“Purchased from original owner that bought the truck new in 1956 from a Dodge dealer in Greenfield MA. Have original bill of sale and key with original Dodge key chain. Over the course of the last 4 years I did a ground up restoration. All numbers match right down to the wheels that have been tired up with non directional 9×16 rubber that would have came new on truck in 1956. In an effort to keep everything original or period correct, it has been painted 1956 Dodge Ponchartrain Green with Mason single stage urethane. Everything on this truck has been taken apart and refurbished. The bed is white oak with 3 coats clear urethane, stainless steel bed strips and hardware. This truck is a late 1956 Dodge mid-year changed to a 12-volt electrical system, a NP synchronized 4-speed transmission and came with the only factory option at the time a drivers side arm rest. You will not set any land speed records with this truck but you can crawl over and climb just about anything.”

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How I fell in love with 1957 Dodge Trucks

After seeing a 1957 Dodge W100 Power Wagon project for sale on Craigslist in April of 2018, I was hooked. The Forward Look, one year only front end, first year full opening hood, V8, automatic, 4wd. The guy I got it from had a yard full of Dodge trucks of various sizes from the ’50s and ‘6’s. After hauling it home, I started looking for parts and bought 3 more ’57 parts trucks, D200, D300, D400.

I started with rebuilding the brake system, changed fluid and seals in differentials and transfer cases. After looking into the cost of rebuilding the 315 V8 and missing original transmission, I bought a low mileage Dodge ’72 motor home 318 from a salvage yard. I did a cheap cleanup rebuild, gaskets, oil pump, timing chain, cleaned up the cylinders and valves, new plugs, wires and rebuilt the carb. After that I made motor mounts and upgraded the wiring with a  single wire alternator and electronic ignition. The motor fired right up. Spring of 2020 I was looking forward to taking the truck to some local car shows. But due to the Covid virus, everything that was planned was canceled. I did enter the trucks in to Vintage Trucks magazine virtual truck show. We did put more miles on the Power Wagon than on our 1966 Dodge Monaco this summer.

The D400 has Horton Sales, Mpls Minn, stenciled on the drivers door. I’m sure there is story about that. After unsticking an exhaust valve, rebuilding carb and fuel pump, replacing points, plugs, wires the 251 6cyl. it fired up. So now to start on it as the second ’57 project, maybe a hydraulic dump flat bed?

I also bought another parts truck, a ’56 H model, minus sheetmetal. Now I can’t wait till spring to start back up on it.

Wish I more time, money and a bigger heated garage. Thanks to good buddy Bruce and my son Jacob for all their help. Special thanks to my wife Geri for letting me play with my trucks.

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Four-wheel-drive pickups are in high demand today, but in 1961, a four-wheel-drive truck was a rare sight. These trucks were not used as commuter vehicles or for family transportation. Dodge brochures from that time show new Power Wagons at muddy construction sites with men in boots and hard hats moving heavy objects about. The subject of this article is one such rare survivor of a hard working life.

1961 was a big year for new Dodge truck styling and mechanical innovation. Its new “Sweptline” design would continue for a decade with a few changes. Also new for 1961 was the “Slant Six” engine, a valve-in-head, four-main-bearing block that leaned to the right at a 30-degree angle to allow a long-stroke engine design while also fitting beneath a car’s low hood. The amazing durability of the Slant Six, aka “The Leaning Tower of Power,” became legendary. That said, a Slant Six-powered truck is not going to win a quarter-mile race, and it certainly isn’t going to blitz down the highway. That’s especially true of our featured 1961 Dodge truck, which is one heavy, short-wheelbase half-ton 4×4.

Dodge made these new Sweptline Power Wagons concurrently with the old-style WM 300 “round nose” Power Wagons built for extreme duty. The round nose WM 300 trucks were initially built for the war effort during the 1940s, and Dodge continued to manufacture them in limited numbers up to 1978. The final batch of WM 300 Power Wagons was sold in South America since they were no longer legal for U.S. roads. The new-for-’61 Sweptline Power Wagons were made for road use as well as off-road.

Tale of a rare survivor

What little history is known about the feature truck is rather interesting. A former owner bought the tired truck and intended to restore it. He removed the cab and had a welder replace the rusted-out floor. The rest of the sheet metal was quite good, so when the cab came back from the welder, he reassembled the truck and painted it in the original Toreador Red. Then the former owner hired someone to install a new clutch and pressure plate and resurface the flywheel. A month or so later, the truck developed a serious engine noise, and the discouraged owner parked the truck in the woods behind his home where it sat for several years.

The present owner noticed a classified ad for the old Dodge. He visited the site where the truck was left to the elements, bought it, trailered it home and got it running. It tuns out the engine noise was caused by a loose flywheel. Whoever replaced the clutch apparently forgot to tighten the flywheel! As a result, transmission removal and replacement was in order. The four-wheel-drive transfer case on this Dodge is separate from the transmission and is connected via a short driveshaft. Thus, transmission removal and reinstallation is no more complicated than the same job on a two-wheel-drive pickup.

The truck is now semi-retired. It stays in the garage of the owner’s summer cottage where it is used to haul a vintage 20-foot inboard powerboat to the boat ramp and back. It’s a short trip and one perfectly suited to this antique Power Wagon. Its other duties include transporting kayaks to launching sites as well as occasional trips to the lumberyard. With jobs such as those, the truck will last indefinitely.

More mechanical innovations

Besides the revolutionary Slant Six engine, Dodge in 1961 was the first truck to be equipped with an alternator. Within a couple of years, the alternator would become standard across the industry. Besides an alternator, this truck came from the factory with a two-barrel carburetor, which boosted performance of the new 225-cid Slant Six engine. Indeed, the new “225-2,” as Dodge called it, had a higher horsepower rating than the 251-cid, L-head engine that it replaced.

The axles on this truck are full-floating, which were the same as the axles used on 3/4-ton trucks. A full-floating axle places the weight of the vehicle on an axle tube, rather than the axle shaft itself. The rear axles on this truck can be removed without even jacking up the vehicle. It is a rare case of a manufactured product being better made than it needs to be. By 1965, W-100 Dodges had the less expensive semi-floating axles. There is a semi-elliptic leaf spring on every corner, and none of them have more than five leaves. There are no overload springs.

