6 Legendary Muscle Trucks And What They’re Worth Now – Jalopnik

Before there have been hemi and Viper-powered Rams, there have been the trendy muscle truck pioneers who noticed the unrepentant utility of American pickups and stated “that’s cool, but what if it needs to win a drag race?” Dodge’s adorably named menace, the Li’l Red Express, helped lay the muse, however the section we would acknowledge in the present day actually started to take form with early efforts just like the Chevrolet 454 SS and the OG Ford F-150 SVT Lightning. As time went on, producers continued discovering methods to pack extra pleasure into platforms that have been initially designed to be lengthy on energy however quick on fizz.

Interestingly, the muscle truck arms race performed out largely on pavement for many years, with in the present day’s stupid-fast-off-road-truck section mendacity largely dormant till Ford confirmed up with the F-150 Raptor in 2010. That largely closed the e-book on street-focused efficiency vans, and for those who’re looking for such a factor in the present day, you are just about restricted to the Hellcat-powered 2027 Ram 1500 Rumble Bee, which is extra for smoking tires on asphalt than flying by way of the air within the dunes.

Which brings us to our record of the pickup-bed-laden asphalt-smokers of yore, from the li’l Dodge to the GMC Syclone to the SRT-10. In addition to discussing the vans themselves, we’re additionally going to get into their present-day worth whereas we’re at it. That Ram 1500 Rumble Bee begins underneath $63,000, however the one you actually need is almost $100,000. So, do a few of its legendary predecessors sitting within the historic rear-view mirror provide a extra affordable backdoor into the muscle truck expertise, or have shortage and nostalgia completed their factor and priced us out of a section as soon as once more? Let’s discover out!

The Dodge Ram SRT-10 left the manufacturing unit with the most important displacement engine provided in a brand new truck, and it obtained there with some real sports activities automotive provenance. Before there was an SRT-10, there was the Dodge Viper — itself a solution to the query of what occurs whenever you take an enormous V10 designed for giant vans and stick it into just a little sports activities automotive. From there, the Viper grew right into a legend in its personal proper, form of heading off to sports-car ending faculty to be refined into an 8.3-liter, 500-horsepower monster that apparently had Dodge engineers elevating an eyebrow and saying “what if we put that back into the pickup truck?”

It’s delightfully silly when you concentrate on it, and the outcome was a truck that might go from zero to sixty in 5.2 seconds, quick by fashionable requirements and preposterous within the early 2000s when it was born. In its second mannequin yr, Dodge checked out all that and determined that what individuals actually wanted was to have the ability to get pleasure from all 500 horsepower from a quad cab, as a result of why not.

So how is the used market treating the sports activities truck impressed by a truck-inspired sports activities automotive? Cars & Bids offered one for $30,000 in June and one other for $27,250 in August. So though the CLASSIC.com Market Benchmark sits nearer to $41,000, it seems you can completely snag considered one of these for fairly a bit lower than that. Collectible? Sure. This is not used truck depreciation. But unattainable? No. At least not but.

Today, because the market remains to be making an attempt to determine whether or not there’s room for smaller-sized vans in main OEM lineups, the second-generation Dodge Dakota deserves your consideration even earlier than you drop a 5.9-liter Magnum V8 underneath the hood. The R/T variant that will get that beefy V8 and another efficiency bits represents Dodge’s strategy to muscle vans earlier than they landed on the Viper-related resolution we simply talked about above. Instead, they merely checked out their compact truck and have become the one producer on the time to supply one with a V8. 

The outcome was a not-huge truck with 250 horsepower and 345 pound-feet of torque, and Hot Rod managed to interrupt 15 seconds within the quarter mile with it. Still, in addition they reported a definite feeling {that a} good little bit of the engine’s energy wasn’t making its option to the rubber on the bottom, a suggestion that maybe the simplistic “big engine in a little truck” system had its limitations in real-world use.

This brings us to market worth, the place possibly arising just a little quick within the driving expertise division has contributed to extra affordable public sale outcomes. Last yr, Bring a Trailer offered one at $15,250 and one other at simply $8,800, with CLASSIC.com estimates telling an analogous story. So it is not an outrageous halo truck or a efficiency monster, nevertheless it does have the chops to go quick sufficient to impress whereas nonetheless trying like one thing you borrowed out of your uncle to haul drywall.

Even although the Ford F-150 Lightning was an incredibly good electrical pickup, for some fanatics seeing the Lightning badge on an electrical truck was the most important nameplate revival disappointment because the Eclipse Cross. That’s as a result of earlier than the Lightning was defining a automobile section and additional dividing a tribalized nation, it was serving to Brian O’Conner ship components in model for The Racer’s Edge with some outstanding appearances within the first “Fast and the Furious” film.

But we’re getting forward of ourselves. Before Brian was curbing a second-gen Lightning outdoors the components retailer, the primary era was making its daring debut, with Ford’s Special Vehicle Team (do you know “SVT” stood for one thing?) constructing on the F-150 platform by including a 240-horsepower Windsor V8, upgraded anti-roll bars, and efficiency Firestones. It was additionally lowered, as a result of there was a time when making the truck flex meant happening, not up. After just a little break, the SVT Lightning returned for its second era in 1999, largely taking the identical system as its predecessor and turning the dials up. The subsequent one had a supercharged 5.4-liter V8 making 360 horsepower at first of its run and 380 by the tip.

