Only 80 of these Dodge Dart GTS Hurst-Hemi coupes ever left the factory, built with fiberglass panels, a stripped interior, and a 426 Hemi tuned strictly for the quarter-mile. Chrysler skipped the radio, the warranty, and just about every comfort feature to shave weight for Super Stock competition. Today, genuine examples can command prices approaching $250,000, and specialists still build faithful reproductions for collectors who cannot find the real thing. Read on to find out what made this stripped-down Dart one of Chrysler’s most extreme factory experiments.
Eighty. That’s the entire production run — eighty cars, full stop — and Chrysler never intended a single one of them for a normal dealership sale. This isn’t the story of a factory tweaking a family sedan for a little extra punch at the stoplight. It’s the story of engineers handed a blank check to build something closer to a purpose-built drag strip weapon that happened to wear Dodge badges and street tires. The car started life as an ordinary Dart. What it became is one of the rarest, most single-minded machines Chrysler ever let out the factory doors, and the reason it exists at all traces back to a handful of very persuasive racers.
The Racers Who Talked Chrysler Into Building It
The Hurst-Hemi Dart didn’t come from a marketing meeting. It came from high-profile drag racers lobbying Chrysler directly for a lighter, quicker Dart that could compete in Class B Super Stock ranks. A company spokesman put the mission in blunt terms at the time: Dodge wanted to put more zip in its Dart in hopes of hitting the bulls-eye in Class B Super Stock competition, with a car light and quick enough to run the quarter-mile at over 130 mph in under 11 seconds. That kind of number, from a compact economy car’s platform, was the whole point. Chrysler’s engineers didn’t build a faster Dart so much as they built a race car and let it borrow the Dart’s sheet metal.
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Bare-Bones by Design
Every one of the 80 units left the factory stripped to the essentials. There were two bucket seats and nothing else — no radio, no optional trim, no window-crank mechanisms, and no finished paint, just a coat of primer over bare sheet metal. Chrysler even attached a non-warranty disclaimer to the car, an unusual step that made clear this was not meant to be daily transportation. Every ounce not directly related to lowering elapsed times was considered unnecessary weight, and the factory treated the interior accordingly. Buyers who wanted comfort were looking at the wrong car; buyers who wanted to win a class trophy were looking at exactly the right one.
Shaving Weight Everywhere Else
The bodywork tells the same story. Fiberglass replaced steel on the fenders and hood, the latter finished with a purpose-built scoop for the induction system underneath. Lightweight window glass and lighter-gauge doors followed the same logic, stripping pounds from every panel that didn’t need to carry structural load. Ironically, the engine itself worked against the diet: Chrysler used cast-iron cylinder heads instead of aluminum to save roughly $1,000 in production cost, a decision that added about 70 unneeded pounds back onto the nose of the car. It’s a reminder that even a purpose-built race car has a budget behind it, and sometimes the accountants win a round the engineers would rather have kept.
What Made the 426 Different From a Showroom Hemi
Under that fiberglass hood sat a 426-cubic-inch (7.0-liter) Hemi built for the strip, not the street. Compression ran a stout 12.5:1, fed by two Holley four-barrel carburetors sitting on a lightweight magnesium intake manifold. A roller-bearing timing chain reduced stretch to keep valve timing consistent under sustained high-rpm abuse, while a high-capacity oil pump and Prestolite transistorized ignition with dual-point breaker distributors kept the engine fed and firing cleanly at the top of its rev range. Metal-core plug wires and headers rounded out an ignition and exhaust package built specifically to survive repeated quarter-mile passes rather than commuter miles.
Cooling, Electrics, and a Battery in an Unusual Place
Supporting hardware got the same race-first treatment. A seven-blade viscous-drive cooling fan and heavy-duty radiator kept temperatures in check during back-to-back runs, while heavy-duty rear shock absorbers handled the launch without the axle wrapping up. Perhaps the oddest detail is the battery: Chrysler relocated the special high-output 135-amp unit to the trunk, both to free up engine bay space and to shift weight rearward over the drive wheels for better traction off the line. None of it was subtle, and none of it was meant to be. Every component change on this car answers the same question — does it help the car leave the line and get down the track faster.
The Federal Rules That (Mostly) Didn’t Apply
1968 was the year federal safety mandates started reshaping ordinary Darts, with matte-black wiper arms replacing chrome, shoulder harnesses added to front outboard seating, and side marker lights required front and rear. Chrysler’s Clean Air Package became standard equipment across the regular lineup as emissions rules took effect in all 50 states for the first time. How much of that applied to a stripped-down, 50-unit competition special built with no radio and no warranty is genuinely unclear — these cars occupied a strange gray area between showroom product and dedicated race equipment, and Chrysler’s own paperwork on the subject is thin.
What One Actually Costs Today
Rarity plus documented racing pedigree adds up to real money. A Hurst-Hemi Dart GTS in moderately good condition can carry an asking price approaching $250,000, and even a rougher basket-case example commands a serious premium simply because so few exist to begin with. Home restoration is technically possible, but it’s expensive, intricate, and often a multi-year project given how many parts were unique to this 80-car run and were never cataloged for the general Dart parts bin. Anyone chasing one of these needs deep documentation skills as much as deep pockets, since verifying a genuine example against a clone is its own specialty.
Where Enthusiasts Go to Build (or Rebuild) One
For collectors who can’t find an original, specialists like Mr. Norm’s shop in Chicago’s Humboldt Park have built a business around better-than-original reproductions of the ’68 Dart, finished either true to factory spec or upgraded with a fully trimmed interior for street use. Modern versions of the 426 swap in aluminum heads in place of the factory iron units and, depending on how far a builder wants to push the internals, can produce anywhere from 625 to 720 horsepower — multiples of what the original factory rating claimed. It’s proof that the formula Chrysler’s engineers landed on in 1968 still has plenty of room left to grow.
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None of the regulations stated were applicable to the Hurst-HEMI Dart (or its Hurst-HEMI Barracuda sister) as it was not made to be street legal. They did, however have a window “mechanism”. A seatbelt strap was attached to the drivers side to facilitate raising and lowering of the window with snaps on the upper and lower bouts of the door. Most of these were also automatics. And there were 80 made rather than 50.
so where’s the pic of the Hurst Hemi Dart?