1966 Dodge Town Wagon Power Wagon | Jay Leno's Garage

i tried to get it registered and i tried to tell them it was a sport utility vehicle that's what i looked at it as and sure enough they went back to the archives and now it's a station wagon it didn't even occur to me this is like a forerunner of the multi-row seat suv right right it's like owning a giant dog an appeal to me was that big lumbering easy to work on because i'm going back a few years to my high school auto shop days right you know so basic that you really have to relearn all that stuff too right welcome to the jay leno's garage the vehicle featuring today if you're tired of italian supercars well this is the exact opposite this is a 1966 dodge town wagon power wagon this looks like it could have been built anytime from 1941 to 1966 which was actually the last year uh you know four-wheel drive this is when four-wheel drive really was to go off-road i mean so many vehicles now are all-wheel drive two or four-wheel drive but uh this uh v8 engine 318 i came about this in an odd way uh a woman called me uh it had been sort of rusting out in her backyard and could i find a good home for it and uh one of the guys that works with a steve hoffman he been here since the beginning you know we transport cars and stuff he's got a flatbed and he always wanted one of these so i called him and told about it he went and picked it up in colorado it has some california history let's bring steve in and find out what this is all about steve hoffman come on in steve good to see you my friend hi jay you know if you ever wonder how the cars get to the location steve's guys that does it for us uh so tell us first of all why the interest in these i you know i've always liked the dodge power wagons just because they're big meaty you know military-esque things and uh and i had a flat-fendered power wagon right at the time and when another one comes along well you just don't say no you don't say no he just adopted now what year was the flat funded one the flat fender is in 1950 okay and uh actually still sitting awaiting restoration really because i can only do when you say flat fender what are you referring to that's the older body style pickup with flat fenders more military style to accommodate the bigger chassis and the four-wheel drive okay now what chassis is this is this a truck this is a truck chassis this is a pickup truck chassis right okay from a later series called sweptline started in the early 60s the body itself is a carryover from the late 50s what they call power giant series and these at top speeds about what 60 miles an hour i think yeah i think that's downhill in a hurricane that's being generous yeah yeah uh and of course v8 eats gas but it's really meant for off-road these are popular with yellowstone sure park rangers uh that kind of stuff real utility vehicles meant to work hard in an off-road environment i mean it doesn't lower on its suspension like modern vehicles it's all for lack of a better word this is what the old days it would was called a manly vehicle you know that kind of very much a tractor right with a station wagon body right exactly i guess the american uh eagle remember the rambler sure eagle that was the first sort of real four-door car that did this function and this is like almost a truck's version of that and this is all steel obviously it's a lot of steel it does look like something that was built in the 40s when you first got it i said real that's that's 1966 but this was that's it no more after this this was the very tail end of production they were selling a couple of hundred a year right to real specific industries oil gas exploration railroads things like that because they were too utilitarian compared to the the competition which was the jeep wagoneer and uh international travel yeah much nicer vehicle much more modern and i think 67 there were some regulations coming into play that we're gonna yeah and this i think i remember seeing one of these outfitted with the railroad wheels on the tracks they would go up and down the tracks and search for breaks in the track or over by you know dodge was always the government low bidder so you saw a lot of these in ambulance service uh forest service that sort of thing in their heyday but by 66 the justification for keeping them on the production line was pretty slim well let's open the hood and see what it looks like inside here okay that engine's way down there you really need a stepladder to work on this thing don't you it's true okay but it's that's the 318 is now is that the same 318 that was in every dodge as the basic v8 or is it a truck version you know it is a truck version and it's what they call a poly v8 polyspherical head it was a 50s kind of low-cost answer to the hemi right and it saw some life in plymouth vehicles and some of the sedans but really this was the production v8 that you the low no frills v8 right and most a lot of these came as slant sixes though yeah the v8 was an option yeah that's it's odd to find with the v8 i remember the mueller's being sixes uh and this is 200 horsepower is that a two barrel on there you have two two barrel carburetor so i suppose you could put a bigger carburetor you've restored it completely stock yeah you know i'm i'm weird that way i like the stock basic look my youth was filled with jeeps and kind of basic utilitarian vehicles so that's a lot of them are modified just because a little more get up and go and that's a massive alternating around there and he almost wonder why i mean all it's running is headlights i mean there's no reason really for a big alternator like this is there another drive that it would no no it wasn't it was just i guess more power is better in a utilitarian kind of state if you're in the snow and you're working the truck and the headlights are on and your rotary beacon is on on the top right yeah i guess that's true you know they used it for just about everything and probably for accessories as well now what kind of shape was it in when you got it because it's pretty rough it was pretty