A vintage Dodge Dart with a Chrysler 340 under the hood lines up against a modern C5 Corvette, and the comment section had already decided who wins before the video even loaded. One viewer calls it over before it started; another shares the story of nearly buying a 340 Duster for $1,000 back in 1975. Watch to see if old-school Mopar muscle really does settle the argument.
A rear tire that spends more time in the air than on the pavement should be a bad sign in any drag race. In this matchup, it barely slows things down. A vintage Dodge Dart, built around Chrysler’s small-block 340, lines up against a modern C5 Corvette running nearly three decades of automotive engineering it was never designed to face, and the reaction from viewers has been unusually one-sided for a race this old-versus-new. One commenter puts it best: the race was over before it even started. Was it really that lopsided, or is nostalgia doing some of the talking for a car most of these viewers grew up wishing they had bought?
The 340: Mopar’s Underrated Small-Block
Chrysler’s 340-cubic-inch V8, produced from 1968 through 1973, occupies a strange middle ground in Mopar history — smaller and lighter than the legendary 440 and Hemi engines that get most of the attention, but widely regarded by period road testers and modern enthusiasts alike as one of the best-breathing, quickest-revving small-blocks Detroit ever built. Factory rated between 240 and 290 horsepower depending on the model year (Chrysler famously underrated the early 275-hp versions — Hot Rod magazine dyno-tested one closer to 320 hp), a well-built 340 punched well above its paper numbers, and this particular Dart appears to carry aftermarket work that pushes it further still, judging by how eagerly it comes off the line.
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A Front Wheel Lifting Off the Ground
The most visually striking moment of the run is the Dart’s front wheel rising clear off the pavement under hard acceleration, a classic sign of a well-set-up leaf-spring muscle car transferring weight rearward at launch. It looks dramatic and slightly out of control on camera, but among Mopar enthusiasts a lifting front wheel is often treated as evidence of a car dialed in correctly for maximum weight transfer to the rear tires, not a mistake.
What the C5 Corvette Brings to the Fight
On the other side of the line, the C5 Corvette — produced from 1997 through 2004 — represented a genuine leap forward for the Corvette nameplate, with its LS1 small-block V8 rated at 345 horsepower in standard form and 385 in Z06 trim, paired with a lighter, stiffer hydroformed frame than any Corvette generation before it. On paper, a stock C5 should have a comfortable advantage over a decades-older Dart running a smaller-displacement engine — which makes the Dart’s showing in this footage more notable, not less.
Mopar or No Car and the Comment Section’s Loyalty
The top comment sets the tone for the entire discussion: “Damn you got STRETCHED OUT… Mopar or No Car,” a phrase deeply embedded in Chrysler enthusiast culture that treats brand loyalty as close to a personal identity. That loyalty shapes how the entire comment section reads the race, with viewers consistently framing the outcome as validation for classic Mopar engineering rather than crediting driver skill, launch technique, or the specific tune each car happened to be running that day.
A Duster Nearly Bought for $1,000
One commenter shares a specific, wistful memory: a friend once owned a 340 six-pack Duster with a line-lock and Hurst shift kit, offered to them for around $1,000 back in 1975 — a price that, adjusted for what these cars command today, represents one of the more painful missed opportunities a Mopar fan can recount. Stories like this recur constantly around 340-powered A-body Mopars, cars that were common and affordable well into the 1980s before collector demand transformed them into six-figure investments.
The License Plate Joke That Became a Running Bit
Beyond the race itself, one commenter’s suggestion for a fitting vanity plate — “I8AVTT,” playing on the idea of the car simply eating whatever it lines up against — has stuck around in the replies as a small, recurring piece of comment-section folklore. It is a minor detail, but it illustrates how thoroughly this specific clip has been picked apart and re-enjoyed by the same small community of repeat viewers over the years since it was uploaded.
An Upload From Before Modern Drag-Race Channels Existed
Posted in 2009 by the channel “4415100,” this clip predates the current wave of dedicated drag-racing and roll-racing channels that now dominate this genre, back when individual enthusiasts with camcorders were largely responsible for capturing and sharing amateur track-day and grudge-race footage. That earlier, rougher production style is part of what gives the video its specific character — no slow-motion replay, no on-screen graphics, just a single fixed camera angle and the sound of two very different eras of American V8 meeting head to head.
Why Old-vs-New Mopar Matchups Never Get Old
Races pitting a classic muscle car against a modern performance car tap into one of the most durable debates in car culture: whether decades of factory engineering progress genuinely translate into a real-world advantage once a well-built, well-driven classic enters the equation. Clips like this one keep circulating specifically because they offer a data point either side of that argument can claim, regardless of how the run actually finished.
Where Clean 340 Darts Sit in the Market Today
A well-documented, numbers-matching 1968 to 1973 Dart or Duster with a factory 340 now regularly commands well into five figures at auction, with six-pack-equipped or otherwise heavily optioned examples pushing higher still — a dramatic shift from the used-car-lot pricing these cars carried through the 1980s and 1990s, when many were bought cheaply, modified hard, and occasionally raced exactly the way this one appears to have been raced.
The C5’s Own Quiet Legacy
It is easy to overlook in a matchup framed around Mopar pride, but the C5 generation is itself increasingly appreciated among collectors as the last analog-feeling Corvette before electronic driver aids became standard on later generations, making this particular car a legitimate piece of performance history in its own right rather than simply the foil for a Dodge highlight reel and its loyal comment section.
Comparing Two Very Different Engineering Philosophies
What this race ultimately illustrates is two entirely different approaches to going fast in a straight line separated by nearly thirty years: a lightweight body, a big-displacement small-block, and mechanical simplicity on the Dart’s side, against fuel injection, a stiffer chassis, and decades of aerodynamic refinement on the Corvette’s. Neither approach is objectively wrong, which is exactly why this specific pairing keeps generating passionate replies instead of a settled consensus.
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That dart is by no means stock.
Gear ratio.
Mopar r no u don’t have a car
Mopar or no car. Corvettes are peaces of shit anyway
If u could spell lol
William Mayer what ever DICK HEAD
Looks more like a demon than a dart
Its a dart sport
yeah i remember them, i just think it looked more like the demon than the square body dart.
Everyone thinks mine is a duster lol
The church asked for a boycott of chrysler over the demon hence the two year run 71-72 in 73 they chamged the name to the darts sport
Kris Stewart show stewy
Kicked butt!!!(Brad says)
Bad ass…Gotta love mopars…I owned many and loved everyone one of them.
That’s not a dart it’s a duster or a demon. Try and get your models right
Its actually a dart sport i own one i would know just by the emblem and tail lights. You should learn to get your models right pssh you obviously know nothing about mopars anyone who does could tell its a dart right away
Mopar is fuckin nice!!!
Corey Woodrum
Don’t mess with the big bad dodge, right Dakota Wiseman lol
Looks more like the duster
That is an angry, angry Dodge.
That vette sucks.
Allen Caulfield
Melissa Bartos
Jerry Grubb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaqFI8WLfJI
vette sounds like crap!!
Mopar’s have great looking taillights
DART!!!! still would have won but he went first and that gives any car a 1.5 to 2 car length head start. Vettes ounded like shit when it did get going.
the Dart is a lot lighter than that vette
It wouldn’t play for me. So what happened.
Why not on a drag strip?
One for you Jim Marchio. Mike
Wish both were stock.
Any old lightweight muscle car can be made to go very fast in the quarter mile and as far as that goes it’s a lot to do with the driver and traction C5 may not have the traction right off the bat either way it’s no big accomplishment