Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Dodge Dakota sports an eight-litre V10 from a Viper under its hood, and a six-speed Tremec to boot. That makes this a pickup with pick up, and a hauler that can haul ass, but will its price inevitably haul it down?
In Swedish, Viggen means ‘thunderbolt’ and with its 68% Nice Price win, yesterday’s 2000 9-3 Viggen certainly lit up the smiles among many of us. That tidy temptress might prove useful when teaching torque steer 101 or the tire torture prerequisite seeing as its copious power flows exclusively through its unfortunate front tires. In complete contrast today’s Dodge Dakota is a year newer.
That’s right, this is a 2001 Dodge Dakota, representing from that model’s second generation, and from an era when Mopar’s trucks went under the brand name Dodge and not Ram. Oh yeah, and this one rocks a Viper mill and gearbox, did I mention that?
The Dakota was always a mama bear truck—not too big, and not too small—and was one of the only compacts to offer an available V8. Who knew it could hold oh so much more.
Now the Viper—the first ones at least—were about as raw and visceral an extension of one’s Id as you could find. What it also had was a near perfect 49/51 weight distribution making sure the 400-bhp and 465 lb-ft of torque that the 499-cid engine produced could do some good when it came to back tire toasting time.
That might not be the case here in this Dakota, unless of course you throw a few sandbags in the back, under what’s described in the ad as a custom hard tonneau. The suspension underneath all that is also claimed to be custom—whatever that means in this instance—and while this is a shortbed, at least the wheelbase is a good 19-inches longer than on the Viper.
Paint is Viper-like, with a deep blue body segmented by two wide white stripes. Aside from that however,there’s little to no evidence of what evils lurk beneath. The engine install looks tidy, although seemingly at the expense of such conveniences as A/C or a heater. I guess that big V10 pumps out enough BTUs to keep things toasty on all but the coldest of days.
The interior is a total mystery, as are the wheels since the seller chose not to include pictures of either. He does note in the ad that the truck rocks a modest 43,000 miles while the engine has only 10,000 on it and the tires but 2K. That’s all got to add up to some magic number I guess.
The magic number to make this Vipota (Diaper?) your own is a cool $35,000. Now, you could buy a Viper for that much, the early cars haven’t exactly taken off in value yet, or probably 35 regular Dakotas if that’s your fetish.
We’re not going down either of those roads and instead are going to focus our attention on this Viper-imbued Dakota and its $35K price. What do you think, based on the ad, does it seem worth that? Or, does that price make this a total pain in the Asp?
You decide!
Portland OR Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to HighWindAdvisory for the hookup!
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