rough and it had uh some custom add-ons the the guy who who bought it was a scientist up at jpl a real rocket scientist one owner one owner yeah and his family knew this thing as super truck right big green monster that and the daughter is who i'm still in contact with uh regarding the truck but he bought it uh not too many regular commercial sale non-commercial sales for stuff like this but he he bought the truck and i'm sure he used it well it was a familiar sight up at jpl how many miles on it when you got it about 42 000. oh that's all yeah but that's all that's millions of miles when you when it 30 years on and it was in pretty sad shape i picked it up in colorado and brought it back here but there was like anything that's been sitting for a long time well the fun thing is it was given to me and then i gave it to steve and we it was all done on the proviso that it would be restored you know the lady was very kind it didn't run she could have sold her but she wanted it to be fixed up right just like when her husband had it and you've done a great job steve it really looks thank you terrific i think he would be very proud of it uh and she'll probably see it today for the first time right yeah yeah i let her know that it's it's almost there done yeah and uh we'll be sending her a copy of this is there still stuff to do on this is it the little things yeah door seals and right really minor stuff right right the bulk of it is done a lot of sweat equity in this one many dents and dings you know there were and and thank god it's the the kind of steel that they made stuff out of in the day right it takes repairs much better than some of the flimsy stuff the downside is such a rare bird that parts are a monumental task now what are unique parts of this i mean that's a dodge truck va it's a radiator dodge truck chassis basically this particular truck has wider fenders off of a like a 500 series medium duty truck right to accommodate the four-wheel drive the body like i said was just a carryover they sold as many as they could make and that was about it there wasn't a no none of the dealers kept one on the lot yeah it was just that kind of vehicle and so parts some parts from the 50s if you can find them if you can find a crossover some stuff you have to make i found a guy who makes an interior kit unbelievably nobody has any even has patterns and he has a kiss yeah there's always those guys yeah there's one or two guys that just know these things and thank god for the internet i mean it's a lot different than it was 25 years ago i was trying to find these guys you mentioned that about parts from the 50s when i was restoring my 55 buick we had it all apart and all the parts laid out and some gm guys came through and let that go oh we're still using that bracket i mean it amortized the cost down to what like four cents to make it now because they've been making it since 1955 and they were still using that bracket and it just made me laugh and that actually that's clutch right and that's that's a single massive single master cylinder you ever worry about that i do i get a little nervous yeah it's uh you know i'm used to the dual mastered and uh well you're never really going fast enough that's true you know so but there's a lot of momentum too yeah yeah that's true that's true but hey it worked fine for 50 years and you rebuilt the engine as stock yep i figure if it isn't broken right and it runs on regular fuel regular fuel i don't have to worry too much about that yeah okay again nothing too exotic here right and these are the old-fashioned locking and unlocking hubs you have to get out and do it right you have to manually turn the locking hubs on and then it'll actually engage the front axle and what kind of gas mileage you get with this i haven't driven it far enough to know and it's probably better that i don't especially with 6.15 gas i know i know i just wonder what the difference is between having the hubs engaged and not engaged there's plenty of drag yeah yeah it does make a difference yeah it's not the most aerodynamic vehicle no no it's not i mean i'm six i'm six feet tall and look look at this this is so it's hilarious oh it's hilarious how big this thing is to get a running start to jump up into it but but it's the best name power wagon it's just yeah it's all it is it's a tractor yes and i guess a lot of them had a winch in the front sure that was uh yeah all kinds that would explain the alternator sure right it would the winch would be run by probably a power takeoff right right off of the transmission very cool okay well let's close this up again let's uh i said there you go they gotta give that a little clunk to know yeah it's close and of course was it hard to find this original paint you know we had to color match it because there's eight different versions of it and different books and over time the the paint samples do discolor so yeah was it available in a number of colors or just about six colors right right okay all right let's see let's uh let's go around the back and then we'll come up to your interior it's a long walk back here let's open her up okay there you go i like boy nothing everything's pretty simple here right yeah yeah you'd think it'd be easy to work on but inevitably frozen bolts and yeah you know just every single thing well sitting outside in colorado yeah and you got we got three rows here yeah okay and i guess that seat comes out yeah the seats come out right to make it more van-like right right those are another impossible to find item because when they got handed down to the next and the kids and they took the seats out and threw them in the garage and never to be seen again why not you got wing nuts on it so they're really factory yeah real easy to get out yeah yeah cool and i guess you could camp in this thing too couldn't get too sure yes you could sleep in and do the whole deal okay very cool and this one's got to close first yep oh it's pretty light actually you can see why they used them for ambulances no do i need to lie it's all good okay what is