The Sweptline Power Wagon’s optional Synchro-Shift transmission by New Process was another component that was shared with much heavier trucks. In fact, this is a dump truck-duty transmission. The transfer case was also by New Process, and even though the unit is also heavy-duty, there is a weak point. There is an internal component that has come to be called “The Clunk Gear.” Wear to that part causes excessive driveline backlash as these vehicles age. International pickups of the era had the same problem. At this writing, reproduction repair parts are available.

Brakes are the internal-expanding drum type with hydraulic function and a single-chamber master cylinder. The hydraulic clutch uses an identical master cylinder, and both master cylinders are bolted side by side to the firewall. The slave cylinder for the clutch is mounted on the outside of the bell housing and is simple to remove and repair. The handbrake is a drum on the driveshaft with an external band and is cable-actuated by a lever under the dash at the driver’s left.

Body features

The new-for-1961 body seems tinny by current standards. There is no sound-deadening material anywhere, and the doors close with a loud “Bang!” The pull-type outside door handles were a short-lived design feature, replaced by push-button handles by 1965. The hood opens all the way until it hits the roof overhang over the windshield. Thus, the engine could be removed without removing the hood. The checkerboard aluminum grille was a one-year feature and was replaced in 1962 with a steel unit with a horizontal motif. The tailgate is held shut by hooks connected to chains, and it is a five-step process to open the tailgate and reconnect the hooks and chains to hold it in the flat-open position. The floor of the 6-1/2-ft. bed is wood, secured by metal strips and carriage bolts. Rear fenders and running boards are bolted to the bed sides.

Inside the cab is a functional and pleasing dashboard with full instrumentation. Access to the ignition key switch is impeded somewhat by the bare steel gearshift lever when in first gear. Moving the hole for the ignition switch would have been an easy matter at the time of manufacture, but that detail escaped those making design decisions. There is no radio, and there does not appear to be a place for one. The ashtray is mounted at the top center of the dash and opens with a squeak. The glove compartment is at the standard right-hand position and is opened by squeezing two opposing tabs together and pulling, an action followed by another squeak from our feature truck. Both of the glove box and ashtray remain in the open position by friction devices, so it is easy to imagine they also squeaked when new.

The cab is roomy. Brochures on Dodge trucks compared the headroom, legroom and hip room in the Dodge cabs to those of Chevrolet, Ford and International trucks (the brochures noted Dodge was, of course, numerically superior to the competition). One curious design feature of the Sweptline Dodges is the extra-wide windowsills provided when the side windows are open. This provides an excellent resting place for one’s arm.

Driving a ’61 Dodge W-100

I pull on the long door handle and its tip swings out slightly, opening the door without resistance. It’s quickly apparent that there is no spring-and-roller action to hold the door open at different positions. The concealed running board that appears when the door is opened is fairly useless.

Once in the driver’s seat, the driver’s position seems oddly low for a four-wheel-drive truck. Even though the seat height seems correct for the view out the large windshield, it seems unusual for my legs to be almost straight forward, as in a car. There is one sun visor and no inside armrest, so once on the seat, the inside door handle is used to pull the door closed. That loud “Bang!” follows. There are no soft surfaces to absorb sound. There is no headliner, and in fact the only things in the cab that are not painted steel are the steering wheel, seat, knobs and pedal pads.

To get moving, I push the clutch pedal down, pump the gas pedal a few times and pull out the choke via a knob just to the left of the steering column marked with a “C.” I slide the long, double-90-degree-bend gearshift into neutral and twist the ignition to “ON” and then “START.” The engine starts immediately. The speed of the engine must be kept up so it won’t stall. After a few seconds, I slide the choke knob in a little bit. The truck is ready to go.

I grasp the black Bakelite gearshift knob and slide the shift handle to the right, pushing through a strong spring that keeps the operator from accidentally hitting reverse, then shove the lever back. Reverse engages with a click. The gearshift knob almost hits the seat. I then raise the clutch about halfway up, give it a little gas (it still might stall) and back the truck out of the garage. Reverse gear is very low. It is immediately apparent that there are many turns of the steering wheel lock to lock, and so I have to complete my turning while in motion.

I shift into second gear. First in this truck is a creeper gear, or “grandma low.” Starting off without a load is done in second. Clutch up some more, a little more gas and the clutch engages smoothly. There is no chatter. Gain speed, shift into third and the truck springs ahead. This truck wants to go. Once up to about 25 mph, I shift into fourth and the truck suddenly seems rather quiet. The gearshift has such a solid feel; it’s almost like swinging the door to a safe. It clicks into every gear.

Now that I am moving, I roll down the driver’s window, swing open the vent pane and put my arm on that wide door sill to enjoy the summer breeze blowing in. This truck is well ventilated, and there are also foot vents that can be opened by knobs on the dashboard.

Even though the hood sides are emblazoned with block letters that spell out “POWER WAGON,” there is no feeling of excess power while on the road. The engine is really too small for the truck, at least by modern standards, but it doesn’t complain, as long as there is no hurry. It picks up speed at a leisurely rate. However, every bump in the road is immediately obvious and this truck certainly would be a kidney cruncher on a rough road. Comfort was not part of design considerations.

The seat is just OK, but the controls seem to be in exactly the right place. I get used to the low driving position and I have to think it is rather comfortable, especially when compared to the ’50s trucks that it replaced. I watch the speedometer as the needle rises. I am on a wide open road now, and I try to find the optimum high speed. I am not interested in maximum speed, as that would probably feel suicidal, but I find 50 mph seems like the most reasonable cruising speed.

I turn around and head back. This truck is called a Power Wagon, and I want know why. I get back to home base and back up to the 20-ft. fiberglass boat that’s waiting on a tandem axle trailer. I connect the coupler, safety chains and electrical connections. I get back in the truck and this time, I slide the gearshift lever into granny low. Clutch up, a little gas and the truck creeps forward. It’s a heavy load — about 5000 lbs — but the low gear makes the job easy. I pull out on the road, push down the gas pedal and the “Hillside Hemi” (another nickname for the Slant Six) accelerates quickly: to about 5 mph. (That’s the end of acceleration for that gear.) With the clutch down, I try to slide the shifter into second gear and it declines with a grind. It appears the Synchro-Shift transmission isn’t quite synchronized in second. I think, “maybe the synchronizer ring is worn.” I double clutch it into second gear.

