I’m too young to remember the traditional cycle of the new car reveal, but a lot of you remember it well: Come about September, the dealership went into Secret Squirrel mode while the new models were trucked in, and then they were revealed once everything was ready. There was no two-year warning period over the upcoming model like we have now…if you were lucky you knew a change was coming down the pipeline and planned accordingly. And when the dealership did reveal the new models, it was like an early Christmas present to the gearheads, who wanted to see the new colors, options, and most important, deals.

These pictures, which come to us courtesy of Moparts, show what it was like on delivery day for a Mopar dealership, from the early 1950s up to the mid 1980s. The likelihood that every dealer got a boatload of brightly colored muscle cars on the back was minimal…usually you might have one or two hot cars, followed up by some sedans and a Dart or two.