Missing motors
The Dart Swing was the body of choice, for me.
Bought one new in 70, after wrecking my 68 Hemi RR, that I also purchased new in the winter of 1968.
When I wrecked the RR, the insurance company totaled the car. The insurance adjuster came to my house, looked at the car, it had rolled and did a nice slide on it's roof.
It took them about 8 days to sens a truck to pick it up. In that time we were able to pull the Hemi, the 833 4 speed, and the Dana 60. The car was just 3 years old.
About a year before that I purchased a 69 GTX from my neighbor. The car was a year old with 1600 (hundred) miles on it. He sold it to me for the remaining payments. About 16 months at at $86 a month ( about $1400). It was a 440/4Bbl, 833, and a Dana 60. My goal was to put the Hemi into the GTX, and the 440 into my 340 Dart.
The 70 340 was rated at about 275 HP. with a few changes you could see 300+ out of them without spending a ton of money. Remember, this was during a time when you could by a factory replacement engine, like a stock 383 rated at 335HP, with no mods.
I sold the 340 to a friend for enough money to by what i needed (some used, some new) to put the 440 into the Dart, and abot 8 months or so later we started converting the GTX to take the hemi.
That's my only "340 story". I was never a big fan of the 340, just seemed to be more hype than not. By 73 they were down to 240HP, and you could buy a junk yard 318 from a few years earlier that would have had a 230HP rating with a 2 Bbl carb! The 318 in my 76 B200 van with an Edlebrock "Streetmaster 318" Manifold, a Carter 625 cfm AFB, a set of cheap 1-5/8" primary headers, and a couple of "Hush-Thrush" mufflers, and an RV cam from Crane, up grade was making ("corrected") 315HP, and similar torque, and in 77 when I did that up grade I had a total investment of $600. Drove the van into the garage on Saturday morning and it was back on the street Late Sunday afternoon.
The fact was that 340 have always been a premium, and the money saved building a 318, or a 360 amounted to as much, or more bang for the buck.