Very few consumer-targeted trucks have ever come with stacks. Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Dodge D150 L’il Red Express Truck is just so exhaustively featured, but is its price stacked against it?
Toyota’s 7M-GTE engine has a reputation for going through head gaskets like they’re going out of style. That didn’t stop 65% of you from voting yesterday’s so-equipped old school Supra a Nice Price win. Apparently clean editions of that car are not going out of style anytime soon.
You know what once did go out of style was Dodge’s once and future king, cop-motor pickup, due to its thirsty nature. But now, proven by today’s 1979 D150 L’il Red Express Truck, it’s back.
Debuting in early 1978 as a performance truck, the special D150 rode on a short, 115-inch wheelbase and was only available with a wood-trimmed Utiline bed. Garish gold artwork adorned both doors and the gate, and most noteworthy, twin functional exhaust stacks from the step plates just aft of the cab. At over 6,000 pounds it was exempt from many of the emissions requirements of the time
This Li’l Red Truck, being a ’79, is slightly detuned from the debut year, but it still rocks a truck-grade 360 topped by cop engine intake and an 850 cfm 4 bbl Carter ThermoQuad gas sucker. Changes to the second, and last, model year include replacement of the hot cam with a standard 360 edition, an 85 MPH speedo, and the adoption of catalytic converters to meet tightening emissions standards.
Backing up the engine is an A-727 Loadflite with a 2,500 RPM stall converter and a 440 V8 valvebody, That sends power back to a 3.55 rear end. Adding a little show to the go, Dodge dressed the engine bay up with chrome plated valve covers, dual snorkel air cleaner, and those crazy two and a half inch exhaust stacks covered by equally shiny heat shields.
Obviously, owing to its name, these trucks all came in red. The wood trim is solid oak and the interiors could be had in either lurid red or black. This almost as-new D150 went black and never went back. It also sports the stock buckets, but they're so American ass wide, you might mistake them for a bench. Everything on the truck, from the inside, to under the hood and the exterior looks to be in amazing shape. The ad claims but 42,000 miles total and, owing to an oil change record, only 2,500 of that has been added in the last 25 years.
Today, the L’il Red Express truck may appear garish and perhaps even cartoonish, but it is without a doubt a significant representative of ‘70s performance metal, and while be-stacked, be-chromed, and be-oaked, it belongs in the historical records. The question of course, is whether this survivor should belong to a new owner for its $18,998 price.
Before you decide, and just to add fuel to the fire, here’s another one on eBay that’s asking considerably more. In fact, these trucks were not cheap to begin with, adding 20% to the cost of a base D150. Here now, 34 years later, you need to determine what premium one might command. Do you this this L’il Red Express is worth $18,998? Or, does that price make it l’il too expensive?
You decide!
Autotrader Classics, or go here if the ad disappears.
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