this way any idea it's about about 7 500 pounds oh it is yeah it's very heavy and that's all chassis yeah chassis and body yeah yeah yeah just the bumpers doors are not that heavy but yeah and that's the way it was with the white trim no chrome very basic it almost looks like early 50s blackout korea you know when they yeah true enough you know it the early ones the fancier ones that they tried to sell to the public right some had wheel covers or hubcaps right but by 66 it was just turn and earn just put them out there turn and earn put them to work let's take a look at the interior all right you open up that side now it's interesting the dashboard almost looks like a home style hot rod dashboard speedometer you know in the middle of a piece of wood with some gauges around it just the basics yeah just just the basic at least you got gauges not idiot lights so that's kind of cool yep you got your emergency brake right there and it's a four speed yes it's a four speed yeah but granny low right from climbing mountains so around town you just pull away in seconds exactly yeah okay any overdrive no no okay i guess the theory is you're never going faster than about 35 anyway yeah yeah and that's those two levers there that's your what two that's the transfer case for that front-wheel drive four-wheel drive okay front-wheel drive so you get out you unlock it and then you throw those right it's good it's a neutral high and low right okay and engage and disengage gotcha okay i mean it's funny i mean you look at the dashboard you can see well the radio should go right there but no and a lot of them that you see even today have big holes cut in the dash because you know that was a 70s thing put a radio in it right but yeah the real the real rare bird is the the roof mounted filco radio with the internal antenna and this has to be the last year for a single master cylinder yeah it has to be yeah because i think passenger cars had to have it in 66 and i guess trucks got a pass for a few years probably they tend to do that and it's a standard dodge truck steering wheel yep i love the big shifter it looks like that uh one they used to have on the um you know the big hemi with the pistol grip almost the same shift lever hilarious uh but boy new boot rubber everything it looks good yeah some custom work yeah yeah another impossible to find thing is the shift boot yeah so you you do what you can and try to make keep it original and you've got a bit of a headliner and then just roof on this it must be like a drum to drive isn't it yeah it's very tinny and i put sound ending in it hoping to ally some of that but yeah it is what it is it's a big oil can well let's hop in and take it all right i like how far yeah you have to really it's an effort to get in you have to get in this thing here we go here we are no power steering obviously nope actually steers pretty nicely it's not heavy at all big drum brakes all the way around yes sir gigantic drum brakes yeah they used a lot of the three-quarter ton parts on this thing even though it's rated at half time so it's got the big axles and the whole thing cold-blooded it definitely needs a run maybe next weekend malibu it might be a little ambitious might cause you about 1500 gas yeah i might i should start tomorrow worked all weekend putting in the steering gear and getting it kind of straightened up didn't have a chance to go and run the hell out of it yeah beforehand so yeah i love this thing i love i always go to the car shows and i walk right by the the mustangs and the camaros and i always go to the back where they keep all the the big trucks and the the weird top ball stuff yeah that's that's always been my thing you know they put the ambulances back there and all the weird was last time to change those blood probably three months ago yeah but it's been sit it sits that's the death knell for these things is just sitting around plus the gas today is so i know awful i have a few more things to do got to get somebody to finish off that steering wheel i've made great progress with all the cracks but steering wheel looks good it needs to be dipped and all the you know to be done right is that a hard wheel to find it's impossible to find yeah and this is an original wheel so all the cracks i'm trying to fill them in and you know make it presentable is there a bigger wheel than there's another job it's i always say this but you realize this is halfway in the development of the automobile or the truck i you know you're just about the halfway point to now you can figure 1910 is when things really started moving you know you look at this and you go my god we've come a long way but you realize they've come a long way in 66 my brother wanted a desperately to get a 67 mustang had to have a 67 mustang boy you better think about driving one of those around town before why 67 i don't know just something about that first generation's iconic mustang right 67 it was just changed for the sake of change a little bit of body change yeah so he had to have it and i said no it's not going to drive like your your your car it's just not it's not even going to be closed yeah because you got this image in your head oh it's going to be fantastic muscle car i'm going to well you know one of my favorite things on this show tim allen and i we showed up with a 66 or maybe a 67 gto right tri-power homing versus a four-door altima v6 sedan and it blew the doors off yes yeah i know i i admire the hemi and the whole thing i love that muscle car era but boy compared to a modern car just driving around the only thing that hasn't kept up in my opinion is the style yeah i like the old cars because you could tell them apart they were distinctive now everything looks looks the same and you know everybody just benchmarks a bmw or whatever yeah you get a korean built clone of a bmw did you strip this motor down or just clean it up uh we tripped it down yeah i had george look at it and it's red it's running better than it was here we go now she's running downhill and this this ride it is a two-door i you know i