Looking tough with an ATV on board, the Dodge LRT may be small and sporty, but it’s still a fairly capable pickup.
Don’t get me wrong, regular maintenance such as tires, brakes, and oil changes are important, but things like paint and upholstery are not so much.
My orange Chevy was once a beater to the point that it had mice living in it on the daily, and the passenger door had trouble staying latched as the structure of the cab was rotted out. Between that and having to shut it off in gear so the engine wouldn’t diesel-knock itself to sleep, it was time to repair it.
I always keep my eyes open for a good beater pickup, but it has to be just the right one. After all, if you’re not picky, there’s no chase or adventure to be had. That’s why I wish Dodge had gone through with the production of the 1990 LRT. It’s cool, and it’s thirty years old now so that it would be the perfect beater.
Based on the V8-powered Dodge Dakota chassis and styled much like a modernized Lil Red Express Truck, the LRT name actually was just that, Little Red Truck. Overall, the shape was an early teaser of the new facelift that the Ram and Dakota would both get in the middle nineties, but with some seriously cool and unreleased features.
First off, it sits right. Low slung, with minimal wheel gap on seventeen-inch wheels, which would have been huge at the time. Second, it has a Targa top that isn’t removable but rather electric, which rolls back and down into storage. The nice thing about a lowered truck is the ease of loading stuff: no high lifting and no big ramp angles. In the case of the LRT, it’s even easier to load, as it has a tilting dump bed for loading an ATV or whatever else you desire.
Unfortunately, the LRT was seemingly nothing more than a publicity creation, never really destined for actual production. It’s a shame too, as I think it would make a great beater today. Dodge had a problem with paint adhesion around that time for some reason, so I bet there’d be some with that great leopard-spotted, rusty primer finish out there. Not only that, there’s a solid chance that the Targa top would go down but not back up, and the dump bed would be non-functional as well. A solid five-hundred-dollar summer beater that unfortunately never will be
Have a question or comment for Kelly? Post it at lmtimes.ca/kirk