Junkyard Find: 1988 Dodge Raider

by Murilee Martin

Published: December 17th, 2013

So, out of the entire series of Junkyard Finds, which goes back three years and includes more than 600 posts, which vehicle has attracted the most readers? Strangely, it’s this 1987 Dodge Raider, which I shot in a Denver yard about a year ago. Why? Perhaps fans of the rebadged Mitsubishi Pajero are especially ~~obsessed~~ devoted, to a degree that the rest of us (I’m sure Raider/Montero/Pajero fans have a derisive nickname for us) will never understand. Anyway, here is exactly the second Raider I’ve seen in a wrecking yard since the start of this series; I found this little gold devil during my visit to the San Francisco Bay Area last week.

Just 136,000 miles on the clock, but I’m sure they were manly miles.

I don’t recall ever seeing Ram emblems on a Raider before. Could these have been lifted from a Dodge Ram 50 aka Mitsubishi Mighty Max?

Marques in the Chrysler family got pretty hard to follow by the late 1980s, what with all the DNA from AMC, Renault, Mitsubishi, Simca, and assorted second cousins of those badges coursing through the company’s veins at this point. The Raider makes for some good automotive trivia questions, though not quite as weird as questions related to early 1970s captive imports or the greatest Brazilian Chrysler of all time.

I don’t recall hearing about the lawsuits that must have led to these warning labels. Anybody know this story?

The coolest truck in the Napa High School parking lot!

#1980s #1988 #1988DodgeRaider #BadgeEngineering #Dodge #DodgeRaider #DownOnTheJunkyard #FourWheelDrive #Junkyard #JunkyardFind #SUV #Mitsubishi #Montero #MitsubishiMontero #Pajero #Raider #MitsubishiPajero

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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2 of 35 comments

Azmtbkr81 on Dec 18, 2013

I always thought that these were good looking, well proportioned vehicles with classic, clean 80's Japanese lines. Too bad Mitsu doesn't offer one today, it would be a way to set themselves apart.

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MRF 95 T-Bird on Dec 19, 2013

The Ram badges were standard on these since Dodge did not offer a 2 dr SUV thought they did plan to have a SUV version of the Dakota. The purchase of AMC/Jeep by Chrysler probably put the kibosh on that since it would cut into Jeep, in particular XJ sales. My dad considered one of these back in the early 90's but went for a S-10 Blazer 4.3 instead. Except for the typical paint issues as well as suspension, torsion bar it turned out to be a reliable vehicle.

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