Happy Easter to all who celebrate! This gorgeous Easter Egg-colored 1971 Dodge D100 pickup looks like it just jumped right out of the pages of a brochure; what a beauty. The white walls are a hair too big for me, but white wall tires are shown on pickups in a brochure, just not quite this big of a white wall. The seller has this truck posted here on craigslist in Strasburg, Colorado, and they’re asking $18,500 or offer. Here is the original listing, and thanks to Mike F. for the tip!
Unfortunately, after that great opening photo, things go downhill quickly as far as photo quality goes. The seller didn’t bother to move the truck in order to have the sun on both sides, sadly. That’s always a bummer, especially when it’s a vehicle above $10,000. Not that the price should matter, but dang. The photo above is the only one showing even a glimpse of the driver’s side, which is unusual, but it looks as great as the passenger side does as far as I can see. The backup light lenses appear to be missing, so add that to the list. It has a chrome rear bumper, but a different style than is shown in the brochures.
The trim on the driver’s door appears to be missing, and in the first photo, the trim on the bottom of the bed is missing. The seller says the trim is in great shape, but there’s no word as to whether the missing trim is included or not. They say it’s a “driver quality” paint job, and that may be why trim and other things seem to be missing, but the paint sure looks good in the photos. I believe the “Adventurer Sport” level was the only one that had all of the trim as shown on this truck, according to that brochure link. But there’s no badging on the rear sides of the bed, no trim on the tailgate, etc., to show what this one is or was. The Adventurer Sport also had bright drip (is that an oxymoron?) moldings, which this truck doesn’t have. Also, no bright windshield or rear window trim. Was this side trim added to a regular D100? I’m confused. The bed has been sprayed, and it looks ding-free on the wheel wells, so that’s good, right?
The interior looks great, and this truck has dealer-installed air-conditioning. I’m assuming it’s working, but there’s no mention of that. A couple of the door strikers have been painted, but maybe they were that way from the factory, too? Otherwise, they sure taped off around the data plates perfectly, nice job! Power steering, power brakes, AC, and an optional TorqueFlite automatic give this truck gobs of luxury, or at least a very easy drive for the next owner. I wish I were the next owner. I love this one, missing trim or not. There are no vinyl side door pockets, which would have been on an Adventurer Sport, and no woodgrain instrument cluster. I’m confused; maybe one of you will know exactly what trim level this truck is, not that it matters in the grand scheme of things.
A weekend of detailing could bring the engine compartment up to speed for sure. This is Dodge’s 225-cu.in. OHV slant-six, which had 140 horsepower and around 215 lb-ft of torque when new. The AC will draw some power, as will the power steering, but I wouldn’t give up either of those features. Hagerty is at $15,100 for a #3 good-condition truck and a whopping $26,100 for a #2 excellent truck. This one is probably right on the money, despite the fact that most of us remember when they were $5,000 trucks. Sadly, it isn’t the early 1990s anymore. I really wish it were. Any thoughts on this D100?
Really nice overall Sweptline here. I always liked that design on the rear bed fenders. I know I mentioned on a different one that I believe SG wrote up a while back that the design lends itself nicely to a two tone paint sceme. This ones a great color. And I appreciate Scotty posting the link to the Dodge truck brochure. If you look, many of the half ton models had twin stripe white walls on them. I also liked the baby moons on the yellow crew cab. The Slant Six and Torque Flite won’t win any drag races, but it’ll get you home reliably from the Home Depot or Cars and Coffee. If it were me, I’d prefer a 3 speed on the column or even a 4 speed manual transmission. I’d definitely try to source the missing trim pieces too, but this one is really nice as is. We’ll have to let Scotty off the hook for not creating a crew cab version, seeing as how Dodge beat him to it. This is a very nice find, tip of the hat to Mike F for submitting it. I enjoyed your write up Scotty, thank you.
The last vestiges of Exneruberance, almost (they built the D500-800 with this cab through 1973).
Hi nlpnt, actually, the last Exner designed cab was on the 1975 Dodge Bighorn semi tractor. It used the older ’54-’60 C series cab, I believe.
