Found in Gainesville, GA. Photos submitted by Harry Case.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1987 Dodge Ram 250 – Oh Yeh, Ultimate Goddess Of Pickups, Thy Name Be Dodge!
Curbside Find: 1980s Dodge Ram – Looking Sharp In Georgia
– Posted on September 8, 2024
Based upon the grille (if it hasn’t been swapped out over the years) this is an ’86 to ’90.
While not as fond of short-bed examples, this is a nice pickup. The baby moons and trim rings work quite well.
For some reason, these old Dodge pickups are for sale in amazing numbers in my area, and more than one of them tempted me recently. Many are definitely projects, but a couple of them have been almost as nice as this one. Fortunately, I am out of the market again and therefore prevented from doing something rash.
These will always bring to mind the commercials they ran at the time. They dropped them from outside the camera frame and when they hit the ground, they sounded like a front-end loader dropping a load of parts in a dumpster.
Now that you’ve mentioned it, I can’t un-hear the parts being dropped into the dumpster. However, imagine what bravery of the actor in the commercial as those trucks are being dropped near him. I would be pretty wary of 2.5 tons of vehicle dropping near me with apparently no guards in place.
I ran across one of these last week as I was doing my weekly pilgrimage to Menard’s. It was bone stock with the mid-80’s full wheel covers intact. Regular cab, white paint, 6 foot bed, single exhaust, I would have imagined it was a Slant Six. It looked so dainty parked there next to a current day pickup…
I’ve come to fully appreciate (and prefer), the earlier generation of Dodge pickups. More original, and less design conformity to mainstream tastes, in their looks.
Stout trucks make no mistake .
Dodge got decades of use from that cab design .
I loved my ’79 D150 shortie with factory twin fuel tanks tow package and slant six, I never should have sold it .
-Nate
I bought a new ’86 D-150, regular cab, short ‘Sweptline’ bed, 318/727 auto. Basically a slightly modernized ’72, but it was simple, very reliable, and not too expensive. The D/W trucks were restyled in ’81 with new sheetmetal including a roof that Dodge claimed improved fuel economy. The hood had been revised in ’79 and it was retained. By 1986 the D/W models offerings were significantly reduced, ’82 being the last year for the extended ‘Club Cab’ and ’85 being the last year for the ‘Utiline’ step-side bed, dual rear wheel pickups and crew cabs. At least one reason for paring down the variety was to make room in the Warren Truck Plant for the Dakota which was coming for 1987, but I think slow sales of those specialized Ram models was also a reason. The Club Cab and the dual rear wheel pickups were reintroduced as the Cummins diesel option revitalized sales of the larger Ram trucks.
As the owner of a “shorty” full size pickup and also a full-length one (short bed with the crew cab, which is the equivalent of a standard cab with an 8-foot bed), I can tell you that the missing 18 inches or so of vehicle length can make a ton of difference in tight parking lots (you still need to know where your rear corners are at all times…).
A nice thing about pickups is that they are so configurable, both for the specs at the time of the new-truck purchase and also for modifications or additions after purchase. 8-foot studs fit kitty-corner in the 6.5 foot bed, and 4×8 plywood can either stick out the back a bit on a slope, or you can run with the tailgate down and tie it in.
Yup, the 8-foot bed is “throw it in and go”. But then there are moments when a 9-foot or a 10-foot bed would be better, or a flatbed, or greater load carrying capacity, or 4WD, or diesel, or, or, or…
I see the shorties as the best choice when one is running empty or lightly loaded, which is most of the time for most non-commercial owners. And they fit just a little better in many garages (though parking a pickup in a garage is some sort of blasphemy, as is washing it more often than every six months or so…). YMMV.