I went to where the car is stored today and looked at the rear bumper. Everything looks original. All the hardware looks correct and no signs of tampering are evident. Wonder if those Canadians were messing with us?
More likely in the first 30 years of the cars life it was swapped. With a scheduled production date of June 4, 1971, it is a later build ‘71 MY Dart. All those ‘70 parts left along the assembly line would have been bolted on early in the ‘71 MY (August/Sept 1970) Darts. Even then, considering it was a visible change between MY Darts, it’s still unlikely those early MY Darts had a ‘70 item on it.