Didn’t Hank Kimball drive one of these?
He had a Bronco roadster in several episodes. Another rarity.
Hank started out with a Jeep but soon had a Bronco. Ford was a sponsor of Green Acres. The Douglass’s had a Lincoln.
And Ken Barry, at least for a while on Mayberry RFD.
He had a Bronco for at least one season
Pretty much splitting hairs what truck was best. Dodge always seemed middle of the road. Not quite as popular as Ford/GM, but more popular than IH/Studebaker, for some reason. As with all these, someone “found” this, cleaned it up, didn’t need much, added the wide whites to attract an older crowd, and away she goes. I think of all the great in line 6s we had. The 300 Ford, the GM 292, the AMC 258, and of course, the Chrysler Slanty. This motor was like the 3.9 Toyota,(F) used in a wide variety of vehicles, from the Valiant to trucks, it was a good motor. Nice truck here, someone going to reap the benefits of dads years of care.
Dodge was called “the poor mans pickup” back in the day.
Would the super 6 with a 2bbl. carb. be helpful for this truck?
bumpers were optional from the factory back then
Seth, chrome bumpers both front and rear were standard on the Adventurer SE trim level, and standard on the front for the Adventurer Sport trim level. At least according to this brochure.
https://www.xr793.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/1971-Dodge-Light-Duty-Trucks.pdf
These are terrific trucks. I had two along time ago. A D100 with 318, and D200 with 383. Very durable and dependable.
Nice truck. It looks to me that it’s wearing more than its original livery. That looks like a lighter shade of green on the extreme inside of the front splash panels.
No big deal. A new paint job means that the old one wasn’t worth showing. True, it might be covering up a rusty patch but that’s one of the risks you take when you take on a project like this.
A bit of deja vu here. For me anyways. I dated a girl in high school. Her dad bought the near identical twin to this one, but his was designated a farm truck. It at least ran the 318. I don’t remember the exact occasion but somehow my GF had the truck and we were out driving. We were on the freeway and beside us was a graveled service road. A 3-ton box truck was driving down the service road and we both saw it, a medium-sized rock got flipped up from the rear duals and arced way up and started its way down, right into the windshield, putting the absolute FIRST star in it. Sad, really, because the truck had less than 2K miles on it at the time. The GF told her dad and he just kept watching the news, probably knowing that every farm truck was destined to have that happen before it got 10K miles on the clock…
That’s about the same reaction my Dad would have Lol! Vehicles to him were transportation. With his new ’66 Chev. p/u he found a metal headboard and welded a piece of diamond patterned screen onto that and that thing went into the front of the box to protect the rear glass from bouncing wood pieces from cutting wood for winter.
He bought a new ’78 Chev. Scottsdale Big 10. Beautiful 2-tone green, cloth & carpet, chrome bumpers, etc. Drove me nuts when I found out he was hauling wood with that!
I corraled it for a month and had some repainting done & added aluminum running boards for the benefit of my 5′ tall Mom.
I sort of lectured him on keeping that pickup nice which got me little more than a grunt in reply! LOL!
A good truck driver always checked the duals for rocks wedged in coming from off road. Usually took a chain and a sledge. Happened to me once, in my MG, a truck I was following, a rock comes flying at me. Being an MGB, quick response and it missed me, but I heard it hit the car behind me, a Camaro, I believe.
BTW, does Mackenzie know about this story??? :D
Actually, she does. I learned, many years ago, to be up front and tell all. These stories have a nasty habit of showing up unannounced. If I recall correctly, I told her that when our Saturn Vue got its “baptism.” I might add, “while driving along a service road.”
Bee-you-ti-ful! Always wanted one of the trucks with this body style, 1968-71. Too bad about the automatic as I imagine it won’t help performance. I had a ’76 with a slant six and 4 speed, got 20 mpg consistently.
nice looking truck. these are not often seen anywhere in the wild.
Perfect for a Hellcat restomod swap, get it done in time for Scottsdale B.J. circus next year.