My Patina-Heavy Dodge Trucks Are Meant To Be Driven

This story first appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Join the club to receive our award-winning magazine and enjoy insider access to automotive events, discounts, roadside assistance, and more.

My dad is a mechanic, and I’ve been working with him in our shop since I was 14. He’s been a Mopar guy his whole life, which influenced my tastes. My first car was a 1974 Plymouth Duster that we restored together. I still have it, and I’ve built it up over the years with a 340 V-8 stroked out to 416 cubic inches.

I kept playing with Mopars, but I started gravitating toward trucks from the late 1940s and early 1950s because I loved their looks. The only problem is that you have to drive those trucks so defensively because the braking, acceleration, and turning aren’t suitable for modern roads. I started looking into swapping the vintage body onto a more modern chassis. About five years ago, I put together my first, a 1950 Dodge “pilot-house” truck. It was a mutt—I used a Chevy S-10 frame, a Ram 2500 V-10 drivetrain, and a Ford 8.8 differential—but it drove well, and I learned a lot with the build.

My next body swap happened by chance about a year later. I was giving a customer a ride home, and she saw my 1950 Dodge truck sitting in front of the shop. She told me her family had a 1948 Dodge Panel Van that they were going to junk. I was interested, so I went to their barn. The van was parked in the back corner and had great patina. A local painter used it in the 1960s and ’70s, and there’s still lead paint all over the back, inside on the doors, and everywhere. I already had the perfect name picked out: VanGo.

The day after I bought VanGo, my pinstriper Brian Rodgers said his best bud was looking to get rid of a 1999 Dodge Dakota R/T. Four hundred bucks later, I had the perfect drivetrain and chassis donor.

A week later, I started cutting. I put VanGo on the lift and chopped out the floor and firewall. I cut down the Dakota to just the cowl, steering, heater box, and powertrain, then shortened the chassis by 3 inches. I drove the Dakota chassis underneath the panel van, lowered the van on top of it, and wiggled it down. Wherever the van body sat—it was basically as low as it could go without touching the tire—that’s where I welded it. After 16 hours, I drove the chassis-swapped VanGo out of the shop and took it home to finish the details.

The track on the second-generation Dakotas is pretty wide. I added fender flares from a 1950 Dodge truck to the van body to compensate for the extra width. I also added an original 1950s Mopar accessory visor. VanGo was pinstriped, and my friend Brian Hensley, who owns Poppy’s Patina, came by to preserve the truck with his two-part, wipe-on clear coat for a YouTube video. I got it titled and insured and took care of some preventive maintenance like replacing the suspension. I’ve been driving it ever since.

I had the itch to build another truck two years later. I was at a car show with VanGo, and a guy showed me pictures of his buddy’s 1946 Dodge utility truck originally used by Bell Phone. He was trying to sell, so I bought it and named it Ma Bell. The truck was mostly restored by a high school shop class and was really nice, and I probably could have spent a month to finish the restoration. But I wanted to take it apart and do another body swap because VanGo turned out so well.

It took a while to find a suitable donor, this time an extended-cab 1999 Dakota R/T. I thought the swap would be easy, since I used the same chassis on VanGo, but the 1946 Dodges are way different from the ’48s. But I wasn’t afraid to start cutting and just deal with what happened. I had to take the drivetrain, firewall, and floor from the Dakota and move it back 8 inches on the chassis, so I could have room for the radiator. Because the Dakota was an extended cab, I had to shorten it by about 22 inches.

The nose that originally came on the truck was smooth and round, and I didn’t think it fit the rugged looks of the phone-service bed, so I traded some parts for a ’46 Dodge Power Wagon front clip. It’s all Dodge, it’s all the same year, but the patina is different from the cab.

It took me about four months to finish Ma Bell, and I started taking it to car shows. People who worked for Bell Phone or had family who did gave me locks, tools, a torch, a call box, and a ladder that were used by Bell service trucks. An old-timer sold me an original Bell Phone utility splicer trailer that was sitting in his storage unit.

Some people who have patinaed rides stress over it like a paint job. That’s not the reason why I have rusty trucks—they’re meant to be driven. They both still have the EFI computers in them, stock 5.9-liter V-8s, and four-speed automatics. The panel van has cruise control, air conditioning, heat. Ma Bell has none of that because it wouldn’t fit in the Power Wagon nose. Our family takes VanGo and Ma Bell everywhere. My wife is a teacher; she takes VanGo to school and the students love it. We’ve driven both trucks five hours to Columbus, Ohio, for Mopar Nationals.

I beat the snot out of both trucks—burnouts, donuts, etc.—and I have not had any problems. Eventually I’ll break something, but that’s the plus about the body swaps. I can go to AutoZone or O’Reilly and easily pick up replacement parts.