Junkyard Find: 1960 Dodge D200 Pickup, With Genuine Flathead Power
Chrysler’s flathead (aka “L-head”) straight-six engine is one of the forgotten heroes of prewar and postwar Detroit, being produced from 1929 through some undefined year in the early 1970s (for stationary use, e.g., in generators and irrigation pumps). There was even a five-bank, 30-cylinder version made for tanks. It appears that it was possible to buy a new Dodge truck with the flathead six through the 1968 model year, though some say that Uncle Sam was the only buyer for the last few years of flathead Dodges. Most buyers opted for futuristic overhead-valve engines by the 1960s, anyway, but here’s a D-series pickup in a California wrecking yard that still has its L-head.
The flathead six that came with my 1941 Plymouth ended up being sold to some Craigslist buyer who drove all the way from Nebraska to Denver to pick it up for his DeSoto project (my car is getting a Vortec 4200 DOHC six out of a Trailblazer and a mid-1990s Corvette ZR-1 six-speed; I thought about keeping the flathead for a future fenderless street rod project, but engine hoarding gets ugly in a hurry).
A 1950 Dodge pickup with 217-cubic-inch Chrysler flathead won the Index of Effluency award at the 2014 Utah 24 Hours of LeMons race. So, I’m a big fan of this engine and it was exciting to spot one at a U-Grab-It wrecking yard a couple months ago.
This 230-cubic-inch engine was rated at 120 horsepower, but it made a respectable 202 pounds-feet of torque. Coupled with the granny-gear manual transmission, this truck probably wasn’t much fun on the freeway but could haul big loads (with driver patience).
Fifty-five years of rainwater sitting in the bed did this. It’s possible that this truck never spent a night in a garage.
This interior had been picked over well, but it didn’t look much different with seats and gauges.
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, Hagerty and The Truth About Cars.
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@Drzhivago- now that you mention it, I think the bumper option went even later for some. My brother bought a new Nissan pickup in 1990 without a rear bumper. As a recent grad, he needed to opt down as much as possible so he could afford to get A/C for life in Houston.
My granddad had a 58 version of this truck black with white bumpers and grill with white hubcaps. His was a step side with 3 on the tree and nothing else, not even a radio. He traded it in on a left over 63 IH step side in Jan. 64 with a straight 6, three on the tree, and no radio. The IH was a much better truck. He got a good deal on the IH and a local farmer bought his Dodge as soon as he traded it in. My granddad always took excellent care of his vehicles and they always had lower than average mileage. I do remember this truck being not nearly as reliable and good as his 50 Dodge pickup.