1965 Dodge Dart Charger

65dartcharger said

Dan! In general I think you definitely right. Re the trunk lids all 65 Dart GTs I have owned over the years (9 cars) all of them had the black tejp under the trunk moulding. Those cars were assembled both in Los Angeles as well as Hamtramck.

Re the assembly staff I think they had one model for Dart, one for Dart 270 and one for GT. But if those was out of stock they took a trunk that was spare part. That's the reason for holes just for the centered letters! That could not be applayed to the assembly line work. That would be too time consuming!

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I disagree. I'm more agreeing with Dan on this. The decklid on the assembly line would have no holes in it at all, except for tail lights. There would be fixtures for each model of Dart that would be placed up against the lid either while it sat in a holding fixture offline, or on the car on the line for the necessary holes to be drilled. "Maybe" all decklids had the holes through the center because the factory knew that those holes would either be used or hidden on every car, so it was cheaper to have the part come in with those holes present and just cover them with tape as a fast cheap sealing method. But even cars with the center moulding would have needed holes for the clips to hold the moulding in place. Either way, holes had to have been drilled at some point on any car except a base vehicle.