We think of the Dodge Dart as a compact car, but the name first appeared on a mid-priced, family-size sedan in 1960. 

Introduced in October of 1959, the 1960 Dodge Dart arose from the Chrysler Corporation’s complicated tangle of dealer alignments and the product planning headaches they tended to produce. (These dealer alignments included Chrysler-Plymouth, Dodge-Plymouth, and Plymouth-DeSoto.) A decision was made to eliminate the Dodge-Plymouth alignment for 1960, leaving more than 3,000 Dodge-only franchises without a Plymouth-priced product in their showrooms—a big chunk of their sales volume.

To plug this hole in the lineup, a new product was whipped up with Dodge-style exterior sheet metal but based on the Plymouth 118-inch wheelbase rather than on the slightly larger 122-inch Dodge platform (both were based on Chrysler’s Unibody construction that was brand new that year). An extensive market study somehow generated the name Zipp for the new new low-priced product, which was roundly rejected in favor of Dart—a name that would prove to have a long history with Chrysler, as things turned out.

The new Dart was offered in three trim levels, with Seneca at the bottom, Pioneer in the middle, and Phoenix at the top. Since they shared their black metal with the Plymouth range, numerous body styles were available: two-door and four-door post sedans, two-and-four-door hardtops, station wagons, and a convertible. While the senior Dodges included a standard V8, the Dart’s base engine was the new Chrysler Slant 6, with the V8s available at extra cost. (See our popular feature on the Slant 6 here.) Sticker prices for the Plymouth-based Dart started at $2330, a full $600 less than the starting price for the senior Dodge.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the new Dart—slightly smaller but otherwise similar—outsold the big Dodges by a huge margin, claiming the lion’s share of the division’s sales in 1960. (The Dart even outsold Plymouth.) For 1963, the popular badge was moved over to Dodge’s A-body compact platform, where it remained through 1976, selling millions of units through the years—and why we associate the Dart name with compact cars. There was a Dodge Dart pickup, too, but that’s another story.

The Dart name was revived one more time in the Sergio Marchionne era at Fiat Chrysler for a compact sedan based on the Fiat architecture shared with the award-winning Alfa Romeo Giulietta. Unveiled in 2012 as a 2013 model, the Italian-American Dart never quite took root in the U.S. market and was discontinued in 2016. Will the Dodge Dart name ever appear again? That’s difficult to say, but the odds are slim. The Chrysler brand in its current incarnation as Stellantis has an almost infinite number of product badges in its portfolio.