Dodge moved something like 7,000 of these Lil’ Red Express Truck packages in ‘78 and ‘79, riding the late ’70s long-haul trucking and CB-radio craze and a simultaneous national obsession with customizing pickups and vans. It was part of what Dodge called its “Adult Toy Program,” but even more important was its performance charter. The Little Red Express Truck was known in some circles — like that of Chrysler’s Tom Hoover, father of the 426 Hemi —  as “The Last American Hot Rod.” Despite tightening emissions regs, Dodge still managed to build something hot enough to give the goofy bastard in the ad above — the one grinning ear to ear — apparently a decent shot at a threesome. How?

The secret was a loophole in the government’s smog laws, now obvious in light of the past decade’s full-sized-SUV bacchanalia. Since it was a truck, the Express’s big-rig style chrome stacks could blurt out all the full-strength emissions it wanted from its worked-over 360 V8. It was a brilliant strategy on Hoover’s part to package a pickup truck as a stealth muscle car, using a race-massaged truck engine to turn back the performance clock to the days before the intrusion of power-sapping anti smog gear. In a Car and Driver dragstrip test, the Express was pitted against a Porsche 928, Porsche 911SC, Ferrari 308GTS, Porsche Turbo, and whatever the fastest Corvette of the time was. Only the Porsche Turbo was quicker, just ask Don Sherman.

[via Auto Trader Classics]