This Big-Bucks Dodge Truck With Mitsubishi Roots Resto Makes No Sense And We Love It

A ton of time and money has been poured into bringing this forgotten light truck up to show-winning condition

                                        https://www.carscoops.com/author/chris-chilton-cc/                                    

I’ve always though the great thing about winning a life-changing amount of money wouldn’t be the off-the-peg supercars you could buy, but the off-the-wall builds you could commission. Sure, buying a new Ferrari F80 would be wonderful, but I’d be more excited about doing something much sillier.

Also: Somebody Just Bid $70K On A Burned Dodge That Looks Like It Drove Through Hell

Imagine paying a top-quality shop to drop a Civic Type R crate motor into my ratty second-gen Honda CR-V and restore the whole thing to create a wicked sleeper. And who cares if you’ll never get back the money you put in?

A Forgotten Compact Pickup

It can only be that kind of thinking that led someone to dump an ungodly amount of time, effort and cash into building the gorgeous Dodge Ram 50 Sport truck you see in these pictures. The Ram name only comes on full-size trucks today, but back in the late 1970s and through the 1980s it was also found on simple, lightweight four-cylinder trucks that lived hard lives and were unceremoniously junked when those lives were over.

You probably haven’t seen one of these Ford Courier, Toyota Pickup rivals for years, and you definitely haven’t seen one like this. Restored to better than new condition, its jade-colored paint perfectly offset by the eye-catching orange and yellow graphics, this D50 build is nicely judged, looking fairly stock at first inspection.

However, a closer look reveals some subtle mods including some visual and breathing mods for the 109 hp (111 PS) 2.6-liter inline four, a wood-lined deck, beefy roll bar and leather-wrapped three-spoke steering wheel.

Vanguard Motor Sales

The Ram 50 isn’t really a Ram at all, but a Mitsubishi L200, which was sold in America as the Dodge D50 between 1979 and 1980 before adopting the Ram 50 name. This one’s technically a Power Ram because it’s fitted with the all-wheel drive transmission that became available from 1982. And being an ’86 model it’s from the last year of the first generation truck, an even boxer gen-two pickup landing in 1987. Dodge also introduced the bigger Dakota that year, but the Ram 50 lived on into the mid 1990s.

How Much Does a Dream Cost?

We don’t know how much it cost to build this truck, which has since sold, but the fact that Vanguard Motor Sales had it advertised for $59,900 gives us some kind of guide to the level of financial commitment involved.

So, if money were no object, what kind of off-the-wall, totally impractical project would you put together? Something fast? Something odd? Something only you could love? Let us know in the comments.

Vanguard Motor Sales