Junkyard Find: 1995 Dodge Dakota, With K-Car Engine

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

The plenitude of vehicles based on the Chrysler K Platform helped the company bounce back from its humiliating 1979 near-bankruptcy and government bailout, and the modern overhead-cam four-cylinder engine Chrysler developed for the K was a big part of that success. We think of that 2.2/2.5 as a transverse-front-wheel-drive-only engine, but Chrysler made a longitudinal version for the rear-wheel-drive Dakota pickup.

Here’s a very rare 2.5/5-speed example I saw in a Denver-area yard recently.

1995 was the last model year for the good old K-Car 2.5 engine in the Dakota. After that, FAW made these engines for Chinese-market vehicles, while Chrysler switched to the 2.5-liter AMC four-cylinder for the Dakota.

This transmission and bellhousing should enable crazed engine swappers to use the Spirit R/T‘s engine in, say, a Miata. We recommend this application.

The last owner of any Dakota must smoke Marlboros. It’s the law.

Just over 126k miles on the clock. Nobody loves non-huge pickups these days, it seems.

The 1980s had been over for a while at this point, but 1980s-style tape stripes and graphics lived on in Detroit.

Dodge pickups were #1 in sales growth in 1995!

Those who bought the first-gen Dakota Club Cab could fit four lumberjacks inside. Cue Monty Python song.

[Image: © 2016 Murilee Martin/The Truth About Cars]





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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  • Andrew Andrew on Sep 29, 2016

    When I worked for an Audi-Porsche dealer, their buildings were spread out and one warehouse that housed the detailing section also stored large parts such as bumpers, doors and the like. To haul them around between buildings, they used a 92 or 93 Dakota just like this one except it was a long bed and as of a year or so ago, they still had it....with 349,000 miles on the odometer!!

  • Mhn65688625 Mhn65688625 on Aug 27, 2022

    I still daily drive one. Probably oddest optioned one around 4cyl 5 speed sport with off Rd package and factory chrome light bar lol

  • Varezhka Suzuki Jimny, Toyota Century, and I know it technically just ended production but Honda e.
  • CoastieLenn For those that care to read the details of the crash NOT included in this article but published elsewhere- this happened at nearly 10pm when the CRV was stopped in the center lane of travel, lights off, with the driver remaining in the car. Not only is it not known if Blue Cruise was being used, it would have been a nightmare for most alert human drivers to mitigate that driving the 70+mph speed limit on many sections of I-10 in Texas, much less an AV system.
  • Jeff This is what I would want: Toyota has now released an affordable truck called the Toyota IMV 0. The newly developed vehicle made in Thailand comes with a rear-wheel drive and a gasoline 2.0-liter inline-four matched to a 5-speed manual transmission. NEW $10,000 Toyota Pickup Has Ford & GM Crapping ... YouTube · Tech Machine 8 minutes, 46 seconds Dec 26, 2023
  • Jalop1991 At the same time, let's take these drivers off the road--at least the ones that haven't yet taken themselves off the road.I can guarantee, at no point was this guy or any of the dead Tesla-stans actually driving the car. They were staring at their phones, because, HEY, SELF DRIVING!!
  • 3-On-The-Tree To Maintenance Costs His best friend did the union meetings and he said that there wasn’t a lot of negotiating taking place between the union and state because they were happy with how the state was treating them. He said it seemed more like a formality having the union.
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