1968 Dodge Dart GTS: A 340 for the Street, and 80 Hemi Darts That Were Never Meant for It

On December 7, 1967, Chrysler's Race Group wrote to W. E. 'Farmer' Dismuke at the National Hot Rod Association about proposed 1968 Super Stock B race cars. DodgeGarage reproduces the opening of that letter in its history of the LO23 Hemi Dart. On February 20, 1968, according to Over-Drive, Dodge released the option: a 1968-only Dart built for drag racing, assembled by Hurst Performance, fitted not with the Street Hemi but with the full cross-ram race 426, and sold with a non-warranty disclaimer. Both sources count 80 of them. The same model year gave ordinary buyers a very different fast Dart.^1,2

That car was the GTS, new for 1968; Old Cars Weekly spells out the initials as GT Sport. Over-Drive describes it as a high-performance version of the GT with its own body designation, offered as a two-door hardtop and a convertible. Its standard engine was also new that year. Over-Drive's fast facts record the arrival of the 318 and 340 V8s in the Dart, and Old Cars Weekly traces the 340 to Chrysler's 273 and 318 family: a 4.04-inch bore and 3.31-inch stroke, 10.5:1 compression and a single four-barrel, rated at 275 horsepower at 5,000 rpm and 340 lb-ft at 3,200 rpm, a manufacturer figure whose rating basis the sources do not state.^3,2

The GTS put its equipment where a buyer could see it. Old Cars Weekly lists a low-restriction dual exhaust with chrome tips, heavy-duty Rallye suspension, 14 x 5.5 wheels, E70-14 red-stripe tires, a hood with power bulges and vents, and body-side stripes, with the bumblebee stripe around the tail as a no-cost option. Over-Drive adds firm-ride shock absorbers. A column-shifted three-speed manual was standard; Over-Drive prices the four-speed at $179 and the TorqueFlite at $181 with a V8, and Old Cars Weekly lists 3.23, 3.55 and 3.91 axles. Vinyl front buckets were standard in the hardtop and optional in the convertible.^3,2

For more displacement there was the 383. Over-Drive lists it at 300 horsepower at 4,400 rpm and 400 lb-ft at 2,400 rpm on 10.0:1, with freer-breathing exhaust manifolds and carburetor secondaries enlarged from 1.56 to 1.69 inches, and says a 383 car wore '383' just below its GTS badge. Old Cars Weekly says the bigger engine added 89 pounds with the four-speed and 136 with the automatic. No count of 383 GTS cars has been found in a named source, so how many buyers chose the heavier engine over the new 340 is unknown.^2,3

Old Cars Weekly prints $2,611 for the GTS hardtop and $3,383 for the convertible, a $772 gap between two bodies of one model that no factory price list consulted confirms. Its production statement is more useful for what it admits: GTS output was lumped into 24,100 Dart GT-series V8s rather than reported separately. A 340-production compilation that names Galen Govier and Consumer Guide among its sources counts 5,828 GTS 340s, about a quarter of that GT-series V8 total. For scale, Over-Drive says 56,900 six-cylinder base Darts were delivered the same year.^3,4,2

The magazines liked the smaller engine. Old Cars Weekly reports that Hot Rod ran a 340 GTS with the TorqueFlite through the quarter-mile in 14.38 seconds at 97 mph, a figure for that tested car from an issue the article does not identify. Hot Rod, as quoted there, suggested that 'the GTS might be a more sensible package' than Plymouth's Road Runner, pointing to carpet, fat tires and bucket seats, and thought the smaller engine could prove an advantage in drag-racing classes. The comparison was pointed: both cars came from the same corporation, and the Dart made its case on equipment rather than engine size.³

The LO23 began where the GTS ended. DodgeGarage decodes LO23 as the car's VIN model designation and says the bodies started down the line at Hamtramck before a specialized Chrysler and Hurst completion. Street Muscle places the conversion at Hurst's Ferndale, Michigan, facility and lists what happened there: a fiberglass hood with a scoop and hold-down pins, fiberglass fenders, acid-etched doors without mirrors, side windows of thin Chemcor worked by straps, enlarged rear wheel wells, van bucket seats on aluminum brackets, and bodies delivered unpainted. The magazine puts the finished weight at 3,020 pounds, a figure it does not source.^1,5

The drivetrain was chosen for one job. Street Muscle describes two combinations: an A833 four-speed with a Hurst shifter driving a Dana rear with 4.88 gears, or a modified A727 TorqueFlite with an 8.75-inch rear and 4.86 gears, both behind a Hemi breathing through two Holley four-barrels on an aluminum cross-ram. It reports the published rating as 425 horsepower and an original price under $5,000. DodgeGarage's 'As Delivered' section likewise describes a driveline that depended on the transmission chosen. None of that made the car a road car, and the disclaimer made the point in writing: it was sold for competition, without the warranty a showroom Dart carried.^5,1,2

Eighty is the number everyone repeats, and it rests on one lineage. DodgeGarage reports 80 LO23 cars, Over-Drive's matching figure is probably drawn from the same heritage account, and neither exposes a Chrysler or Hurst build or shipping ledger. The Plymouth half of the program is less settled still: DodgeGarage reports 72 Hemi Barracuda package cars, while NHRA's 2024 account of the Barracuda prototype says Chrysler built 50. The two A-body race cars shared an engine, a converter and a purpose, but their counts come from different accounts and cannot be added into a program total.^1,2,6,7

On the drag strip the LO23 did what the letter to NHRA had proposed. Street Muscle says the cars began to dominate the SS/B and SS/BA classes and set progressively better records through 1968 and after. DodgeGarage's recipient paragraph names racers associated with original cars, and its images include tribute and re-created cars that cannot prove what every original looked like when it left Hurst. What the program established was a factory-authorized race car built from a showroom body, with its provenance, its code and its count all resting on documents that are still only partly public.^5,1

The street car's own consequence showed up in the next year's numbers. The same 340 compilation counts 3,645 Dart GTS 340s for 1969, down from 5,828, and 16,637 Swinger 340s. The GTS had shown that a small Dodge with the 340 could sell on performance; in 1969, by those counts, more than four buyers chose the Swinger 340 for every one who chose the GTS 340. The Hemi Dart's story, by contrast, is told by a letter, a dealer release and a converter's parts list rather than by a production table.^4,1,5