4-door as a driver ?

[Valleyant]

Drive mine everyday....great visibility and comfortable and good gas mileage. Its got a 225 with a holley 2 barrel, milled head/compression ratio of 9 to 1, recurved distributor,auto 904 and 2.76ers out back and has power steering. I plan on a front disk brake upgrade. I love it!View attachment April11,2014valiant 024.jpg

View attachment April11,2014valiant 049.jpg

Four doors are cool......check out Australian Hemi Valiants and oops Falcon GT/HO just to name a few....

 

[72bluNblu]

Just drive the Dart! :thumbup:

I daily drive my '72 Challenger. I used to worry about it, I got over it. ;) Granted, I usually only drive about 10-12k miles a year, but all of it is in my Challenger, or my Duster nowadays.

Seriously though, look at what new cars sell for. Even having a classic worth $30k is small potatoes compared to a fully loaded truck these days. And theft? I have a hard time finding folks my own age (35 ish) that even know how to drive a stick shift! Most car thieves wouldn't even know HOW to steal your Dart. At least the types you'd run into in a parking lot or at the mall. And if you actually get targeted by a professional looking for classics? They'll roll it right out of your garage on a set of dollies if they have to.

As far as the 4 doors go, I don't see why not? The extra doors will be handy on a driver, and if driving your Dart daily concerns you it seems like a good way to go. I would just plan on only making minor improvements to improve it's roadworthiness (like disk brakes). Any major improvements will just be money you'll never get back from a 4 door.

If the extra doors bug you, take a look at some of the later year cars, 73+. Much easier to find a 2 door for a decent price if it's 73+, and as an added bonus they're much more likely to have disk brakes already.

 

[Rockerdude]

Its nice to see all the four doors out there being used. Here's the car that introduced me to the a-body scene back in high school. My friend had a lot of fun with it and unfortunately it was basically trashed when he sold it. It was just your basic 318 with a 4 barrel carb, headers, 340 cam, and duals. It did 15s in the quarter and broke a lot of 7.25 rear ends..

 

[Denny]

Nothing wrong with cool old 4-door driver.:glasses7:

 

[2 Darts]

I drove my 73 Dart Custom mordor as a sort of daily driver. I say sort of because I prefer to ride a scooter except for long distances and inclement weather. I also drove the Dart when I had to carry something large. It has a /6, 904 powertrain, PS, and LBP disk brakes.

I rebuilt the front suspension and replaced the rear axle and springs when I did the LBP disk brake conversion. The other thing that happened at about the same time was replacing the SBP 14x4½ wheels, 195/75-14 tires with LBP 15x7 wheels with 205/60-15 tires. Along with giving the car a street performance front end alignment and a front anti-roll bar, these changes transformed the handling of the car.

What I liked best about the car is the accessibility of the rear seat. It will make my 200 mile one-way weekend commute at 70+ mph with no complaints while returning ~25 mpg. I'm not tempted to keep the car 100% original because there is no complete interior upholstery available for it. While trim and sheet metal is not well supported by the aftermarket, there is good support for the powertrain. There is a cult-like following for the /6 that keeps spewing out parts to improve the leaning tower of power.

A four-door makes good sense as both a daily driver and an introduction into the old car hobby. It's possible to buy one for fewer dollars than an equivalent condition two-door. Fix one up, experiment, practice and develop mechanical skills. The four-door makes the perfect lab rat for the automotive Dr. Frankenstein.

 

[Serj22]

I drive my 4 door every single day, and have put almost 30 thousand miles on it in the last year and a half of driving. It's a 225 turbocharged, and been running 2,000 miles so far with the turbo - still a daily driver.

I also get asked about it almost daily. Some people ask if I want to sell it to them, others say they/ their dad/ their grandpa/ aunt had one just like it and they just want to look at it. Others do a hover hand and oggle at it, and I usually park it in front of a window where i can see it if I go out to eat or something. I almost always spot people looking in the windows, talking to each other about it outside.

I think people are now interested in 4 doors, just as much as the 2. Mine also has a lot of flair to it I guess, so it draws attention. Just today when I drove my dad over to the taco truck, a guy with an s10 asked what I had in the Dart, and when I said a turbo225, he really wanted to see it, so I opened the hood for him. That happens on occasion too.

4 doors are cool too. Mine also doubles as a handy kid transporter with the extra doors as well. But i upgraded all the seatbelts to modern reinforced systems, because i value all 4 of our lives over "originality." And the kids like riding around in it anyway.

 

[Pompis]

I use my 4 door 1970 Valiant as my DD all year around. I have upgrade the 225 with a 2bbl intake and a NOS holley 2288 and it drives great. I gets 20-26 mpg which I think is fine for a old car that need a engine rebuild. I would rather have a car that are more fuel efficiency but then I need to have a boring and modern car. You only live once and I rather spend the extra cash on fuel and feel like I'm living my life everyday when I drive to work and other places. A modern fuel efficiency car make me pay for something that I do not enjoy it just takes me from A to B, so in that sense I combine something that I love and it takes me from A to B.

I was against 4 door and Slant 6 in the beginning but can not live without it now. So I say go for it, they are cool and the proof is that many people come up to me and ask questions about it. I have 3 peoples that want to buy it from me. Regular people doesn't see the difference between 2 and 4 door cars, they just like them because they are old and classic.

 

[BigBlockMopar]

This was once my daily for over 12 years;
Had about 5-6 different engines in it. Friends called it my rolling engine test-rig.

 

[69DARTS]

:cheers: