By Tim Odell
The Rampage joins the Plymouth Scamp and Ford Durango at the bottom of the Car-Truck notoriety scale. Based on the Mopar L-Body platform, it’s by the Iacocca-era 2.2 four cylinder engine. Fortunately this particular example comes with three pedals and five gears as well. However, unfortunate are a number of stylistic choices the owner has made.
The 19″ wheels stick out most of all (literally and figuratively). While the stock 14×6″ styled steelies never got anyone laid, maybe there’s a more reasonable middle ground at 15 or 17″ that’ll actually allow more than a 12 degree turn of the front wheels. The brown-over-black (primer?) paint isn’t so bad, but that faux carbon fiber wrap on the tailgate…why? Most terrible (but most easily fixed) are the PepBoyZ special pedal covers, steering wheel and shifter. I actually like the “angry eyes” headlight things. Don’t judge me.
Un-dumbed, this could be a decent little runabout as a shop vehicle or something. Based on the number of swaps I see and literally two minutes of skimming forums, it appears raiding the 80s-90s Chrysler and Mitsubishi parts bin enables reasonably straightforward swapping of later triple-digit horsepower DOHC or even SRT Neon motors. Torque steer for days.
Anyway, the auction ends later today and as I type this no one’s taken the seller up on his $4200 opening bid.
1984 Dodge Rampage for sale – eBay Motors
Jeff Glucker
Someone rescue that poor, innocent car from the fiend that has been torturing it.
Sorry, couldn’t resist. Love Archer way too much and think of this every time I hear of / read about the Dodge Rampage.
https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/hphotos-xaf1/t51.2885-15/s320x320/e15/11357875_817529344963020_938830756_n.jpg
Someone please help me to understand something about this trucklet.
The power window retrofit makes sense; I’ve done that on a couple of cars in the past. And I get that this involves removing the door cards, working in a tight space where you never actually have room to get any of the parts you need in or ones you don’t out, and then trying to wire it all in when it’s done and not have an electrical fire start the first time you test it.
But where are the bottom halves of the door cards?
The only thing I can figure is that they were discarded as a partial offset for the additional weight of the power window components. No other explanation can possibly make sense on such a masterfully-prepared vehicle.
On an unrelated note, I want to say that the rotating door lock knob is a Mitsubishi part – from the Colt, IIRC. Interesting that Chrysler would have raided the family parts bin in that direction for that item.
The first thing that needs attention is the rear axel needs the right u bolts holding up the lowering blocks. Other than a good de pimping I wonder how hard it would be to put a pentastar 3.6 under the hood or even between the rear wheels. Could make for a fun build.