Couple buy rare '68 Dodge Dart, sell it, then rediscover it in the woods 40 years on
Published on Jun 09, 2025 at 9:29 AM (UTC+4)
by Claire Reid
Last updated on Jun 09, 2025 at 10:25 AM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Kate Bain
A US couple who were forced to sell their 1968 Dodge Dart GTS convertible spent decades looking for it, before finally finding it in a field.
Mr and Mrs Stanley bought the car new from a dealership in winter 1968, opting for the GTS model with a 340-cubic-inch V8 and a four-speed manual transmission.
The couple didn’t know it at the time, but this made their car one of only 44 ever built to that specification.
A few months after ordering it, the car was delivered and Mrs Stanley wasted no time in taking it drag racing.
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The car became a real part of the family, with old photographs showing the couple and their young son Jack proudly posing with the Dodge.
However, in 1982, the family hit some financial difficulties and made the tough decision to sell the beloved car.
Sadly, folks selling their car and then later coming to regret it isn’t uncommon; just ask this couple from Michigan who sold their 1969 Dodge Charger in order to get an upgrade and soon realized they’d made a mistake, or this man who hired a private detective to track down his 1979 Tans Am because he missed it so much.
And it was a similar story for Mr and Mrs Stanley, who spent years searching for their blue 1968 Dodge Dart GTS convertible.
In an attempt to find their vehicle, the couple took out ads in the local paper and would ‘talk to everybody’ they thought might be able to help.
Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, the car remained missing.
Until one day in 2017, when their son Jack was out driving and saw some abandoned old vehicles parked in some woodland.
After taking a closer look, he realized that one of the cars was none other than the 1968 Dodge Dart GTS that belonged to his mom.
Pretty incredible, right?
However, the poor old Dart wasn’t in quite the same condition it had been when the Stanleys sold it back in the 1980s.
The family had to practically dig it out of the woods, removing trees and brush, before loading it up onto their trailer and taking it home.
It had clearly spent a large amount of time outdoors, exposed to the elements, and needed a complete restoration.
So, they reached out to Mopar expert Mark Worman from Graveyard Carz to get his help to restore the beloved car to its former glory.
Worman is more than up to the challenge and has promised to document the whole journey on his YouTube channel.
We bet the Stanleys can’t wait to see how this turns out.
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Claire Reid is a journalist who hails from the UK but is now living in New Zealand. She began her career after graduating with a degree in Journalism from Liverpool John Moore’s University and has more than a decade of experience, writing for both local newspapers and national news sites. Claire covers a wide variety of topics, with a special focus on cars, technology, planes, cryptocurrency, and luxury.
