As you’d imagine, anything that has to do with moving, turning or stopping her been replaced. The big slotted rotors and multi-piston calipers will haul this thing down well. A Dart Lite weighed 2,910lbs when new. With all the new tubing and stuff this one may be up a little but still a low 3,000lb pro touring car is gnarly.

Here’s the 6.4L late model hemi engine that is now nestled in the engine bay. The guys at Hotchkis Performance East massaged the engine bay and made the mounting hardware to get this baby in. Word is that Arrington Performance may be laying some tune magic on this bad boy. More powah!

The fabrication work starts to show itself immediately on the car with the looks of the roll cage down bars and the beautiful removable cross brace. Artwork!

Not exactly the sign you were driving a powerhouse in 1976 but it meant you were getting good mileage. Pretty much flop that backwards now and you have the current state of the car.

One more look across the top of the engine bay to give you another angle on that awesome brace. Remember that shape. It will show up again.

The bumpers are ‘glass and mounted the same way that bumpers get mounted on NASCAR racers because Ron and Kevin Bryde come from decades of experience in that world. Note the removable towing eyelet that slides into a ready made slot in the bumper. Lots of slick stuff happening here. Oh, and the headlights are late model Chrysler pieces that throw way more light than the stockers.

The Hotchkis tuned shocks by Fox live on all four corners as well as the Hotchkis components that anyone and their brother could buy today. This car will be a great proving machine to the Hotchkis TVS system for these A-bodies.

Due to the fact that stiffness and rigidity was a paramount concern when putting this car together, pains were taken to tie everything together. This upper shock mounting setup is proof of that. In talking to Kevin Bryde, they wanted to make sure that the car was completely stiff so that the suspension would be able to act as it should without being compromised by distortion of deflection.

We’re dorks for this stuff but really, touches like how this air inlet piping was run get us all geeked out. The finish here is really, really nice. The fact that it is not all covered up by paint and you can see welding marks and all makes it cooler.

Again, just look at the finish here, the billet mounts and how it is all tied together. Yes, those cannisters say “Roush” on them because Hotchkis Performance East is in Mooresville, North Carolina and that’s mecca for NASCAR fans due to the fact that virtually every major team is based there. LOTS of parts flying around from the NASCAR realm.

Remember that air tube we showed you running into the fender? It is hooked to the filer that is in this awesome custom air box and Kevin Bryde made. The panel has been removed from the rear so you can see it but this is in the front of the wheel well on the driver’s side. So where does it get air from?

Right here! The box is tucked a couple inches above the lower edge of the bumper, away from water, rocks, and junk. It is actually in a nice area to scoop air down there while bring protected as well.

You can see the Hotchkis upper and lower control arms and the Hotchkis sway bar as well. This is componentry that you can bolt on your Mopar, too. Oh and those front brakes? Yeah those are what you would find on a late model Viper. 

This offset shifter struck us as cool. The transmission is a Legend SS700 five speed and it will be given a thorough work out when Wesley is behind the wheel on the autocross course, road course, or even at places like Targa Newfoundland. That red knob? Brake bias adjuster.

Cool touches here. This plate was crafted to keep someone’s feet IN the footwell if things ever get rough out there. The tubing it is attached to is the conduit that the fuel line is running through. All the lines are mounted inside the car for maximum protection from debris at mixed terrain rally events like Targa Newfoundland and others. If we made this piece it would look like something from a prison license plate stamping line.

More protection! This time it is a plate to keep the ECU for the computer from getting bashed with anything on the right side of the passenger area.

The metalworking skill again comes to the surface when you look at how nicely made the transmission tunnel is. The forming of it, the small bracing you see down near the lower left of the photo, all of it.

What? Did you think it was going to have factory door panels in it?!

So remember that shape from under the hood and the bracing? Looks like the door bars in this FIA spec roll cage that the car was built to conform to. There’s a bunch of tubing in here and it serves the purpose of protecting Kevin in the event of trouble but also it makes this car as stiff as a petrified log.

Things we cannot do: create anything with a welder that looks like this!

These door bars are interesting because they provide good protection but also allow for seemingly easier ingress and egress than the traditional style ‘cage we are used to seeing.

While we did not hear the hemi fire up during our visit, Kevin and Ron report that the thing sounds absolutely awesome through the little Magnaflow race mufflers that are tucked down at the end of the system. We can imagine!

Wait…are those? Yes, those are leaf springs! Why didn’t the guys throw coil overs and all the stuff at this car? That isn’t how Wesley wanted it. This is where the hurt feelings will start. If the leaf spring guy owns your zooty coil sprung car you may have some emotional damage. Recognize the rear brakes? Mustang Cobra pieces!

The same basic design that Ma Mopar put under the car in the 1970s but greatly refined in execution. Note the steel box that the fuel cell is in.

There’s said fuel cell and the twin down bars at the back of the cage. The twin bars are 100% necessary to meet the letter of the FIA law but the guys all agreed to add them for stiffness and frankly extra tubing isn’t a bad thing if the going gets weird. The fuel cell also has some “twin” to it in the form of twin pumps for redundancy. There is a switch on the dash Kevin can throw to switch between them in the event one fails. 

This aluminum trunk hinge is pretty slick. Because racecar.

These Falken tires will be the final piece of the grip puzzle to keep the Dart planted to the asphalt as Kevin Wesley works his hardest to get the car around corners, hills, and whatever other obstacles he will see at tracks across the country.

Here’s another look at the cage from inside the car looking over the Sparco seats. In typical roll cage fashion, it is a jungle gym back there!

These are pretty slick! Far more robust than the typical thin sheet metal discs you normally see with hood pins. Another nice finishing touch.

We didn’t want to leave you without a shot of the sweet looking factory grillwork in the car. These middle 1970s Darts are growing on us the more that we see them. Typically everyone is looking at the late 1960s stuff so there may still be deals out there on these cars and they make a great base for several different styles of car builds.

When I was at the shop there was some final finishing work to do like the installation of the windshield, some interior/dash stuff, and and best we knew Kevin Wesley was planning on getting his mitts on this thing soon. The car had been driven on a shakedown cruise (sans windshield!) a few days before we got there. Obviously the real shakedown will come when the hammer gets laid down and the engine, trans, and suspension all get a workout. Chrysler fans, you have a new hero to cheer for in the pro touring world. What do you think?

A quick look at the machine sitting on terra firma after Kevin got back from a quick shakedown run. Note the lack of windshield. They were plugging it in the day I was there and Kevin was down to get the car picked up just a day or two ago. Stay tuned, we look forward to following the exploits of this Mopar killer!