The most famous and, dare I say, seminal of Chrysler K-cars was their game changing mini-van introduced in 1983. Just-like-that, breeding Boomers had their family truckster and the rest is history. On the other side of the sales success spectrum were Chrysler's K-car based, 1982-1984 "coupe utilities"; Plymouth called theirs "Scamp" (1983 only) and Dodge called theirs "Rampage". Our Facebook Marketplace 1983 Rampage here hails from bucolic Greenville, Pennsylvania nestled on the Ohio-P.A. border roughly an hour northwest of Pittsburgh and 90-minutes southeast of Cleveland. Purportedly all of 17,000-miles on it's forty-year-old analog ticker. Asking price is negotiable.
If I recall correctly, I believe my knee-jerk reaction to these things when I first saw one back in the day was something along the lines of, "what the f--k is that?" Please understand that I grew up in a bedroom community of New York City where such things like this were about as common as a seeing a cow in a supermarket. Well, a fully assembled, alive and breathing cow and not one or several already dismantled and ready for grilling. If I didn't "get", understand or appreciate the virtues of pickup trucks or anything construed as midwestern, again, back then, highly unusual to see a pickup used as a daily conveyance where I come from, to say nothing of how dazed and confused I was regarding Chevrolet El Caminos\GMC Sprints and Ford Rancheros, imagine how I felt about these things.
All I saw was a K-car pretending to be an El Camino. Nothing more and probably a whole lot less. Well, it was considerably less big than an El Camino or Sprint of the era; Ford got out of the Ranchero business after 1978 although they did commission a number of Fairmont's for custom conversion to "pickup cars" from 1979-1982. Wannabee city-slicker me not seeing these things for what they were really trying to be - an affordable, efficient, and quite practical utility vehicle with a dash of sporty panache.
Based on the bones of the newly freshened for 1982 Dodge Omni O24 Chrysler dubbed, "Charger", our Rampage here uses the Charger's comely front end with a unique utility box aft of what would be the Charger's center-post or B-pillar. The unit-body riding on a slightly elongated Charger chassis with the Charger's front coil struts and an exclusive leaf spring\shock absorber rear suspension. With a tubular rear axle, Chrysler claimed a 1,000-pound payload capacity and 750-pound towing capacity. This just in - you ain't towing the camper with this thing.
Propulsion was provided by a Chrysler-built, 2.2-liter, overhead-valve, inline-four-cylinder engine making 84-horsepower. Sorry, no pictures of that autobahn scourge in the ad. Our red head here has Chrysler's slushy but rugged, three-speed A413 transmission derived from the Volkswagen A404 box Chrysler used in the Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon going back to 1978. Four- and five-speed manuals were also available.
Although weighing just 2,400-pounds, performance was best described as leisurely to the tune of zero-to-sixty in 16-seconds. Whoa. Most vehicles today can do the quarter-mile in 16-seconds or less. Then again, it was the early '80's, most everything was grossly underpowered. Chrysler claimed 25-mph city, 40-highway. Your mileage may vary, see dealer for details.
Too small for pickup truck aficionados and not, I guess, bizarre enough for fans of the VW Rabbit based coupe utility or Subaru Brats of the day, despite high critical praise from auto scribes, Chrysler moved just over 37,000 Rampages in just three model years of production. Meaning, our little front-wheel-driving coupe utility here is quite rare and unique.
Despite my misgivings at first, I've actually always thought these things quite cool looking. And if I had the room and\or need for something wholly practical and not wanting to spring for an SUV or "real" pickup, this little Rampage here might be the ticket for me. I'm not quite there yet, I don't know if I ever will be to be quite honest, but it's nice to see how much my taste in things as evolved from the cloistered myopia of my youth where it seemed anything remotely construed as midwestern was verboten.
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