I can feel the load, but the truck doesn’t mind. This thing can pull. Shifting into third and fourth is easy with no clashing. On the way to the boat ramp, there is a valley and then a slight incline where I have to shift back down to third. Once I get to the boat ramp, I stop, shift into reverse and crawl backwards as the boat behind me goes down the ramp. The very low reverse is perfect for slow backing. There is no power steering, but steering effort is not extreme at this low speed. I do notice that the back window is a little small when I turn my head to back the trailer. A big back window was an option that would have helpful at this point. I get the boat to the water and it slides off the trailer, then I use granny gear and mosey up the boat ramp to the parking lot.

After the boat ride, I back down the ramp again, winch the boat onto the trailer and get back in the truck. It’s granny gear time, and the truck on the steep incline with the heavy boat lurches ahead with little effort. The rear wheels barely spin on the slippery surface of the boat ramp. If they did spin, pushing forward the four-wheel-drive lever that’s just to the right of the gearshift would take care of that. I wonder how slow the truck would be in low four-wheel with the granny gear, but I don’t try that extreme gear reduction. This kind of task is exactly what this truck was made for.

Summarizing the W-100 experience

This is a formidable piece of equipment, if you have a job for it. A long tour in this truck would be work. It’s not going to get you anywhere fast, but every car that passes you in the opposite direction will honk and slow down for a look. This is a piece of history that has all but disappeared from the scene. Four-wheel-drive trucks such as this were few when new and were normally worked to death, so their survival rate is very low. Today, a ride down the highway would be a tedious affair, but a ride to the ice cream stand or a blueberry patch would be more like it. And if you need to pull a house down, a ’61 Dodge W-100 would be the perfect tool for the job. With a semi-retirement job such as this, our featured truck must be the happiest truck in the world.

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The post Car of the Week: 1961 Dodge W-100 appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

By Brian Earnest

John Roberts thought it was just an ordinary Friday evening. The Rotonda West, Fla., resident was on his way back home when his son Wes called from Indiana, where John had raised his family before moving to Florida. “I talked to him for a minute and then he said I’ll call you when you get home,” Roberts recalled. “I thought that was a little strange. He had me on the phone and I was thinking, ‘Why don’t we just talk now.’ We always talked on the phone once a week and I didn’t think anything of it …

“So I get home and pretty soon I hear a rumbling down the street and I look up and there’s this Li’l Red Express truck coming toward the house. It pulls in and Wes is driving it! He got out and said ‘Hey Dad, this is your truck.’ Geez, I get choked up even today thinking about it. I said, ‘Wes, what are you doing here with this truck?’ He said, ‘It’s yours. The truck is for you.’ I said ‘I can’t afford this,’ but he said, ‘You don’t owe me anything. The truck is yours.’

“He just decided to do something nice for his dad.”

The red pickup was the same one that the pair had checked out in Muncie, Ind., several months earlier when John headed north for a visit. John was blown away by the wonderful condition of the truck and knew the asking price was “a steal,” but still couldn’t bring himself to write out the check and take the truck home. “I just couldn’t pay that much money for a toy for myself,” he lamented. Roberts had to pass on the truck, but he still talked about it occasionally and one day Wes decided to see if the truck was still available. “He’s a big Mustang guy and I was helping him look for one, and then he called me one Sunday afternoon and asked me for the number of the guy that was selling the Li’l Red. He said he just wanted to call the guy and see if he still had it.”

Wes called the man and found out the Li’l Red was still for sale. He called his dad back and told him the car had been sold, which was only a half a lie because the car had indeed just been sold, to Wes himself.

It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say the arrival of the hot red pickup has given Roberts a whole new lease on life. He has become a bit of an expert on the trucks over the past 18 years, has become an active member of the Li’l Red Express enthusiast community, has become a chief judge at national meets and is the author of the “78-79 Li’l Red Express Identification Handbook,” which he said recently went to its fifth printing. “I’ve kind of gotten neck-deep in these things over the years,” he laughs. “I’ve learned a lot about them on my own, and learned a lot about all the little differences between the two years they were built. People think the trucks were all the same, but here is actually something like 186 little differences between the years. I had all that stuff in my brain and figured it’s time somebody wrote all that down.”

That was back in 2000 and Roberts chuckles at the notion that he has now become a know-it-all on the flashy retro trucks. He clearly remembers seeing one for the first time and having no idea what a Li’l Red Express was. “The first one I saw was when I walked into a Dodge dealer,” he recalls. “For 22 years I sold auto dealer supplies so I was always visiting dealers, and I’ve always been kind of a speed nut. I always loved speed and used to race late model stock cars back in Indiana … At the time I was looking to buy a Dodge Omni. Well, it turns out that everybody was buying Omnis and the dealers didn’t have any left. I had no idea; I figured you could just got down and buy one on the lot, but I found there was a waiting list … As I left and walked out door look out and saw this red truck with wood on the back and chrome stacks, and I thought, ‘What in the world is that?’ I went and looked it over and it had the 360 police engine, it was all chromed out with the big stacks and wood trim. It was an eye knocker! I thought, boy I’d like to have one of those things. They were all flashy and big ol’ fat tires. They were built to run!”

The $8,000-plus price tag caused Roberts to keep looking, but he had become a fan of the trucks for life, even if he doubted he’d ever own one. “You know, $8,000 doesn’t sound like that doesn’t much today, but back then you could buy Dodge pickup — full-size — with almost everything on it for $3,500, or something like that,” he notes.

Rockin’ Red Surprise

The muscle car era was a fading memory by the late 1970s. There were few cars that still looked the part — the Corvette and Trans Am among them — but true speed demons were a thing of the past, victims of the oil embargo, soaring insurance costs and tighter emissions laws.

Yet somehow, Tom Hoover, known as the father of the 426 Hemi, kept the flame alive with the Li’l Red Express — a truck seemingly built in another time and place. Hoover found a bit of a loophole in the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules on emissions by using a truck. Light-duty trucks were exempt from needing catalytic converters if their gross vehicle weight rating was above 6,000 lbs. Hoover decided to use a Dodge D150 Adventurer with a step side bed as the base for his muscle truck.

Chrysler’s in-house “hot rod shop” took the high-performance 360-cid E58 ‘police code’ block and pumped it up with a few other goodies, such as a camshaft from a 1968 340-cid V-8, Super-Flow cylinder heads, a special cold air intake at the radiator yoke, and a Carter four-barrel carburetor. The 225-net-hp engine was mated to a modified A-727 automatic transmission with a 2500-rpm stall converter and 3.55 Sure Grip rear axle. A rear stabilizer bar was standard.

