full size pickup truck has become the luxury suburban commuter of choice in America, but not so long ago truck is noisy, noisy machinery, more suitable for construction sites and the battlefield than stop and go highway traffic and mall parking. We will look at the waning years of the era real pickup with today gem dump: one 1980 Dodge D-Series half a ton in a vineyard in the Denver area.
Of course, I mean “real pickup” really annoying to pick up; Today’s smooth pickups are much faster, safer, and more powerful, and better all the time energy saving than their ancestors. However, we lost something as a nation when Detroit pickups started to resemble New Yorkers or Ninety eight internal.
Chrysler has been using ram hood ornaments for Dodge trucks from the 1930s, but Lee Iacocca got the company serious about the Ram name when he took over the Chrysler Corporation. D-Series trucks and B-Series trucks became Rams for the 1981 model year; this ’80 has a large DODGE RAM sticker on the back door, but I doubt that’s a dealer-installed option.
I think the ram jump decal on the fender was applied by the same seller.
This truck has a 131-inch wheelbase, a base cabin, and a Sweptline bed. If you want a crew cab, you have to buy the three-quarter or one-ton version.
The base price is $5,165 (about $19,705 at 2022 dollar exchange rates), but the instrument panel shows quite a few options, and the out-of-the-door purchase cost can be closer to $23k today. The building tag on the door says it was built at Chrysler’s Jefferson Plant in Detroitbegan operating as a Chalmers factory in 1908. By 1925 it was entirely Chrysler and continued to operate until 1990. Today, Stellantis build Cherokees and Durangos at a new(er) factory across the street.
The build tag says that the original tool is a 318 cubic inch (5.1 liter) V8 engine, and that certainly looks like what’s still here. The basic motive is Slant-6 225-inch bulletproofbut that engine only makes 110 horsepower and 175 pound-feet and will make this 3,437-pound pickup uncomfortably slow even when forgiveness standards of the times (and that curb weight isn’t a typo; this truck really weighs just under half a ton more than a new ranger). The 318 almost as reliable as the Slant-6, albeit thirstier, and it was rated at 145 hp/280 lb-ft in 1980. Cost: $296 ($1,130 today).
Automatics have been pretty common in pickup trucks of this era, but this one has a good old four-tier manual. The base gearbox in the ’80 D-150 is a guide three on the tree (available in Dodge D-Series trucks throughout 1985), so this upgrade cost the original buyer $175 (currently $665). The automatic three-speed Torqueflite adds a whopping 408 bones or clams final profit ($1,555 after inflation). As you can see, 2022 trucks seem a lot more expensive even when factoring in inflation, but then they look like great deals when you compare their standard features with those of their ancestors.
Lander, Wyoming, located in the western part of the state, was certainly the pick country in 1980 (although today everywhere is the pick-up country now). All-wheel drive would have been a good idea in those rugged mountains, but pickup truck owners back then were so resourceful that this Ram had rear-wheel drive.
This “Sound Exploder” Audiovox was serious audio business in the 1980s.
The five-digit odometer might show an honest 96,554 miles, but my guess is 396,554 miles. working truck Covers a lot of ground, Wyoming is huge, and this Dodge probably spent 42 years in the Mountain West.
Note the missing gasket on the clutch pedal and the well-worn gasket on the brake pedal.
Dodge built this generation of pickups from the 1972 to 1993 model years, so there’s no shortage of these trucks today. However, it’s sad to see this person aiming for crusher.
Dodge builds pickup trucks that help build homes, and sometimes Carry houses.
So hard that, they cut it out with a saw as proof.
