It wasn't until those rare days when the first demure, unmarked '68 Darts and Barracudas rolled off the car trailers from the Hurst facility in Michigan that people began to fear the high-horsepower-plus-little-body combo potential of the A-Bodies. What followed was the single greatest corporate rebellion in professional drag racing history, landing the infamous Super Stock Darts and Barracudas their rightful place in the annals of the NHRA and IHRA.
Rocky Audenried's '67 GT isn't a Super Stock clone, nor does it even attempt to simulate the signature look of those thoroughbred racers. Rather, Rocky took a page from Dodge's book, Other People's Classic Mistakes in Underestimation, and built himself a Dart that nobody would suspect as being anything more than a cruiser, and swiftly ate their lunch. This supercharged small-block has plenty of power on tap, and the right mannerisms to take it out onto the street any day of the week.
Rocky's brother had just completed a gorgeous '69 Plymouth Road Runner when he chose to put his '67 Dart GT up for sale. Rocky and his family own and operate a summer-long seasonal restaurant in Lee Vining, California, when they aren't living in Sun Valley, Nevada, their usual home. Taking the A-Body from his brother, Rocky had to leave the car parked outside in the California dessert sun since their resort town didn't have a garage to store the vehicle. For seven months in 2000, the car sat until Rocky could take it back home to Nevada and begin the winter-long rebuild. Luckily, the car was straight as an arrow, totally rust-free, and, all together, a great platform to start any project.
An all-new front suspension was needed, so they replaced the old ball joints and bushings with a complete polygraphite kit. A set of subframe connectors helped to tighten up the body to keep it from flexing under the impending strain of the engine combination that Rocky had in mind. An 831/44 rearend was loaded up with 3.91 gears, Moser axles, Super Stock springs, a heavy-duty shackle kit, and an adjustable pinion snubber. In addition, incredible stopping power was slated for the little car with massive Wilwood discs at each wheel, and BFG rubber was wrapped around 15-inch Stockton TQ rims.
Once the car could sit on its own four wheels, it was wheeled into the paint booth to be repainted its original factory orange color, sans the white highlight stripes. Going the extra mile, B&T Custom Rods of Reno, Nevada, wet-sanded the sprayed A-Body, polished it, and finally buffed out the paint to bring out that rich, wet look that great paint jobs can pull off.
The powerplant started as a regular 360 short-block with a .509 hydraulic cam with 10:1 compression pistons. Edelbrock Performance RPM aluminum cylinder heads and a matching RPM Air Gap intake manifold reside atop the small-block with a complete set of Crane rockers. A Mighty Demon sits above the intake, and it is plumbed to the side-mounted supercharger ramming super-cooled compressed air down its throat. A Be Cool crossflow radiator with dual 11-inch fans, a Be Cool recovery tank and fan control box keep the temperatures below boiling under the blazing Nevada sun. A sprawling tti exhaust system with Dynomax mufflers expels the fumes out from under the rear bumper, while a competition 904 automatic transmission with a 3,500 stall torque converter and B&M Mega Shifter bang away at the gears.