TRUCK PROFILE
1965
A100
BY JIM DONNELLY
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JEFF KOCH
If the pony car was a synonym for the soaring Sixties, what about the pony truck? Seriously, these cab-over-engine trucks that were popular in that
time seem to fit the bill: smallish trucks
and vans with unconventional, by American practice of the time, drivetrain positioning. Ford and General Motors both
had them, the second case forming the
Corvair truck line. At Chrysler, though,
these were ground-shifting commercial
vehicles. Those who know rank them
with the original Dodge Brothers truck
of 1918 and the radical T300 Ram pickup
of 1994 as the most important Chrysler
trucks ever built.
By world standards, light trucks with
far-forward cabs weren’t all that wonky
in the early 1960s—witness Volkswagen
and Commer overseas, to name just two.
Dodge trailed Ford and Chevrolet in
getting the very light trucks to market,
rolling out the A100 lineup of pickups,
cargo vans and Sportsman passenger
wagons in February 1964. In Canada,
Chrysler introduced a similar Fargo-badged series of trucks at the same time,
to be sold via that country’s Chrysler-Plymouth retailers.
The A100s were segment-leading vehicles long before that appellation was
first coined. The biggest reason why,
you could say, was engine selection. Initially, the A100 line offered two sizes
of the Slant Six, either 170 or 225 cubic
inches. Next, however, Chrysler added
the 273-cu.in. OHV V- 8 to the rigs’ option
list, beginning in 1965. Its displacement
was expanded to 318 cubic inches in
1967. Either a three-speed manual or
three-speed automatic was offered, the
MOPAR’S LITTLE FORWARDCONTROL WAGON
automatic called the LoadFlite and controlled by a dash-mounted shift lever.
The engine choices gave the A100 and the
longer-wheelbase A108 that joined it in
1970 best-in-class gross-weight ratings of
up to 5, 100 pounds.
Built through 1970, these were hugely
popular trucks. Close to 90,000 A100s and
A108s were sold in 1968 alone. Like many
Chrysler products of similar vintage,
they’ve demonstrated a lot of durability.
Their technical variety and their historic importance make them eminently
collectible. There’s a guy who can speak
authoritatively on that topic. His name
is Brian Bowie; he lives in Harwood,
Maryland, and he’s founder of the A100
Truck and Van Association. He owns 13
of them, including a former C&P Telephone repair van with windows on one
side, doors on the other.
“Believe it or not, there are quite a
few thousand of them still out there,” he
told us. “Right now, they’re a very easy
restoration for anyone to do. I’ve been
into them for 30-plus years, and the only
real problem is that their version of the
727 automatic has a very short tailshaft
because of the engine’s location. I sell a
kit that changes the engine mounts and
fixes that.”
Bowie is very clearly an A- 1 source on
A100 matters: Without prompting, he
already knew that Hemmings Motor News
has owned two such pickups. We asked
him to quantify their affordability. He
explained, “I know a guy who was selling
a Fargo pickup in Texas, fully restored,
for $14,000, and that was for a Fargo, not a
Dodge. As it is, the pickups sell for twice
as much as the vans.”