A big part of the factory “customized” pickup’s tough personality came from its Hemi-style mufflers that fed twin chrome exhaust stacks with perforated heat shields that stood up from behind the cab.

The Li’l Red Express was only available in red with cool gold pinstriping. There was no mistaking a Li’l Red for something else. There were also gold decals on the doors and tailgate. Clear-coated oak wood trim panels adorned the pickup box’s sides, floor and tailgate. The front and back bumpers were chrome as were the side steps. Likewise, the engine was dressed up with a chrome-plated air cleaner and valve covers.

The chrome-plated steel wheels wore raised white-letter tires. The front tires of ’78s were GR60x15s on 7-inch-wide chrome wheels while the back tires were LR60x15s on 8-inch wheels.

The seats were either black or red with a matching dashboard and door panels. The steering wheel looked like it was borrowed from a vintage late-1960s MoPar. A bench seat, AM/FM radio, oil pressure gauge, power steering, a column shifter and a convenience package were all standard.

Air conditioning, tinted glass, bucket seats, sliding back window, cruise control, tachometer, clock and heavy-duty front springs were all on the options list. These all added to the Li’l Red Express’ $7,400 base price.

No doubt the truck’s biggest claim to fame was the frequently heard boast that it was the fastest new vehicle on the market when it debuted for 1978. Indeed, at least one popular magazine test confirmed it. Car and Driver found the Dodge truck was the fastest vehicle to 100 mph among the eight new rides it tested for a magazine story.

In short, the Li’l Red Express was everything a muscle truck should be — flashy, fast, very noisy, and lots of fun to own. It wasn’t practical, and wasn’t particularly comfortable, but it went fast in a straight line and looked great in the process. And perhaps the clincher for making them cool trucks to own — both in the late 1970s and today — is the Li’l Red’s rarity. Only 2,188 were built for 1978 and 5,118 for ’79.

A Florida import

The 1978 Li’l Red Express never made it to new car lots in Florida when it was unveiled because of noise restriction laws there, and in several other states. Roberts’ truck was sold new at Palmer Dodge in Indianapolis and he is the proud third owner.

“It’s got 87,000 miles on it, and it’s got rock chips in front and little dings, but I’m not about to tear it down and restore it,” he says. “That’s was what I thought I would do when I first got it. I thought, ‘There’s not a bit of rust on it. I’ll tear it all down and put it all back together and have a brand new truck.’ … Well, one of the other judges found out what I was thinking of doing and he said, ‘No, don’t ever restore this truck. If you want a truck to restore go buy and old beater that needs a total restoration.’ And he was right. They are only original once.

“It’s not perfect, but I’m not afraid to put it in a car show. It’s not a concours level truck so it probably won’t win anything … I’ve replaced the alternator and battery and tires, but mainly it’s just maintenance items. I did finally change the carburetor last year and stuck an Edelbrock 600 on it. Nothing has every really been pulled out of the truck or changed. It’s been cleaned up good, but it’s basically all original from the ground up.”

Roberts loves the fact that the Li’l Reds are so wonderfully imperfect. They come with countless quirks and challenges, but they are never boring.

“It’s a 1978 vehicle, and of course Li’l Reds are noisy, anyway,” he laughs. “The exhaust is about 18 inches from your head. Mine doesn’t have air in it , so in the summertime here in Florida with the black vinyl seats and no air conditioning, you don’t want to drive real far some days. It doesn’t handle that great, it does have a front sway bar on it which most rucks didn’t have, but it’s a straight-line goer. From from zero to 100 I can still walk the dog pretty good. Even at 74, I can still push down hard with my right foot.”

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By Tommy Cockrell

In October 1969, I received my orders to Vietnam where I was assigned to the 14th Combat Engineer Battalion at Fire Support Base Nancy. After getting a temporary assignment as the battalion mail truck driver, I was given my first truck — a deuce and a half. I drove that deuce for several weeks before settling into my regular duty as Courier Driver for the battalion, with a daily run from Firebase Nancy to 45th Engineer Group Headquarters in Phu Bai. But this time, my truck was a mid-’60s Dodge M37.

Introduced in 1951, the M37 was used extensively in the Korean War, and then again in Vietnam by the U.S. military. The basic body style remained unchanged from 1951 through 1968 and was ultimately replaced in the mid-seventies.

The M37 was powered by a 78-hp Dodge straight-six mated to a four-speed manual transmission and four-wheel drive. It’s top speed of 40-45 mph created no problems for me in Vietnam. My 70-mile round-trip took me through several villages and the city of Hue where my speeds were lucky to reach 25 mph.

After seeing a couple of the old Dodge M37s at local car shows, I began my search for a reasonably priced M37. I wanted to recreate the one Uncle Sam loaned me 48 years ago. Finding one proved to be not too difficult. However, many of them had been butchered or cut up pretty bad. I located one at the Goldenrod Garage in Freeport, Maine. After negotiating the deal, including the removal of a snow plow, the M37 arrived in Camden on June 27, 2017. The truck seemed to run pretty well, but had an issue keeping consistent voltage running through the still-intact 24-volt system. Fortunately, a simple coil replacement seemed to rectify that problem.

I knew that I wanted to get it cosmetically refurbished and ready for the local shows and parades. The M37 already had a new canvas top and seat covers. The cosmetic needs involved body work, paint inside and out and new wood rails and troop seats in the bed.

Gordie Medieros was able to work the M37 in his schedule in mid-July. Gordie had previously done a show paint job on my 1962 Olds Starfire and was excited to work on this “fun” project. Other than having to replace one fender, Gordie was able to work with the rest of the truck.

One of my requirements for the M37 was correct markings for the 18th Brigade, 45th Group, 14th Battalion and Headquarters Company. I could also recreate the specific truck U.S. Army number from pictures that I had from Vietnam. Unfortunately, I do not remember my truck number (HQ). It didn’t show up on any of the pictures from 48 years ago. However, my first truck, the deuce-and-a-half, was “HQ7.” I decided to assign that company number to my “new” truck.

After I got the M37 back from the body shop, I started tinkering with it over the winter. My truck and I will be ready for the spring shows.

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Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Harvey Retzack figures that sooner or later the rest of the world might realize that Chrysler Corp. was on to something good back in 1982.

That was the year the company went against the grain and launched its funky Rampage pickup — a little front-wheel-drive hauler that was just a blip on the automotive landscape and fuzzy memory to many car folks. Retzack has one of the few that you’ll see on the road these days, and the longer he owns it, the more he is convinced the featherweight Rampage was a rock star that just never got discovered.

