Car of the Week: 1965 Dodge Town Wagon

dodgechargerfan

dodgechargerfan

In a 55 gallon drum, floating down river, and
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When he went shopping for a new hobby vehicle a few years ago, Bernie Pranica sort of put his cart before his horse.

Actually, he put his trailer ahead of his truck.

“The reason I needed an older truck is because I restored an old travel trailer and I wanted something vintage to pull the trailer,” laughs Pranica, a resident of tiny Sobieski, Wis., just north of Green Bay. “It’s kind of backwards, yeah.

“I’ve been [restoring] cars my whole life and I thought I’d do an old trailer for my retirement … So I did an old 1964 Airstream, and it came out beautiful and I thought I needed something period to pull it.”

Read more.
 
A bit on the ugly side, but oddball-ish enough to enjoy the snot out of it.
All that room in the back... Otto, His Royal Daneness, would love it!
 
Hideous....

It amazes me that people actually bought some of this stuff.

....then I look at any current new car lot......
 
I don't think it's hideous per se, just very bland. I just love the dash... it's like they had a killer instrument cluster all designed and the bean-counters killed it. It looks like shit. :D
 
A truck is a truck...is a truck...is a truck....yea....it's different. :shifty:
 
Love it! Needs to look more manly though, like this...
 

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it astounds me that these were still being made in the mid 60s...when you look at the "trucks" they were being made along side and sharing neer nothing with them using what really is a body out of the 50s

they are ok..i dont find them ugly so much as just a body style that should have diead in the late 50s and been replaced with something based off of the rest of the truck line like everyone else was doing..IE bronco/suberban types
 
They were out-dated technology that was easily replaced by the common passenger van. :huh:
 
68R/T said:
They were out-dated technology that was easily replaced by the common passenger van. :huh:
Click to expand...


theres that too..but with the sweptline in full swing..youd think they would have just opted to make a burban version of that to keep up with the other companys..hel;l even trashy had made that choice to keep up
 
Investing the $$$'s to have a separate production line making a vehicle for a very small niche is not good business. Especially when you're already build a vehicle that can easily fill the need. :huh:
 
thats actualy my point too...still building the old platform..looking dated..when they had a new platform in full swing for 5 years..that would have needed nothing more than a rear roof and the bed/floor mated to a cab and the cab extension removed

i think this old bastard right here is the sole reason we never saw a suberban after it,,,,the ramcharger was as close as we got
 
The body didn't change, but the Town Wagon was built using the current truck chassis. In other words, mechanically it was already a current-production vehicle. A '65 Town Wagon is a '65 D100 under the skin; the same is true of the 4WD version. Only the body was a decade-old throwback.
 
that just further begs the question...why not update the metal..when your allready making everything but the roof

take 1 4dr cab, set it on a 2dr long box chassis, dont weld on the cab extension instead weld on trimmed long box sides, make fill plate between long box floor and cab floor, make roof, make barn doors for the rear...hell the roof could have been made from 2 4dr roof 1 spun 180....seems like a no brainer to be able to have something new and something to keep up with the rest
 
Except it's not that simple. That's how you might do it, but they don't have that kind of time on an assembly line. They would have to make a new roof panel, new full-length bodyside panels, a new floor, everything. That requires tooling, which is expensive especially when you have to draw such a large panel. The Town Wagon wasn't successful enough to warrant that, and yet it was just successful enough to keep offering it as a low-margin truck-based wagon. Much like the '96 Buick Century/Oldsmobile Ciera, it still sold well enough on ancient tooling to keep it in the brochures but there wasn't enough market to dump a bunch of money into new sheetmetal or a replacement model.
 
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