of water! Was this the car that killed Plymouth 40 years later? Dodge’s descent into the low-priced three essentially made Dodge and Plymouth the same brand, and I certainly would have bought a Dart over a Plymouth in 1960.
Wondering how many were actually made with the dual quad 383. Gotta be a seriously low number, with even less left today.
Cool car, but a questionable move from a product-placement perspective. The smarter answer for the ‘long-game’ would have been to give Dodge dealers the ‘exclusive’ on the new compact Valiant (which ‘floated’ as a Demi-independent entity for its first year). Remember, the Valiant got high marks initially for seeming the more ‘upscale’, larger and slightly ‘continental’ offering among the new compacts from The Big Three. So throwing that bone to Dodge would have made sense, and plugged the gap in Dodge’s low priced offerings.
I love the 1960 Dodge – both the Dart and the ‘regular’ mid-range Matador/Polara. But from a brand management perspective, the ’60 Dart was short-sighted. In the name of short-term profits, 1) it accelerated the ‘brand-creep’ that ‘cheapened’ Dodge’s standing as a medium-priced brand competing with Mercury, Pontiac and Olds; and 2) it began a 25 year canibalization of Chrysler Corporation’s traditional low-priced offering, Plymouth.
Good car for the moment; bad corporate stewardship for the long-term. But, I mean… as much as I love my Mopars, this is the same leadership that shrunk their entire line of 1962 full-sized Plymouths and Dodges to intermediate size, based upon a piece of a conversation overheard at a Country Club. So…
Great overview, thanks for sharing your perspective.