FLIGHT OF FANCY AS DART RIDES AGAIN

After 47 years tucked away and forsaken, time capsule Dodge is back on the road

The old house on Vancouver’s tony west side built in the ’50s looks out of place next to the modern multimillion-dollar homes that have popped up over time. Its grey stucco has seen a lot of seasons and the turquoise trim is from another era. At the rear of the old house is a drivein garage. The old wooden door is stuck with overgrown weeds and vines clogging the access. Nobody has lived here for quite a while.

But in that garage, which is part of the downstairs portion of the house, sits a time capsule stored there from a time when automobiles were distinctive, had character and said something about the owners. The 1962 Dodge Dart sedan has been sitting inside since the early ’70s. A thick coat of dust covers the medium blue metallic paint and all the tires are flat. The trunk is open revealing the original spare tire and jack. The cardboard jacking instructions have fallen from where they had been pasted on the inside of the lid. A set of tire chains is stored there along with some car-cleaning items from four decades ago.

Vancouver Sun columnist Douglas Todd’s grandfather Stan Todd, who was a veteran seriously wounded in the First World War, purchased the car new. He was a log scaler, often working out of town and drove his car sparingly. He stopped driving in the early ’70s and died in 1975.

Doug Todd’s father, who also had serious health issues, used the car a few times and so did Doug while he was going to university. The last time the car was licensed was 1981. But indications are it may not have been driven for 10 years prior to that. That would mean the car had been inside without moving for 47 years. The odometer indicates the car had travelled just 60,000 kilometres in the few years it was in use. Ownership of the car passed from Doug ’s grandfather to his grandmother May Todd, who didn’t drive, and then to their daughter, who also didn’t drive.

“It was always spoken about as the old car in the garage by the family,” Doug reflects. “Nobody paid any attention to it until my aunt died. Then we didn’t know what to do with it.”

But there was a need to clean out the old house and the car had to be part of that. On a sunny Saturday morning, the garage door was pried open to reveal the old car that had been sold new a few kilometres away by Lawson Oates Motors, a Chrysler dealer.

The 1962 Dart was a redesigned and re-engineered Chrysler product built on a new lightweight unibody platform. It featured Chrysler’s Torsion-Aire torsion bar front suspension and asymmetric rear leaf springs. This base 440 sedan is powered by the bulletproof 225-cubicinch slant-six engine coupled to a push-button-operated automatic transmission. The only option was a non-push-button radio, the cheapest available. The original cost would have been around $2,500.

Veteran car hauler Murray Chambers was called in to air up the tires and get the car on his ramp truck for the journey to a shop that could assess the car and try to revive it. Once there, a thorough cleaning with soapy water revealed the car had some patina and minor damage due to skirmishes with other objects. But the body was rust free, the engine still clad in factory red paint and the trunk looked like new with the original spare and jack.

A mixture of diesel fuel and transmission fluid was squirted into each cylinder after removing the spark plugs. After two days, attempts to turn the engine over were successful. New plugs, points, coil and a dash of gasoline down the carburetor and the engine ran, for a few seconds. This was promising after decades of not turning over.

Next came a carburetor rebuild and a new gas tank with sending unit that was available through a local auto-parts store. In the meantime, all gasoline and brake lines were flushed out along with the entire cooling system. The brakes required a new master cylinder and wheel cylinders to ensure the hydraulic brakes would function properly and safely. While under the hood, the engine was given a complete cleaning and detailing with some new paint.

Now the Dodge Dart is running and driving again following more than four decades of dry storage. There are still some cosmetic improvements to make the car look like new again along with new radial tires to ensure safe driving.

But the 1962 Dodge Dart that began service in Vancouver for the west-side Todd family is back on the road and looking good.

PHOTOS: ALYN EDWARDS Sun columnist Douglas Todd displays the car his grandfather purchased new, now unearthed after more than 40 years of collecting dust in a west-side garage.

The 1962 Dodge Dart sees its first light of day in more than four decades.

Some diesel oil in the cylinders, new plugs, points and a condenser along with some gas down the carburetor brought the long dormant slant-six engine to life.