1973 Dodge D-100 Adventurer Pickup

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

Dodge’s D-Series trucks of the 1970s are still on the roads in large numbers, since there’s always someone who needs a simple work truck and doesn’t care if that truck is 10 or 40 years old. Still, you can always find another sturdy (if thirsty) Detroit pickup if something expensive breaks, so this Adventurer is now Crusher-bound.

The Adventurer trim package got you some comfort and appearance upgrades, though shoppers for 2012 trucks would find this machine intolerably primitive.

Here’s the one-speaker sound system.

This vinyl bench seat was impervious to spills from any component of a typical fast-food meal, tall cans of Schlitz, and other substances likely to be found in a Dodge pickup cab.

Chances are that this 318 or 360 still has some miles left in it. Most do.










Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Jim Sutherland Jim Sutherland on Jul 29, 2012

    I always liked this era of Dodge pickups and owned a few over the years, including a Little Red Express version.

  • SuperACG SuperACG on Jul 31, 2012

    I would just LOVE to have one of these pre-1976 trucks. I'd drop a Cummins 4BT right in. No SMOG, decent MPG, and lots of torque! Doesn't need to be fast, the suspension couldn't handle it anyway!

    • And003 And003 on Aug 12, 2012

      Speaking for myself, I think I would put a 3G Hemi into this truck and convert it to 4WD with the equipment of today. :-)

  • Bill Wade I was driving a new Subaru a few weeks ago on I-10 near Tucson and it suddenly decided to slam on the brakes from a tumbleweed blowing across the highway. I just about had a heart attack while it nearly threw my mom through the windshield and dumped our grocery bags all over the place. It seems like a bad idea to me, the tech isn't ready.
  • FreedMike I don't get the business case for these plug-in hybrid Jeep off roaders. They're a LOT more expensive (almost fourteen grand for the four-door Wrangler) and still get lousy MPG. They're certainly quick, but the last thing the Wrangler - one of the most obtuse-handling vehicles you can buy - needs is MOOOAAAARRRR POWER. In my neck of the woods, where off-road vehicles are big, the only 4Xe models I see of the wrangler wear fleet (rental) plates. What's the point? Wrangler sales have taken a massive plunge the last few years - why doesn't Jeep focus on affordability and value versus tech that only a very small part of its' buyer base would appreciate?
  • Bill Wade I think about my dealer who was clueless about uConnect updates and still can't fix station presets disappearing and the manufacturers want me to trust them and their dealers to address any self driving concerns when they can't fix a simple radio?Right.
  • FreedMike I don't think they work very well, so yeah...I'm afraid of them. And as many have pointed out, human drivers tend to be so bad that they are also worthy of being feared; that's true, but if that's the case, why add one more layer of bad drivers into the mix?
  • ChristianWimmer I have two problems with autonomous cars.One, I LOVE and ENJOY DRIVING. It’s a fun and pleasurable experience for me. I want to drive my cars, not be driven by them.Two, if autonomous cars have been engineered to a standard where they work 100% flawlessly and don’t cause accidents, then freedom-hating governments like the POS European Union or totally idiotic current German government can literally make laws which ban private car ownership in their quest to save the world from climate change bla bla bla…
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