Junkyard Find: 1974 Dodge D-200 Club Cab Custom
When you write about one Malaise Era Dodge pickup, you might as well follow it up with another on the very next day. These days, crew cabs are nearly ubiquitous on big pickups, but the idea of a truck with a back seat in the cab was still something of a novelty in the middle 1970s, so this truck is an interesting truck history lesson.
The idea of using a 3/4-ton pickup truck as a commuter to one’s suburban office-cubicle job hadn’t taken over the country in 1974, and so these trucks were made for hauling construction supplies and large sweaty dudes with hardhats and Thermoses full of bad coffee.
Thus, luxury touches were minimal, and the space behind the front seat was intolerably cramped by 21st-century standards.
Also intolerable by current standards would be a mere 180 horsepower— which is what you got out of this smog-strangled 360— for such a big vehicle.
With a granny-gear 4-speed and a 4.10 gear out back (if we are to believe this truck’s equipment-identification sticker), however, this ’74 probably did just fine hauling cinder blocks around a job site.
Those days are over for this truck. Next stop: The Crusher!
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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Chrysler built this body style for ages, we just took a '92 Ram off the road at work that was still essentially the same truck as this '74. I used to love driving that thing, very basic, very utilitarian, but with the 4WD it would climb anything, and in terms of towing, payload capacity, and bed length, it was every bit as utilitarian as the new breed of modern mega-sized trucks. A new F-150 towered over the thing, despite them being allegedly in the same size class. We'll keep it as an off-road plow truck until something really expensive breaks, so it will live for some time yet. What really killed it (besides the board putting money in the budget for a new truck for the first time in like a decade) was the fact that its been getting harder and harder to get parts. For as many of these trucks as Dodge (and Fargo) sold between 1972 and 1993, its really amazing that dealers and parts warehouses really don't keep much in stock for them anymore. It took 3 weeks to get new straps for the fuel tank. These days, if you want to keep an old truck on the road, it had better be a Ford or a Chevy/GMC, Dodges are getting surprisingly tough.
Mechanical parts for these are as close as your nearest Auto Zone. Unfortunately body and trim parts weren't reproduced for them for many years until lately. Now a company by the name of Raybuck Auto Body Parts makes every body panel for one, including rockers and floor pans. Precision Restoration Parts is now beginning to make trim and weatherstripping pieces. The original radiator went in my 77 about 4 years ago, so I got a Modine unit from Auto Zone for $160.00.