The simple, affordable, and ever-available GM LS engine platform has made brand loyalty a bit of a thing of the past — the popular V8 engine a common swap into Fords, Mopars, and beyond. When Craig Douglas got his hands on his 1970 Dodge Dart Swinger, though, he was having none of it.

Douglas built the car up with a proper Gen III Hemi, not as a nostalgia trip or period-correct restoration, but to be used, abused, and to prove a point. That Dart is now a raw, twin-turbocharged, drag-and-drive machine that delivers seven-second quarter miles practically on demand.

Douglas, the president of ASG Automotive in Indianapolis, has been through plenty of fast cars. The Dart came into his life after his 2019 Redeye Challenger chewed through three fully built A8 transmissions, four driveshafts, and two rearends in one year. At 4,750 pounds, the Redeye was also a rough lesson in mass versus drivetrain longevity. He needed something lighter that could handle serious power without hurting parts.

Enter the Dart, a car that had been sitting in his best friend of 35 years’s garage, neglected after an LS twin-turbo build ended in catastrophic failure. Douglas saw an opportunity and seized on it. “Before I went out and bought a Fox Body or something else to throw my engine in, I told him, ‘Hey, what would you sell me the Dart for?’ He gave me a price, and I said, ‘Alright, I’ll come get it.”

The Dart has a bit of a legacy in the Mopar racing community. Originally built over 25 years ago by Brad Cashel at BC Race Cars, the Dart was ahead of its time. “This car was always clean and straight,” Douglas recalls. “It had been stripped when I got it — no wiring, no electronics, no fuel system. Just a bare shell with a cage and body. But it was a solid car, and I knew it could be something special.”

The build was aggressive and fast-paced. Over the next year, Douglas transformed the car from the stripped-down empty shell into a menacing street-legal matching capable of things few, if any, vehicles out roaming alongside him on I-465 in his native Indianapolis could rival. The heart of the Dart is a 2018 Dodge Demon-based 6.2-liter Gen III Hemi, stretched to 422 cubic inches. BES Racing handled the machining and porting on the heads, while Douglas and his team at ASG Automotive assembled the mill. It sports a Tim Hogan custom intake with an integrated intercooler, force-fed by a pair of HPT 8280 turbos. On 24 pounds of boost, it already pushes well into the seven-second range — clocking a 7.98-second, 175 mph best thus far — with plenty more on the table.

To harness that power, Douglas spared no expense. The engine breathes through a set of custom-built headers fabricated in-house at ASG Automotive. The ignition system features a Holley smart coil setup with a single plug per cylinder—an unconventional choice, but one Douglas swears by. “People always ask why I’m only running one plug. The short answer? It’s the best thing to do when you’re over 1,200 horsepower on these engines.”

The supporting driveline components are as serious as the engine. A TH400 reverse manual transmission from RPM Transmissions puts the power down through a carbon-fiber PST driveshaft to a 9-inch Ford rearend stuffed with Moser 40-spline axles and a spool. Menscer Motorsports shocks keep the Dart planted, and a set of TBM brakes bring it to a stop after each pass. The dart sports a set of  Mickey Thompson drag radials out back for maximum traction.

Despite its all-business setup, the car had to be streetable. Drag Week was always the goal, and Douglas built the Dart with reliability in mind. “I did Drag Week for the first time in 2016 and had done it a few times with more street-type cars, so it was helpful having that experience to know how to approach this build to make it reliable. I purpose-built the Dart for drag-and-drive events,” he says. “It did exactly what I wanted—went 7.98 at 175 on Drag Week, with an 8.01 average for the week, finishing fourth in Pro Street and 13th overall. And that was at just 24 pounds of boost. I haven’t even really turned it up yet.”

The build wasn’t without its challenges. As with any serious drag-and-drive car, compromises had to be made. The Dart had to be livable on the street, yet capable of surviving repeated seven-second passes. Cooling, fuel delivery, and overall reliability were top priorities. Douglas leaned on his years of experience in automotive performance to ensure the car wouldn’t just be fast, but durable.

“I’ve done Drag Week in a lot of cars, but this one was a different kind of challenge,” he says. “It was hot. Really hot. And when you’re spending that much time in a car like this, you realize how much you appreciate little things, like wing windows. I swear, the guy who invented those deserves a free lunch.”

The reception at Drag Week was everything he’d hoped for. “People love seeing the Gen III Hemi in there. Mopar guys are purists, and they get all butt-hurt when they see an LS swap in an old Mopar,” Douglas says with a laugh. “But they see this thing and go, ‘Oh, hell yeah.’ They know the car, and they knew it had an LS before. So seeing a properly built Gen III back in it, making real power — it got a lot of respect.”

Douglas insists he’s only just begun with the Dart — more boost is coming, more refinement, and more seat time. He knows the car has 7.50s to 7.60s in it, and that’s where he wants to be. “My 7.50 certification is good, and at my age, with grandkids, I don’t need to go any faster than that. I’ve done the crazy speeds when I was younger. Now, I just want to go out there, have fun, and not kill myself.”

Looking ahead, Douglas plans to push the car further while keeping it reliable. “I’m going to start creeping up on it, turning up the boost a little bit, and just see what we can do,” he says. “I’ll probably need to work on my eighth-mile numbers — get it dialed in at the 60-foot, maybe see some 1-teen times there.” With a best eighth-mile of 5.07 at 139 mph, Douglas believes the Dart has more to give. “This thing is built to be a 4.60 to 4.70 car in the eighth, pretty handily. And if I can get it there, that should put it right in the mid-sevens, maybe a 7.50 on a clean pass.”

For Douglas, it’s less about wins and chasing records and more about building something that works —and best of all, staying on-brand when so many would take the easy route and go a different direction. “This car does exactly what I want it to do. It goes rounds, it makes laps, and it doesn’t break. And at the end of the day, that’s what really matters.”