Junkyard Find: 1995 Dodge Dakota, With K-Car Engine
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 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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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!!
I still daily drive one. Probably oddest optioned one around 4cyl 5 speed sport with off Rd package and factory chrome light bar lol