1971 Dodge D-100 Pickup
After yesterday’s 1972 Dodge Tradesman van, we might as well stick with Dodge trucks of the Nixon Era for another day. Big simple pickups remain relevant long after their car counterparts get discarded, but sooner or later every 11-miles-per-gallon old work truck develops some expensive problem and becomes worth more as scrap than as a vehicle. This Dodge held on for 41 years before washing up in this San Francisco Bay Area self-service wrecking yard.
The addition of a camper shell to your D-100 gives it a bit of protection for cans of paint, ladders, and so forth. You’d think that intact camper shells in junkyards would get snapped up by bargain-hunting truck owners, but this seldom happens.
I wonder how many Chrysler LA-block 318s get crushed every week.
Here’s a good example of California-style body rust. It takes many decades of sun and rainy winters to do this.
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.
More by Murilee Martin
Comments
Join the conversation
A friend of mine had a '68 with a 383 out of a '70 Roadrunner in it when he bought it in 1977. It was black over gray and had a black aluminum camper shell on it. He had it for almost 30 years until his oldest daughter, who had wrecked her car a week before that, took it to work and wound up falling asleep and putting it into a ditch, at almost the same spot where she had wrecked her car after falling asleep. Three kids under 5 will do that to you. It was pretty rusted up, but was still on the same engine and trans with 300K on it since he bought it. Other than a couple of water pumps, a radiator, and a bunch of batteries, it was totally trouble free. It was ugly, no doubt. He almost bought a much better looking '74 D100, but the 318 was pretty gutless compared to the 383, with headers, dual exhaust, and probably a cam. I almost bought an Arizona '70 W100 in amazing shape about 10 years ago, but I didn't really need it and came to my senses..
Pretty much anything one could need for an old domestic pickup is pretty cheap to buy. I guess some people just don't want to go through the trouble of locating the part or they don't want to bother with fixing it if they have the money to buy another old truck.