“People say, ‘Did you cut that down from a station wagon?’” laughs Retzack. “Most people have never heard of it or seen it. Dodge did not do a good job of impressing it on the market or impressing it on the world. People didn’t know these were [available], unfortunately. That’s the sad thing — in 1982, ’83, ’84, a vehicle for under $4,000 that would haul a half-ton of stuff and still get 30 mpg. I don’t know why they didn’t sell like hot cakes. I’m sure Chrysler was scratching their heads, too. They just didn’t sell.”

Indeed, the sales figures were paltry: 17,636 in their debut 1982 model year; 8,033 in 1983 and 11,732 in ’84. After that Chrysler gave up on the idea of winning over the buying public with its mini truck line — and nobody seemed to really notice.

But a cheap, gas-sipping pickup was just what Retzack, a Wausau, Wis., resident, was after when he went shopping for a used truck last February. “I was looking for a Volkswagen Rabbit [pickup], primarily because of the 50-pus miles per gallon [they got]. I commute back and forth to Florida. I spend my summers in Wisconsin and my winters in Florida and I was looking for something that would get me decent mileage on both ends,” he says. “I’ve always been a MoPar person. From the rear window forward, this is a Dodge Omni and I’ve had several of those. I wanted a Volkswagen, but they are not available. This I found on eBay down in Arkansas, in Rivers Bend, Ark. It was in the backwoods [laughs].

“Once I found it and starting doing some research on it and discovered how rare they were, we decided to look at it.”

According to the story Retzack got, the truck was purchased in the Midwest but spent most of its life in California. The original owner’s grandson eventually wound up with it and moved it to Arkansas. He apparently did some work on the Rampage and drove it a bit, but the truck had been parked and in storage for a while when Retzack came across it.

“I don’t know how long ago he [worked on] the body, but it’s held up pretty well. My impression from talking with he and his wife that it was just a repaint,” Retzack noted.

The Rampage was based on the Dodge Omni 024 coupe and was Chrysler’s answer to the popular El Camino and Ranchero — the long-running car/pickups from Chevrolet and Ford. It wasn’t the first front-wheel-drive hybrid pickup on U.S. roadways; the VW Rabbit Sportruck and Subaru BRAT both beat it to market here. But it was first Amercan-built truck with front-wheel-drive, along with the Plymouth Scamp, a rebadged offering that appeared only in 1983. For 1982, the Rampage came in both base and Sport versions. For 1983 and ‘84, the choices were the base and “2.2” versions.

The Rampage used the Omni’s unibody construction and front grille/fascia from the Dodge Charger. It carried either a 1.6-liter/65-hp or 2.2-liter/94-hp east-west four-cylinder. The original Rampage could be ordered with either a four-speed manual or three-speed automatic, but a five-speed manual became available for 1983. Dry weight was about 2,400 lbs. The cargo capacity was touted at 1,000 lbs. with a towing load rated at 750 lbs. The double-wall steel rear box was 62 inches long and 52 inches wide and was integrated into the cab. It wasn’t big enough to haul hay bales or large land mammals, but it was plenty big enough for grocery and hardware store runs. In front were bucket seats and a small package shelf behind the occupants.

One feature that Chrysler advertising execs probably should have shouted more about was the unique-for-its-time load-sensing braking system. A valve between the cargo box a rear axle sensed the load based on how hard the suspension was compressed, sending more or less fluid pressure to the drum brakes.

With its light weight, smallish dimensions and front propulsion, the Rampage drove more like a car than a truck, and its 21 city/29 highway fuel economy numbers were definitely not truck-like. Handling and traction were almost certainly better in snowy climates without the rear wheels spinning behind a lightweight box in back, and the protruding Chevy Monza-like nose gave the Rampage a definite sporty-compact car look from the front.

Perhaps it was the fact that the buying public wasn’t ready for a half-ton pickup with unusual looks. Maybe it was the fact that the Rampage wound up competing against both the mini trucks (VW and BRAT) and established half-tons (El Camino and Ranchero). Or maybe it was just that Chrysler marketers did a lousy job of extolling the trucks’ virtues. Whatever the reason, few buyers warmed up to them and very few owners have held onto them after more than three decades.

Retzack always keeps his eyes peeled, and he hasn’t seen another truck like his since he bought it. He had it only display this past July at the Iola Car Show in Iola, Wis., where it drew a lot of puzzled looks.

“This was the fourth show I’ve had it at, and each time this is the sole Rampage,” he chuckles. “It avoided the snow, the salt and the crusher. That’s where a lot of them went, unfortunately, in the ‘90s.”

Retzack’s cream-colored survivor recently rolled past 80,000 miles on the odometer. He figures the truck was painted once, but the interior is original. Ditto the engine and drive train. “Mechanically, I’ve gone from bumper to bumper on it: brakes, shocks, struts, ball joints, A-frame bushings, shifter linkage, clutch, pressure plate, throw-out bearing, brake cables, rear wheel bearings …”

He says finding replacement parts for the truck “was impossible” in some cases. He gave up looking for a suitable radiator and decided to send his deteriorating original out to be re-cored.

“I’ve always been a fan of the 2.2 four-speed. They don’t get as good of mileage as the Volkswagen diesel, but they do pretty good compared to what’s out there right now,” he says. “Some of the options are the split rear window, which is kind of a rarity, this original cover, which is kind of a rarity… You could get it with A/C. You could get it with power steering. You could get it with an AM/FM 8-track. I don’t have the 8-track or the power steering, unfortunately.

“One of the things that makes this one very unique, it is to my knowledge the only front-wheel drive pickup made in the United States, and they only made it for three years. You’d think by now one of the major players would have gotten it together and made a front-wheel-drive truck, but this is the only one I know of. “

Retzack jokingly added an “R/T” badge to the B pillar and a faux scoop on the hood. Dodge didn’t make such a version, but maybe it should have. A hot version of the Rampage may have caught on and been what the public was looking for. We’ll never know, but Retzack likes the truck the way it is, regardless of what the rest the world thought then, or thinks now.

“It drives great. It snaps,” he says. “Because of the front-wheel-drive it’s nice and tight in the corners. It keeps right up on the highway. It loves to cruise at about 70 [mph]. It rides very comfortably because of the strut suspension. And I haul a lot of stuff in it.”

