Junkyard Find: 1983 Dodge Rampage

Once the Dodge Omni/ Plymouth Horizon, front-wheel-drive econoboxes that began life as Chrysler Europe designs, proved to be strong sellers in North America, Lee Iacocca and his poker buddies decided that a pickup based on the Omnirizon platform would be a fine idea. The result was the Dodge Rampage and its Plymouth-badged sibling, the Scamp. I found one of those cartrucks in a Denver-area wrecking yard a while back.

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Junkyard Find: 1983 Plymouth Scamp

North American sales of Japanese-made small pickups went crazy during the 1970s, with the Detroit Big Three getting in on the action with rebadged Mazdas, Isuzus, and Mitsubishis. Ford and GM eventually created their own Michigan-style small trucks, the Ranger (1983 model year) and S-10 (1982 model year) but where was struggling Chrysler— in a frenzy trying to get the new K-Cars out the door— supposed to find enough money to develop a new truck design from scratch? Fortunately, Volkswagen had shown that front-wheel-drive worked well enough in little pickups, and the versatile Omnirizon platform proved suitable for a bit of El Camino-ization. Here’s the result, found in a Denver yard last summer.

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The Value Of A Father's Love

Image courtesy of allpar.com

I am sure the diagnosis came as a shock. It was cancer and the prognosis was not good. The man must have looked at what he had made of his life, weighed the good and the bad against one another, and realized that his 13 year old son was his crowning achievement. He was a good kid, honest, innocent and open to the experiences of the world, but not without that streak of mischievousness that all boys his age had. He would, in time, become a fine man but there remained a long road to manhood. A road he would soon have to walk alone.

The man knew he would miss so many important moments in the boy’s life, the baseball games, high school, his first date, his graduation, college and career. He would never meet the boy’s wife or be there to see him hold his children. Still, there was one thing he could do, never mind the fact that there were years left to go before the boy could get his driver’s license, a rite of passage that had bound father and son together for decades. He could buy the boy his first car and then pass on in the knowledge that he had been able to help his son reach at least one of life’s great milestones.

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Curbside Classic: 1982 Dodge Rampage

The passenger car-based mini pickup niche is as old as as the Crosley Roadside, if not older yet. It’s also a highly ephemeral one, that seems to repeatedly draw car makers to it like moths to the flame. And the results are about the same: here today; gone tomorrow.

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  • MaintenanceCosts It's not a Benz or a Jag / it's a 5-0 with a rag /And I don't wanna brag / but I could never be stag
  • 3-On-The-Tree Son has a 2016 Mustang GT 5.0 and I have a 2009 C6 Corvette LS3 6spd. And on paper they are pretty close.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Same as the Land Cruiser, emissions. I have a 1985 FJ60 Land Cruiser and it’s a beast off-roading.
  • CanadaCraig I would like for this anniversary special to be a bare-bones Plain-Jane model offered in Dynasty Green and Vintage Burgundy.
  • ToolGuy Ford is good at drifting all right... 😉