If you feel like you’ve seen this brown Dodge Daytona Turbo before, you’re not mistaken: we wrote about it a few months ago when it was offered for sale by what was presumably a student who spent a boatload sorting it out. The car then disappeared, presumably sold, but now it has reappeared and is being offered by the shop that performed close to $12,000 in repairs. Even as someone who buys potentially risky vehicles, that number made my eyes water for a car like this. Now, it seems that either the shop purchased it; a mechanic’s lien was placed on it; or the seller agreed to flip it over to the repair shop for a rock-bottom price. Now, this 1984 Dodge Daytona Turbo is being offered here on craigslist for $5,495.
When you rely on a shop to do the work, it’s crucial to have a close relationship when embarking on a major project. If it’s just some small repair or regular service, there’s not much to fear; but if you bring a vehicle in with thoughts of a full-scale mechanical refresh, the numbers can spiral out of control quickly. As someone who often relies on independent shops, I first make sure I’ve given them a test run and that the work was of a decent quality and fairly estimated/priced. Once that’s behind us, we can move on to bigger undertakings. It’s hard to say what happened with this Daytona, but it does seem like the previous owner suffered death by a thousand paper cuts trying to bring it back to life.
When we wrote this car up previously, the seller admitted that despite all of the work done, it still had a high idle and seemed to be running low on oil. That blew my mind, considering these are not overly complex machines and given the scale of investment in maintenance, those are two items that seemingly should have been addressed early on. The seller makes no mention of any outstanding issues, but given the price hasn’t changed much ($6,000 was the original ask), I doubt much additional work has been done. Fortunately, all of this Daytona’s positive attributes remain in place, including the loaded interior, clean leather bucket seats, a 5-speed manual transmission, and excellent all-around cosmetics.
The seller confirms that his shop performed close to $11,200 work of work on this Daytona. While I can appreciate going all-in on a car that you love, this was not the smartest vehicle to dump that much cash into – especially on a student budget. The Turbo 1 engines generated around 142 horsepower, and you can certainly bump that number a bit with some mechanical upgrades that these engines are known to respond well to. The rust-free body and what I assume to be original paint inside and out (the factory decals give me a high degree of confidence that it hasn’t been resprayed) are definite selling points, but I’d want to affirm that the issues mentioned last summer have been addressed. Thanks to Barn Finds reader Curvette for the find.
Back in the 80s I wanted to take one of these and put a frame under it and a V8 under the hood and street race it down on Airport road, but being in my teens I couldn’t afford it and I didn’t know at that time how to add a different front suspension without it looking weird. Now days I have the money and knowledge but I don’t want to destroy what’s left of them
Why would you waste your time putting a V8 in a FWD car that was designed with the turbo 4? Just add power to the current engine. My goodness, people!
Never understood that mindset either. 🤔
This could be a fun little driver. They used to really like the open road.
I love these cars! My wife and I bought an Omni 024 back in 87 and loved the car! It was yellow and black and made numerous trips to Philadelphia from Western Pennsylvania. I’m still thinking about looking for another 024 or better yet a Shelby Charger! Those were so cool and fun to drive. My buddy had a blue and silver one. I’ve thought about looking for one as an old guy cancer survivor project.
Hi John, I love these cars also. I had a blue over silver 1985 Daytona 5 speed lots of fun to drive, but I ended up trading it in on a Trans- am because of
on going issues with the onboard computer, ( 3 ) replaced under warranty and turbos blowing up.
You can rack up a bill like that at a shop really fast, especially if it’s a pampered shop. It is good advice to try them on small jobs at first.
Big lover of 80’s turbo Mopars, especially the Daytona. Had a new one back in 84′ and it was a great car overall. Have had several over the decades and currently have a 84′ Daytona turbo z that I bought from the orig. owner. Whenever I see one of these appear I tend to follow it closely as these cars hardly ever come up for sale nowadays. Overall it looks like a nice, clean pretty original Daytona and it’s obviously had a lot of work done to it but it’s history sort of stumps me. When it was listed last July it was supposedly by a student who bought it in 2023 and was going back to school in the Fall. I found a YouTube video from March 16, 2024 showing this car for sale from what appears to be a dealer in Oregon? Now it’s listed again by a shop owner, but the license plate number showing in both the Craigslist ads and the YouTube video are all the same. With regards to the low oil issue the original seller mentioned, the YouTube video seller stated the oil pressure sensor wasn’t working but they checked the oil pressure and it was fine. If it’s an original OR. car it’s probably really solid, which is vital. I had to drive all the way to VA. to get mine. If I did find any here in NE they usually had serious rust issues. With all the work done and if everything else checked out well I don’t think he’s asking a bad price. These cars are pretty hard to find now, and if you’re into them it could be a really nice ride to enjoy for not big money.
I bought one of these right here on Barn Finds earlier this year from upstate NY. Completely rust free and runs great!
As an auto repair shop owner, the listing for this car SCREAMS to me that something is off. No shop would do this much work and then sell the entire car for ½ their invoice amount. So, either the work is being fluffed up to seem more substantial than it was, the prices are grotesquely inflated or the story is just that, a story but not reality.
The write-up says their restoration cars always sell fast so why is this such a bargain? I am not buying the story.
With that said, the car is beautiful and I have always loved these cars. If it wasn’t such a distance from me and I trusted the seller more, I might look into it.
I agree, the ad is very strange. The paint doesn’t look right either. Not sure why someone would dump $12g into these cuz they don’t bring the value. Mine was $6200 right here on Barn Finds and it was in way better shape with only a brake job needing done after I bought it.
I think the paint could be original but the factory clearcoat has really faded into history.
My first new car was one of these in black. Cool ride. There was a trick to put a brake return spring on the mechanical (no electronic limiter) waste gate and serously bump the tubo boost. Unfortunately the engine wasnt meant for the resulting 9PSI boost….
1985’s had an electronicly controlled wastegate.
Mark
Got our ’86 Daytona 5 speed Z up to142 on a deserted interstate in December of ’87. Comfortable, fast, good looking and fun.
Sure is a beauty. A black CS edition. Do you still have it?
No. My fast road cars are a Mini Cooper S turbo and a Chrysler LE Pacifica big motor van that gets 25 mpg when not running at 120 mph or towing something like the Mini on the open trailer. 9 speed transmission really is something.
Hot rod van.