VIDEO: Kids! Gunplay! Dodge! It's the '64 Dart!
You know you're looking at something OLD old school when a commercial opens with a dad teaching junior how to nail that clay pigeon, whose explosive demise kicks off of the jaunty, swinging jingle for the '64 Dodge Dart. The voiceover's done by someone with a great game show announcer-type delivery, and he sells us on the plucky Dodge as we watch Mom, Dad and the kids enjoy a country drive, blissfully unencumbered by modern safety equipment and regulations.
Voiceover Man tells us that the Dart's "the new kind of compact in the large economy size." When we try to process that tagline our heads want to explode like the clay pigeon, so we're just going to sit back, click "watch again" and drink in the Americana.
This is way better than John Mellencamp selling trucks...
[Source: YouTube]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
StickShift 2:28PM (3/15/2008)
http://www.truveo.com/1964-Dodge-Dart-Commercial/id/1526131040
thats a working link. have fun!
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Jim 5:38PM (10/13/2006)
The voice over guy sounds like hall of fame announcer Ernie Harwell
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Hung2 6:43PM (10/13/2006)
Dodge don't make 'em like that anymore!
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Noah 6:09PM (10/13/2006)
It's amazing that was a compact car!
What's more amazing was the marketing.... which in now way made we want it whatsoever... look if I buy that car my kids will be better looking, my son's aim will improve and my wife will take better care of the yard!
Stupid ad.... how much horsepower does it have? WHO CARE'S IT'S SMALL! What's the actual base price? WHO CARES, IT'S BIG! What benifits does it have? IT'S THE RIGHT CAR FOR YOU!
Ok... wait a second it's just like a modern Dodge ad but with less small text at the bottom of the screen and it doesn't include a visible minority and a construction site...
--Noah
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Paul Y 6:43PM (10/13/2006)
See also:
http://www.cartalk.com/content/testdrives/Reviews/dodge-dart-1963.html
That more or less sums it up. My apologies if you've seen this before, but if you haven't, you'll get a laugh.
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Vexorg 8:01PM (10/13/2006)
Wow, apparently this is so old they hadn't invented rails on bridges yet!
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PJ 8:57PM (10/13/2006)
"It's amazing that was a compact car!"
The other thing that's amazing is that, as big as that Dart looks, today's compact cars are even *less* compact when you run the numbers.
The Dart pictured in that at had a curb weight of 2,710 lbs, a 111" wheelbase, and LxWxH figures of 195", 69", and 54", respectively.
Dodge's current compact, the Caliber, has a curb weight of 3,000 lbs, a 104" wheelbase, and LxWxH figures of 174", 69", and 60". The Dart was longer, but the Caliber is significantly taller and heavier.
I know, I know, it's also safer, better-equipped, yada yada... but it still goes to show, the myth of today's "downsized cars" is just that, a myth.
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Andrew 10:38AM (10/14/2006)
WOW, that was bad! People were not really that stupid back then were they? That whole thing played on ego.
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chris 10:39AM (10/14/2006)
Dependable? My family went through a number of chrysler products in the late sixties and early seventies. I can still remember the whacky starters wherring and the bucking and snorting the engine did until warm. I think the cars were in the shop every month for carb adjustments. Then in three or four years after the body had rusted big holes in the rear fenders my dad would by another one...Sad.
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Doug R 8:19PM (2/01/2007)
I grew up in a family of mopar owners chris and we never had those issues and my dad was notorious for abusing cars. He changed the oil when he felt like it and would drive them across country with one motor mount missing. Of course the motor mount needed replacing after 250,000 miles of constantly gunning the engine. We had at least 3 that I know of that went 300,000 miles. One we called the "moon car" because it had somewhere around 375,000. One had a broken speedometer at 350,000 and mom drove for quite a while after that.+
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Snix 2:10PM (3/07/2007)
Damn, you could actually show a kid holding and shooting a shotgun back then? You mean to say that people were actually responsible for their actions back then? Wow, times have changed......
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patrick henry 1:41PM (2/02/2008)
Was just looking, I've never got to see the Dart ad would really like to. Anyone know why it was removed? Thanks.
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