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The post Car of the Week: 1982 Dodge Rampage appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

Regardless of how much time, hard work and misery it took, John Butner was determined to start showing up at car shows driving something he knew nobody else would have.

It’s pretty safe to declare his quest over — mission accomplished. And a big, 1-ton, gnarly, green, basket case mission it was.

“I really didn’t want to see it go to the crusher, and that’s where it was going,” says the affable Butner, leaning on the front fender of his hulking 1951 Dodge mail truck. “I worked on it about a year and a half. I had times when I put it in a corner and walked away had to go think about it. I’d leave it sit for a week and then say, ‘Well, I gotta do something with it’ and I’d get back to it. I couldn’t just let it sit there.

“I got to the point a couple of times where I decided the hell with it, but it was sitting in a corner and I had other things I need to do, so I had to get it done.”

The end result has left Butner, a resident of Northmoor, Mo., in the northern suburbs of Kansas City, rightfully proud. Even some of his best car buddies told him he had bitten off more than he could chew when he rescued the half-buried Dodge. There wasn’t much left to save, they told him, and what was left was not worth the time and effort.

“Guys laughed at me. They really did. They laughed. They said, ‘What are you going to do with that thing?’” Butner recalled. “I like it because every show you go to you see a lot of Tri-Five Chevys, and you see a lot of Camaros and Mustangs and all that stuff. And I appreciate that stuff, I really do, because I know what these guys have went through to put this stuff together. Still, I like to look at something different.”

Butner had already worked on and restored plenty of other old cars and trucks by the time he caught wind of an estate sale in Kansas City about five years ago. The sale was going to feature about 30 old vehicles in various states of disrepair, and Butner, being a bit of old truck buff, decided he better go check it out. “There were military trucks from during the war and later trolley buses and other stuff … and there was one guy there that was buying most of it and was gonna crush all of it. [The Dodge] was sitting in the ground. It had been in the ground so long that it was sunk up past the front axle.”

But Butner saw potential in the retired delivery truck and ponied up $350 to take it home. After some research and networking with some fellow American Historical Truck Society members, he was able to find some old photos of similar vehicles and learned that the truck had been used as a United States Postal Service delivery vehicle in the Kansas City area. There was no telling how long it had been retired and how many years it had been since the truck was drivable, but Butner was smitten with the idea of bringing it back.

“I figured I was gonna have a pretty hard time putting it together and finding parts for it, but I wanted to put it together. I was determined to put it together,” he says.

Of course, adding to the challenge is the fact that the mail truck carried a coach-built body, courtesy of the now-defunct Boyertown Body Works of Pennsylvania. Boyertown was a long-running fixture of the coach building business, over the years turning out everything from mail delivery trucks, to military vehicles, ice cream trucks, television broadcast vehicles, rescue trucks and a myriad of delivery trucks. The company’s roots date back to 1872 when it began as a carriage maker. By 1918, the business shifted to building truck bodies to meet the growing need for specialized commercial vehicles.

In the early 1950s, Dodge and Ford both supplied 1-ton chassis that Boyerton converted to mail trucks. For Butner’s truck, the company’s “Step-N-Serve” body was mounted on a 1951 Dodge B-3-D Series 1-ton chassis with a 116-inch wheelbase. The 236-cid six-cylinder under the two-piece hood produced 115 hp and was mated to a four-speed manual transmission.

“I didn’t really realize what it was until after I bought it,” Butner chuckled. “I belong to the American Historical Truck Society, they have a big library and I did some research on it… I guess it serviced Kansas City all its life. I found it up behind Royals [Kauffman] and Arrowhead stadiums. If you didn’t know where it was you’d have never found it. Kansas City is a pretty good-sized town, and this was just out in the middle of nowhere, but right in the middle of the city about five blocks from the stadium.”

“They used it to deliver mail from the mailboxes on corners — you know, where people dropped mail off. They used it to pick up mail from there and take it to the post office, or to deliver boxes that were too big for the letter carriers.”

Butner’s struggles started almost from the moment he bought the truck.

“The front fenders were just gone. The sides of it were gone. The bottom of the wheels were gone, and when I went out there to get it with a 1-ton Chevy rollback and I couldn’t get it up out of the ground. So a buddy of mine, his kid’s got a Peterbilt and we got it out and we got it up with that. It was just a mess!”

Butner wound up breaking or cutting nearly every internal piece of the engine in an unsuccessful attempt to get it to turn over. Eventually he replaced the original engine with a new six-cylinder power plant from a donor truck. The original transmission was salvaged and reused.

The interior of the cab — dash, steering wheel, seats, etc., — was in reasonably good shape, according to Butner. Fortunately, the floor was also mostly solid, needing patching in only one spot.

The doors, fenders and body were another story, however. Butner needed to do a bunch of fabricating below the rub rails to restore the sides of the body, and the doors were pretty much rebuilt from scratch.

“I used to do work on UPS trucks as a private contractor, so I had some experience with that kind of stuff. One thing that was different is that the UPS bodies are aluminum, and this was all steal … And Boyertown bodies, they had wooden doors. They used sheet metal glued to plywood. And that’s how they made the doors.”

“I had to fabricate the doors — both the side doors and the two rear doors. I had to replace the sides from the rub rail down because they had big holes. I just cut sheet metal out and welded it together. The front fenders and grille are all from another truck. Even the grille bars were rusted out on the stupid thing.”

The project also included fabricating a new pair of “impossible-to-find” running light rings, smoothing out some dents in the roof, and changing the electrical system over from 6 to 12 volts.

By the fall of 2014, Butner had the truck finished, with the final step being a coat of period-correct olive-drab paint. “No. 5380” and “U.S. Mail” were also stenciled inside the white horizontal strip down the side. To complete the authentic look, a pair authentic-looking advertising signs promoting “Worldwide Air Parcel Post” were placed on the on the sides of the rear cargo area.

Not long after he got the truck finished, Butner received a special request to be part of a funeral procession for a former postal worker who had just died. Butner didn’t know the man, but he happily obliged. “I told them as long as we weren’t trying to go anywhere fast,” he says. “This thing only goes about 45 mph.”

Butner is pretty eager to take the truck anywhere these days. He regular cruises the roads on his way to car shows in the Kansas City area. In July he brought the truck 10 hours north to Iola, Wis., for the Iola Car Show. It was one of the few times he plans to ever have it on a trailer.

“It goes down the road nice. It really does. I enjoy driving it,” he says.

