I spent much of the Labor Day weekend staring at this second-generation Dodge Ram that’s for sale on Craigslist. Its proportions don’t make any sense, as if the picture was taken with a fisheye lens or someone did a bad Photoshop job. But this truck wasn’t digitally altered, someone added a foot of width to a Cummins-powered Dodge Ram.
The 1997 Dodge Ram 3500 is for sale for $31,999 on Craigslist in Spokane Valley, Washington. At first, the sight of the truck is unsettling. You know something is wrong but you can’t quite put your finger on it. I showed it to my family and they knew something was off, but couldn’t figure out what.
But, according to the Craigslist ad, the Ram was widened by a foot front to back.T he quality of the job is so high that it looks almost like it could have come from the factory that way.
The ad says that 1,400 hours of work went into the build and it included a lot of custom parts. In addition to widening everything from the hood to the bed, it has a two-piece windshield, super long rear window and other parts to compensate for the wide body. Those parts aren’t pictured, but I’d imagine there’s some extra bracing going on underneath.
The build is held up by a Kelderman air suspension and a set of thick steel wheels. The rears are a dually setup, only adding to the massive girth of the thing.
The work continues inside, where the truck has a custom dashboard and leather seats with an expanded center section.
It looks like the extra dashboard width comes from the passenger side, which now has two storage cubbies rather than the one the regular truck would have.
The interior is complete with a TV just sort of bolted behind a side window. The rest of the work is so well-done that this looks like an afterthought.
Powering this beast is a Cummins 5.9-liter turbodiesel straight-six. Power is fed through a Weller five-speed manual transmission to a two-speed transfer case and on to all four wheels.
It looks to be in fantastic shape without any visible rust and its odometer shows a low 78,492 miles.
Prior to being listed on Craigslist, this truck was sold at Mecum Auctions, which notes that it was featured in an issue of Diesel Power Magazine and on display at the 2007 Detroit Autorama. And in 2019, it was for sale at Gateway Classic Cars.
If you think that the second-generation Dodge Ram is just a smidge too narrow, this truck may be right for you. It’s certainly one of the widest pickup trucks you’ll ever drive, if you can get past its goofy proportions. The price for this monster Ram is $31,999 on Craigslist in Spokane Valley, Washington.