![]() ![]() And every time I get into a new car, even the cheapest, basic econobox rentals, I marvel at how good today’s cars (even the really bad ones, by today’s standards) really are in comparison. As much as I love old cars, I find it hard to get too nostalgic about most of them because I am old enough to have driven and worked on them quite a bit. It was also harder to work on the points in the distributor with the engine leaned over the right side, as opposed to a straight six like GM and Ford used.įor all I know, it’s a survivor car out there somewhere even now. My favorite part was the italian tuneup on the bypass highway around town, kicking it down into second gear at about 50mph to blow all of the carbon out of it (it never got driven on the highway). When I was old enough, I did all of the maintenance on it for her since she was in our church (and we were allowed to cut through her back yard if we were late for school). While growing up, our elderly widow neighbor had one of these for the last 25 years of her life. There were no other structural safety standard changes clear on up through the end of the A-body in ’76, so there weren’t any safety standards written on the wall to drive Chrysler to discontinue the 108″ wheelbase sedan, either. The other major structural change (requirement for side impact guard beams in the doors) took effect in ’73, and besides, the 108″ and 111″ wheelbase 4-door cars used the same doors. Pretty good coverage of this (with an apposite photo I provided years ago when I used to edit Wikipedia) in their bumper article.Īll the other changes for ’74 - the unitised front lap/shoulder belts, the ignition/starter interlock, etc - didn’t cost any differently to install in a Valiant-shaped Valiant than in a Dart-shaped Valiant. The only difference in safety standards between ’73 and ’74 that would’ve affected the body/structure was that the bumper performance standard now applied to the rear bumper, too, not just the front. Rebadging the Dart as a Valiant was a cost-saving move, for sure, but safety standards really didn’t present some kind of cost wall. Remember, we don’t have a type-approval system here. Out of curiosity, how many VIN numbers do you have for 72 runners (I have a little over 200).Not nearly so much as you might have in mind. Sounds like your database is more complete than mine for 72 cars. ![]() Wish I had started recording serial numbers for cars back then, instead of several years later. I tried to see if I could special order a '72 RR, and they told me it was too late in the year to do that. I wanted a Road Runner with bucket seat interior, so I passed on it. It was sort of hard to see the C-stripe because the white blended in with the blue. It had a blue bench interior, column automatic, 400, white C-pillar stripe, blue steel wheels with small hubcaps. I looked at a HB-1 '72 RR at a Plymouth dealership in Garden Grove, CA around May of 1972. I have serial numbers for cars that I don't have the data plate info for. Maybe there's a couple of others in my list of serial numbers, but these are the only cars I have data plate info for. Louis, and some in Canada, 340 & 400 models. All of them have blue interiors, except for one which is a white bench seat interior. ILUV72RRs wrote:I have 8 serial numbers for HB-1 Blue Sky '72 RRs. ![]()
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