Values are type of far and wide on this one, although few are grime low cost and fewer are pulling extraordinary sums. Earlier this yr, Bring a Trailer offered a low-mile gen-one for $68,000, with a second era going for simply $36,000. Still, there’s loads of room to get within the sport on the decrease finish, with higher-mile examples transacting under $20,000. If you are torn between the 2, simply do not forget that solely the second era obtained the upgraded dual-piston entrance brakes and vented rear discs, so think about how briskly you could pull into parking spots, Brian.

For 1991, GMC constructed a truck that might outrun sports activities automobiles however not haul cargo, and we’re glad they did. The Syclone, along with the truth that it could have completely owned its Google search outcomes if solely Google existed, was additionally one more strategy to fixing the muscle truck equation. It wasn’t a sports activities automotive engine in a pickup chassis and it wasn’t a small truck powered by an enormous truck motor. 

Instead, the Syclone began with the compact GMC Sonoma and paired it with a turbocharged 4.3-liter V6 making 280 horsepower and 350 pound-feet of torque. With assist from its full-time four-wheel-drive system, it might go from zero to sixty in 5.3 seconds. Just for some in-period context, that is quick sufficient to get individuals asking questions on what it might do, corresponding to when Car and Driver determined to line one up in opposition to that yr’s Ferrari 348ts. The Syclone received within the quarter mile earlier than finally succumbing to the constraints of truck velocity because the Ferrari continued accelerating effectively previous the Syclone’s high velocity of 126 miles per hour.

That’s fairly a efficiency discount contemplating that the Syclone began at $25,970 whereas the Ferrari was $122,000. But does the smiles-per-dollar math maintain up in 2026? With underneath 3,000 Syclones constructed (together with a handful in 1992), the CLASSIC.com Market Benchmark is $42,953 and even that appears optimistic whenever you take a look at latest transactions, together with a pair on Bring a Trailer that went for $24,500 and $34,600 earlier this yr. That’s doubtlessly some huge cash for a 35-year-old used pickup, however not dangerous for a truck that might embarrass flashy supercars in its day.

Just a few Chevy vans got here with the 454 V8, and that is the one which was executed in a approach that was worthy of going toe-to-toe with the F-150 SVT Lightning of its day. A 454-cubic-inch big-block delivering 230 horsepower and 385 pound-feet of torque was a superb begin by early-’90s efficiency requirements, however the SS additionally obtained suspension upgrades (together with Bilsteins) and totally different tires that amounted to one thing fairly menacing when all of it got here collectively inside a full-size-but-still-not-huge truck. That was 1990. In 1991, they raised the bar additional, including a gear to the transmission and crusing the 454 as much as 255 horsepower and 405 pound-feet of torque.

If you are into Fords, you may not prefer it. If you are into Ford logos being peed on by unauthorized Calvin & Hobbes stickers, you possibly do. If we’re letting the market determine, outcomes are vaguely on par with the Lightning(s) we already lined. A 94,000-mile instance offered on Bring a Trailer for $25,300, and on the pristine excessive there was a borderline bubble-wrapped one which went for $91,500. CLASSIC.com benchmarks them at $43,949. So, such is life in relation to issues like this: the spendiest examples most likely do not make any rational sense, however a extra typical one could possibly be a cool purchase. Just word that these Calvin stickers began displaying up within the ’90s, so a lewd window sticker desecrating a Lightning can be completely period-correct.

There are automobiles our readers are all the time excited to see, and the Dodge Li’l Red Express is considered one of them. As the Malaise Era dragged on and the American efficiency automotive business suffered deeply, Chrysler engineers discovered a li’l emissions loophole simply sufficiently big to drive a li’l pink truck by way of. Light vans over 6,000 kilos have been exempt from catalytic converter necessities and have been allowed to make use of leaded gasoline. Freed from these performance-crushing burdens and with the assistance of a special loophole that allowed OEMs to make slight design modifications with out being recertified, Dodge might take an current high-performance motor, improve it for extra energy, and drop it into the truck that might grow to be the Li’l Red Express. The outcome was a 360-cubic-inch V8 that made 225 horsepower and the quickest American automobile to 100 miles per hour, full cease.

And so the muscle truck was born. You might have any colour you needed so long as it was vibrant freaking pink, and its distinctive exhaust stacks towered upwards from behind the driving force. Only the ’78 benefited from the right confluence of regulatory loopholes that allowed for the absolute best model of the truck, and by ’79 it was rocking a power-tempering catalytic converter identical to the whole lot else.

The Li’l Red Express stays surprisingly attainable regardless of its textbook-worthy place in America’s automotive previous. It existed proper on the intersection of artistic engineering and much more artistic regulatory navigation, and but you may nonetheless seize one for across the value of shopping for a well-equipped Camry, with a fairly clear one just lately promoting for simply $34,000 on Bring a Trailer. It will not strategy the trendy efficiency fizz that a few of these others nonetheless ship, nevertheless it’s undoubtedly a chunk of historical past.