After about 18 months of trials and tribulations while trying to revive the ’51 Dodge, Butner says he will be hard pressed to ever part with it. He has a handful of other hobby vehicles and a couple lined up as future projects, but he knows it will be difficult to produce a finished product more satisfying than his mail truck.

“I really am pretty happy with it,” he says with a grin. “I do really like it.

“Right now at home I’m working on an old Railway Express Agency 1950 Ford. It’s probably in worse shape [than the Dodge was]. I just want to see if I can do. I think that’s what it is.”

The post Car of the Week: 1951 Dodge 1-ton mail truck appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

Story and photos by Brian Earnest

When he went shopping for a new hobby vehicle a few years ago, Bernie Pranica sort of put his cart before his horse.

Actually, he put his trailer ahead of his truck.

“The reason I needed an older truck is because I restored an old travel trailer and I wanted something vintage to pull the trailer,” laughs Pranica, a resident of tiny Sobieski, Wis., just north of Green Bay. “It’s kind of backwards, yeah.

“I’ve been [restoring] cars my whole life and I thought I’d do an old trailer for my retirement … So I did an old 1964 Airstream, and it came out beautiful and I thought I needed something period to pull it.”

Pranica was plenty surprised with the truck he wound up with. The veteran hobbyist didn’t even remember the Dodge Town Wagons of the 1950s and ‘60s. He had to do a double-take when he first came across one while searching online. But the more homework he did on the 1965 example he found on eBay, the more he was enthralled with the sturdy Dodge. He wound up buying his truck without seeing it in the flesh, and Pranica has been a happy camper — even though he hasn’t officially taken the Dodge and Airstream camping yet — ever since.

“Most of the Airstreams were pulled by Travelalls and Internationals and Chevrolet Suburbans,” Pranica noted. “I got on eBay and started looking and saw a Dodge and thought, ‘Gee, I never even knew they made that.’ … I looked for two years until I found this one. Most of them are hot-rodded or they are four-wheel-drives and they are pretty beat up.

“I found it in New Mexico. Apparently, the truck originally came from San Diego and spent its life on a Navy base …I think what it was used for was to go out on the flight line and take the pilots to and from the hangar … Consequently, there were only 34,000 miles on it in 2012 when I bought it.”

It wasn’t long after he got it off the transport that Pranica started remaking the big green Town Wagon. The Dodge needed plenty of work, but it had no major issues and was exactly the kind of solid, rust-free, strong-running machine that Pranica had been hoping for.

“The body was fairly good. There was some rust back in the quarterpanels, but no holes. Overall it needed a total restoration,” he said. “Inside it was tired. The engine ran strong, though. We did a compression check and it was good and didn’t smoke or anything, so I did not have to rebuild the engine. It’s just the way I got it.

“I was really lucky with that. The transmission, I’ve never touched it. I put new fluid in it. I was very fortunate to get a good drive train in it. I did most of the interior work — the detailing — and then I was lucky my next door neighbor has a little paint shop. I hooked my little garden tractor to it and dragged it over to my neighbor and he painted it for me.”

The color of choice was the truck’s factory original Turf Green with white trim around two windows behind the doors on each side. Some new stainless bits and some nice-looking whitewall tires helped finish things off.

“The interior has been a real challenge. They don’t make the same kind of panel board that they used originally, and you just can’t find it. I’m still playing with that,” Pranica said. “The worst part was the headliner. The headliner is so difficult. I had it all done and it looked beautiful and I had it sitting in the sun and the glue let go. So it was back to the drawing board. But the radio is correct, up in the ceiling. I’ve found the enclosure is impossible to find, so I made it myself. I used to be a sheet metal guy, so that was right up my alley. The rest was pretty straightforward. There is no carpet on the floors or anything. It’s a truck. My wife and I have a couple dogs and we take them to the vet in it, and we go to the stores and the bank … We go places in it. I restored cars years ago that needed body-offs and I found I was afraid to take them places. I didn’t want to make that mistake with this one, so it’s a driver.”

A driver indeed, but one unlike Pranica had ever seen. Not a lot of other folks seem to recall the Town Wagons, either. Pranica discovered some ominous signs of that immediately after he got the Dodge home.

“I got it on July 2nd and it was only a few days later I came to the Iola [Wis.,] Old Car Show and I had a list of parts for this thing. And I went into one tent where one guy had a sign that said ‘I’m the Mopar Man.’ I said I was looking for parts for a Town Wagon, and he said Dodge never made a Town Wagon. When the Mopar Man didn’t know anything about them, I knew I was going to have trouble finding parts for it! [laughs]”

The Town Wagons might still be a bit of a mystery to many, but the panel trucks in which where based certainly are not. Panel trucks have been a staple of the Dodge lineup since company’s earliest truck-building days. For 1954, freshly redesigned and reengineered half- and 1-ton panel trucks joined the rest of the facelifted Dodge lineup. A year later the Town Wagon arrived with additional seating in the back and a pair of windows on each side. These carryall-type vehicles were available in both two- and four-wheel drive and were aimed to occupy the same niche as the completing Chevrolet Suburban.

The Town Wagons are sometimes mistakenly referred to as Power Wagons, and it’s an honest mistake. The two-wheeled drive versions were designated Town Wagons, while the four-wheel-drive vehicles were called “Power Town Wagons”, or frequently just “Power Wagons.” All shared the same wraparound windshields, rounds fender and general styling cues of the Dodge C Series pickup trucks.

The exterior of the Town Wagons changed little the years, particularly in the 1960s, as Dodge stuck with the same simple twin-headlight grille design and upright, boxy body profile.

Engine choices also didn’t change much, and for 1965 buyers still had their choice between a Slant Six or a 318-cid V-8 that produced 200 hp. For the first time a four-speed manual was available that year. The only choices previously had been a three-speed on the column or push-button automatic.

Town wagons could be outfitted with two or three rows of seats, with the third row upping the passenger capacity to eight. A V-6-equipped Town Wagon carried a window sticker of about $2,272 with an eight-passenger version about $50 more. The four-wheel-drive Town Wagons checked in with price tags of $3,058 and $3,104, respectively, when carrying the six-cylinder.

There are no definitive production figure breakdowns for 1965 Dodge trucks, but total model year production is listed at 24,022 for all six-cylinder D100 trucks, which includes the Town Wagons, Town Panels, Sweptline and Utiline pickups, and chassis-and-cab sales.