know it's a two-door but it just you think it's gonna be a four-door vehicle i guess this is the sport model the two-door i tried to get it registered and i tried to tell them it was a sport utility vehicle that's what i looked at it as and sure enough they went back to the archives and now it's a station wagon oh this is a station this is considered a station wagon because it's a people mover and two doors now is that uh is that help you or hurt you with the dmv it doesn't really hurt it's just it's such an old classification station wagon yeah i mean it didn't even occur to me this is like a forerunner of the of the multi-rose seat suv right right well this is one and error one it was it was a truck not meant to have any pretense for luxury you know no no i mean if if you ordered one of these you were just moving bodies to the job site or picking up your hotel guests for your mountain lodge at the airport or the train station and we've talked about this on this show before but there wasn't an era when the luxury truck what happened was in the 80s it was a 5 luxury tax on any vehicle would cost more than 30 000 because that was going to be considered a luxury vehicle but there was no luxury thing on no luxury tax on trucks so they thought why don't we take that five percent and make a luxury truck put a truck with leather seats and radio and air conditioning and all the things you have i think the lincoln blackwood was one of the first ones and the idea of people thought hey why not instead of having two vehicles a car and a truck why not get a luxury truck and that's what uh that's what happened it's all because of legislation and not everybody was gonna drive their regular vehicle to a job site right now and even this as a station wagon was an oddball they sold a lot more panel bands and even more you know panel vans and even less of these things as four-wheel drive right if you sold them you sold it as a station wagon right as opposed to four-wheel drive and you can see how small a market it was especially against competitors like the jeep wagoneer about 66 right the nicer versions of this kind of a truck were coming into play jeep wagoneer you got the international travel wall right right much more family functional car-like than this piece but you certainly get a good greenhouse got good visibility and i like that about the 50s stuff the wrap-around windshield right you really again the style from that that time period really classic because it was more about the visibility than the aero dynamics gas is 17 cents a gallon you don't get too worried about while you do when you're making 75 cents an hour true enough so you know it's all relative it's a matter of perspective i guess i was just a kid when the all the gas pumps had to be changed out because nobody ever conceived of them having to have a a dollar digit all right yeah well it wasn't that long ago when the when they had the first increases like 20 or 30 years ago with a credit card you couldn't put more than 50 worth of gas in the car so it would shut off yeah see what kind of turning radius that's not bad no no that's pretty good i like how the wheel just it's a floater that cop eyeball in it yeah glad my registration's up as much as i like the old stuff boy the internet sure helped me with this restoration oh yeah unbelievable the resources you can find i know where you just used to rely on you know that that knowledge base that was out there in your local garage right now you can find the the subject expert on anything yeah when i got my bureau back in the 80s you had to write a letter in italian to the factory hope that somebody would read it and then there was no phone you couldn't there were no lamborghini parts you know yeah yeah now what did what would you do before the aftermarket even existed you know like anything well now you got you know google translator and all of that but i remember once just trying to get sofia lorena on the show and had to write a letter in italian you know i'm sitting with the dictionary thank you yeah i got i get a lot of help and what a resource and there's forum pages and there's there's eight different facebook groups for every single vehicle gonna get a little noisy on a cross-country trip the family trip to disney world not happening no no not in this yeah it's like owning a giant dog you know a big giant dog an appeal to me was that big lumbering easy to work on so because i'm i'm going back a few years to my high school auto shop days right you know so basic that you really have to relearn all that stuff too right well thanks for keeping it stuck a lot of guys that just drop a hellcat motor in it or something you know you know i i do that in my head fantasy wise but the reality is i i do like the original stuff yeah it just because for me it's as much about the history as anything else yeah and it breaks my heart to see people cut up fenders and transmission is very nice clutch is very nice while i had this thing frame off and everything i i had him go through everything now we're just down to the the details yeah thankfully seemed endless even a simple truck like this is unbelievable how many parts come out of it we'll see if we want to thank you i mean it's still a work in progress it's got a couple little things here but you know it's a lot of fun yeah i just like anything different than the norm and it's so high it's so big and it's so well it's a unique vehicle i mean these were sort of common when we were kids but it's just the type of vehicle you don't see anymore because it's built for one specific purpose and that's it so thanks thank you very much thanks for saving this piece of history i appreciate it all right now we just afford to fill it with gas oh my god [Music] uh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 512,616

Keywords: Dodge, Power Wagon, Town Wagon, V8, Steve Hofmann, Suburban, SUV, 4X4, 4WD, lockers, station wagon, gearhead, motorhead, car enthusiast, off-road, car guy, car porn

Id: HSzXU7WLq7Y

Length: 29min 6sec (1746 seconds)

Published: Mon May 02 2022