Established initially as a producer of diesel engines, at Ourense the company then expanded to make commercial vehicles, reaching licensing agreements with French Berliet (truck cabs), British AEC (buses and coaches), German Hanomag (agricultural tractors), and Vidal & Sohn Tempo-Werke GmbH (light vans and trucks), all of them driven by Barreiros's own engines.

Sold as the Barreiros Dart, it had modified front styling, a four-speed gearbox, and all-around disc brakes.

During that time, the Spanish automobile market was strongly protected, making entering it effectively only possible by domestic manufacturing.

[1][2] A total of 17,589 units were manufactured of both models in Spain, they were produced as a knock-down kit imported from Argentina due to the protectionist Spanish regulations of those years.

Peugeot bought the Villaverde factory, as Chrysler was divesting European operations in Spain, France, and the United Kingdom.

[1][10] On 12 June 1975, Fernando Herrero Tejedor, a Minister Secretary General of the Movimiento Nacional and the politician mentoring Adolfo Suárez, died in a car accident while travelling in his official Dodge 3700 in the municipality of Adanero.

[11][12] After the last ten Ghia-built Crown Imperial limousines were completed for Chrysler, Ghia sold its tooling to Barreiros.

[citation needed] Spanish Prime Minister Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, who served under Generalísimo Francisco Franco, was assassinated in 1973 while riding in an armoured Dodge 3700 GT by an 80 kg bomb planted by the Basque separatist group ETA.