“The first time I laid eyes on it, I saw it was a two-door edition — they only made it with two doors, and I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve gotta have one of those. They started this body style in 1955 and made it until 1966. It’s the same body style and most of the parts are the same. The engines were the six-cylinder and the small eight, and the body stayed the same and that’s why I liked it — with the two doors looks more 50-ish,” Pranica says. “It looks older than what it really is. And it goes down the road so good, it’s kind of the best of both worlds.”

“It’s not like a modern day [vehicle], but 65 on the highway is not a problem. That 318 is really a strong engine.”

Pranica expects to show off the unusual Town Wagon frequently at shows and hobby gatherings in the coming years. This year’s Iola Old Car Show was it’s first appearance at a big show. “Most people don’t know what it is. It’s just that different,” he says. “They haven’t seen it before. This one is probably embellished a little bit. Most of them had the painted grille and didn’t have the whitewall tires, so it’s probably a little embellished from what people might remember.”

Eventually, Pranica plans to have a custom trailer hitch put on so he can pull his camper, “but I haven’t scraped up the money yet.” The Town Wagon figures to make plenty of trips after that, but it Pranica says it won’t ever be leaving his fleet — not while he’s still around, anyway. He likes the Town Wagon so much he’s now working on a second one — a 1956 version.

“I’ll hang onto it I’m sure. I’ve been collecting for so many years and the problem I have is I don’t like to sell things,” he jokes. “I like to keep ‘em. I’ve got this, my other town panel, my Airstream and I’ve got a big barn and I put ‘em all in there together.”

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The post Car of the Week: 1965 Dodge Town Wagon appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.

By Michael Petti

Muscle cars were an extinct species in the United States by the end of the ’70s, leaving sports cars to carry the performance torch. There was, however, one street machine that could smoke a new 1978 Corvette or Trans Am: the Dodge D150 Adventurer Li’l Red Express truck.

In addition to sky-high insurance premiums and the oil embargo of 1973, muscle cars had also been strangled with clean air devices. However, the late Tom Hoover, known as the father of the 426 Hemi, found a way around government emissions regulations during the late 1970s — the pickup truck. Hoover discovered that he could make a muscle machine from gaps in the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules on emissions using a truck. At the time, light-duty trucks did not need a catalytic converter if their gross vehicle weight rating was above 6,000 lbs. Hoover also detected modifications could be made on an already-certified engine without redoing the EPA’s 50,000-mile recertification. With this knowledge, Hoover could work his magic on a regular Dodge D150 Adventurer with a step side bed.

Hoover, along with Dick Maxwell and Dave Koffel, formed Chrysler’s in-house “hot rod shop.” These men took a high-performance 360-cid V-8 engine — the E58 ‘police code’ block — and added goodies to power their new muscle truck, such as a camshaft from a 1968 340-cid V-8 and Super-Flow cylinder heads.

A special cold air intake was at the radiator yoke. Nourishment to the engine was by a Carter four-barrel carburetor. The 225-net-hp engine fed power to a modified A-727 automatic transmission with a 2,500-rpm stall converter. This, in turn, pushed power to the ground through a 3.55 Sure Grip rear axle. A rear stabilizer bar was standard.

Coincidentally, tricked-out trucks and vans were all the rage at this time, so there was little question that a market existed for a factory “customized” pickup. Dodge’s truck packed plenty of punch and deserved a striking exterior and interior in line with the times. The Li’l Red Express received both.
The engine exhaled through Hemi-style mufflers with a crossover pipe that ended in twin chrome exhaust stacks with perforated heat shields that stood up from behind the cab. The setup gave the Li’l Red Express the look of a Freightliner.

The only color available on the Li’l Red Express was a flashy red, which was enhanced by gold pinstriping accentuating the wheel arches. There were also gold decals on the doors and tailgate. Clear-coated oak wood trim panels adorned the pickup box’s sides, floor and tailgate. The front and back bumpers were chrome as were the side steps. Likewise, the engine was dressed up with a chrome-plated air cleaner and valve covers.

En vogue five-slot, chrome-plated steel wheels of the Li’l Red Express were shod with Goodyear raised white-letter tires. The front tires of ’78s were GR60x15s on 7-inch-wide chrome wheels while the back tires were LR60x15s on 8-inch wheels.

Additional eye candy was in the interior with the choice of either black or red seats and a matching dashboard and door panels. A “tuff” steering wheel was reminiscent of those found on muscle-era Challengers. A bench seat, AM/FM radio, oil pressure gauge, power steering, a column shifter and a convenience package were standard.

Not many boxes could be checked when ordering options for the already-loaded Li’l Red Express. Air conditioning with tinted glass, bucket seats, sliding back window, cruise control, tachometer, clock and heavy-duty front springs were some items available. These all added to the Li’l Red Express’ $7,400 base price, which was already a significant jump over the $4,171 base price of the 1978 D100 Utiline (stepside) upon which the Li’l Red Express was based.

In the November 1977 issue of Car and Driver, the Li’l Red Express was the fastest in acceleration up to 100 mph among eight cars tested. By the way, the “Express” on the doors came from the E58 police engine, where the “E” stood for “Express.”

Unfortunately, emissions standards caught up to light-duty trucks in 1979 that were rated below 8,000 lbs. The result was that the Li’l Red Express now had a catalytic converter and required unleaded gasoline. Power fell a bit. Nevertheless, the 1979 version could still dust others between stoplights.

In addition, there were some cosmetic changes between the 1978 and the 1979 models. The ’78 Li’l Red Express had a single round headlamp on each side of the grille while the ’79 had stacked dual square headlamps. The LR60x15 tires on 8-inch-wide chrome wheels were now at all four corners. A four-spoke steering wheel replaced the tuff wheel in ’79 and an 85-mph speedometer replaced the previous year’s 100-mph speedo. Bright Canyon Red was available only in 1978, and Medium Canyon Red was the only exterior color for 1979.

The new Li’l Red Express was not available in all states and municipalities, because it exceeded maximum noise levels in some areas. The high-pitched V-8 could wake up the dead.

The 1978 Li’l Red Express came out in March of that year. Even with a short model run, 2,188 were produced for the 1978 model year. For 1979, 5,118 units were assembled. However, the truck would not return in 1980. The “dual stack exhaust” music died with the second oil embargo.

______________________

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The post Car of the Week: 1978-’79 Dodge Lil’ Red Express appeared first on Old Cars Weekly.