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Remembering the 1964 Dodge D-100 Street Wedge, America's First Muscle Truck

High-performance pickup trucks are quite common nowadays. Ford has been offering the F-150 Raptor for quite a few years now, while Ram has a Hellcat-powered 1500 TRX in showrooms in 2021. Factory hot-rodded trucks didn't become a thing until the 1990s, but America's first muscle truck traces its roots back to the first-generation Dodge D Series.
1964 Dodge D-100 Street Wedge 12 photos
Photo: Dodge
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Introduced in 1961 as a replacement for the C Series, the D Series debuted with a couple of slant-six mills and a 318-cubic-inch (5.2-liter) small-block V8. But as the muscle car revolution began sweeping Detroit in the early 1960s, Dodge executives started thinking that the D-100 truck could be more than just a workhorse.

The idea started to look even better when a California DJ named Dick Boynton won the B/FX (factory experimental) class at the 1963 Winternationals in Pomona in his Drag Master truck, a D-100 powered by Mopar's 413-cubic-inch (6.8-liter) V8 Max Wedge engine.

The latter was introduced by Chrylser in 1962 as a race-spec mill for drag racing. Known as the Ramcharger in Dodge cars and as the Super Stock in Plymouth vehicles, the mill turned Mopar into the brand to beat at the drag strip. Based on the RB V8, it was the predecessor of the more iconic 426-cubic-inch (7.0-liter) Hemi.

Dodge D\-100 Max Wedge dragster
Photo: Dodge
With a street-spec version of the engine, called the Street Wedge, already available in production cars, Dodge took the plunge and dropped the 413 in the D-100 truck in 1963. It was part of the High-Performance optional package, available on both the base truck and the Custom Sports Special. The latter came with bucket seats, a console, carpeting, and racing stripes.

While Dodge built a couple of Wedge trucks with the 413 engine, most of them left the assembly line with the updated, 426 Street Wedge under the hood.

While not as powerful as the race-spec Max Wedge, rated at up to 425 horsepower, the 426 Street Wedge was impressively potent at 365 horses and 470 pound-feet (637 Nm) of torque.

And it was by far the most powerful engine fitted in a truck in the mid-1960s. While Ford's most powerful F-100 with a V8 came in at 170 horsepower, Chevrolet's C/K hauler topped out at 160 horses with a 283-cubic-inch (4.6-liter) V8.

Dodge D\-100 Street Wedge
Photo: Dodge
The four-barrel 426 also came with a dual-exhaust setup and a push-button, 727 LoadFlite three-speed automatic. Yes, there was no manual option, but the automatic gearbox ensured that the truck was really fast on the quarter-mile.

The D-100 needed less than 16 seconds to run the distance and hit the 60-mph (97-kph) mark in less than eight clicks.

Other extras that came with the performance package included heavy-duty springs, traction bars, power steering, and a gauge package with a 6,000-rpm rev counter.

But while it was unprecedented and impressive, the HPP bundle was also very expensive. Dodge charged $1,235 for it, which was about 67 percent of the base price of a D-100 truck. Or almost $11,000 in today's money. Not only that but buyers were also required to pay in full for the truck in advance, without Chrysler Corporation financing.

Dodge D\-100 Street Wedge
Photo: Mecum Auctions
But Dodge wasn't making all that much profit on the Street Wedge truck. That's probably because building one required a high degree of hand fabrication.

The package needed custom brackets for the traction bars, a frame cross member needed to be altered, and the firewall had to be carved to make room for the exhaust manifold.

As a result, Dodge management reportedly decided to limit production to only 50 trucks over three model years. This figure is, however, disputed.

There's no word as to how many of these trucks survived to this day, but the CSS/High Performance Package Registry, last updated in 2010, lists 27 trucks.

Dodge D\-100 Street Wedge
Photo: Mecum Auctions
The list includes 12 D-100s with the HPP package only, which were regular trucks with the 426 Wedge, and 15 equipped with both the HPP and CSS bundles.

Custom Sport Special trucks also featured body stripes and bucket seats. Two of them were early versions with the 413 V8 instead of the 426.

All told, the D-100 Wedge is one bad-ass classic truck and arguably the rarest and most powerful American hauler of the 1960s. It puts the cool yet underpowered Li'l Red Express to shame but, more importantly, it's the vehicle that all modern high-performance trucks owe their heritage to.

Good luck finding one though. These Wedge trucks rarely pop up for sale. I haven't seen one at public auction since 2015.
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About the author: Ciprian Florea
Ciprian Florea profile photo

Ask Ciprian about cars and he'll reveal an obsession with classics and an annoyance with modern design cues. Read his articles and you'll understand why his ideal SUV is the 1969 Chevrolet K5 Blazer.
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