Junkyard Find: 1983 Dodge Ramcharger Royal SE

by Murilee Martin

Published: August 28th, 2012

junkyard find 1983 dodge ramcharger royal se

In the final year of the Malaise Era, truck shoppers could still get a Chrysler SUV that wasn’t trying to be a tall New Yorker. Because the echoes of the vans-and- Quaaludes ethos of the 1970s were still quite loud in 1983, this Ramcharger came equipped with groovy earth-tone stripes.

The Royal SE package came with all sorts of options that seem fairly primitive by 21st-century SUV standards: cigarette lighter, bucket seats, and so on. I am unable to determine whether the stripes were factory-installed or applied by a custom-minded owner with vivid memories of steamboating Acapulco Gold through a toilet-paper tube.

Power came courtesy of the same 318 or 360 engine that motivated variations of just about every rear-drive Chrysler product from the late 1960s until well into the present century.

It is a disappointment that no Royal SE Brougham Edition was ever sold.

#1980s #1983 #1983DodgeRamcharger #4wd #Denver #Dodge #DodgeRamcharger #DownOnTheJunkyard #FourWheelDrive #Junkyard #SUV #Truck #JunkyardFind #Malaise #MalaiseEra #Ramcharger

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 48 comments

Moparman426W on Sep 18, 2012

People swap magnums into old mopars and get good performance and mileage out of them. Rick Ehrenberg at Mopar Action swapped a 360 magnum into a 62 Savoy bolted to the car's original 727 trans. He added bigger injectors, headers with dual exhausts and played around with the software, no internal mods to the engine. It runs 13's and gets over 20 mpg. He has more things planned for the future including a 518 trans swap.

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Corey Lewis on Oct 23, 2012

BTW, the Ram Charger lived on until 2001 - in Mexico - as a 2-door Durango model. Someone should go pick one up.

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Parkave231 Should have changed it to the Polonia!
Analoggrotto Junior Soprano lol
GrumpyOldMan The "Junior" name was good enough for the German DKW in 1959-1963:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DKW_Junior
Philip I love seeing these stories regarding concepts that I have vague memories of from collector magazines, books, etc (usually by the esteemed Richard Langworth who I credit for most of my car history knowledge!!!). On a tangent here, I remember reading Lee Iacocca's autobiography in the late 1980s, and being impressed, though on a second reading, my older and self realized why Henry Ford II must have found him irritating. He took credit for and boasted about everything successful being his alone, and sidestepped anything that was unsuccessful. Although a very interesting about some of the history of the US car industry from the 1950s through the 1980s, one needs to remind oneself of the subjective recounting in this book. Iacocca mentioned Henry II's motto "Never complain; never explain" which is basically the M.O. of the Royal Family, so few heard his side of the story. I first began to question Iacocca's rationale when he calls himself "The Father of the Mustang". He even said how so many people have taken credit for the Mustang that he would hate to be seen in public with the mother. To me, much of the Mustang's success needs to be credited to the DESIGNER Joe Oros. If the car did not have that iconic appearance, it wouldn't have become an icon. Of course accounting (making it affordable), marketing (identifying and understanding the car's market) and engineering (building a car from a Falcon base to meet the cost and marketing goals) were also instrumental, as well as Iacocca's leadership....but truth be told, I don't give him much credit at all. If he did it all, it would have looked as dowdy as a 1980s K-car. He simply did not grasp car style and design like a Bill Mitchell or John Delorean at GM. Hell, in the same book he claims credit for the Brougham era four-door Thunderbird with landau bars (ugh) and putting a "Rolls-Royce grille" on the Continental Mark III. Interesting ideas, but made the cars look chintzy, old-fashioned and pretentious. Dean Martin found them cool as "Matt Helm" in the late 1960s, but he was already well into middle age by then. It's hard not to laugh at these cartoon vehicles.
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