Mercedes Benz : Rough Start: Give The Neighborhood Something To Worry About With This Lifted Dodge Diplomat!

I might be completely and utterly out of love with the platform at the moment, but the Chrysler F-M-J platform series is pretty much intertwined into my history. Ever since I bought my first one in 2000, and even beforehand with a wrecked Plymouth ex-cop car, I’ve done all I can to learn the ins, outs and goings-on involved with the platform that even Lee Iacocca said “should have never been built”. On one hand I can appreciate the draw of the 1980s cop cars, the lines of the boat-tail early M-body coupes, and even the disco-riffic Aspen R/T and Volaré Road Runners. On the other…well, after a grand total of seven of the damned things, plus a few more I worked on that I didn’t outright own, I can safely say that for every positive, there are plenty of aggravating, irritating things that make you want to travel back in time to a 1975 boardroom meeting with a 2×4 in your hand, “Walking Tall” style.

I’m honest enough to say that if you are playing by our Rough Start rules ($5,000 total budget, the car should run and drive at the end of it, and it should be street-legal), that unless you are lucky enough to find a one-owner car that has been taken care of meticulously and has nothing out of place, that you should probably avoid the heartbreak and start hunting for a Duster or truck instead if you are stuck on Mopar. But the fun of Chrysler Corp. products is that little bit of weirdness that comes with the territory…and that’s why this 1981 Dodge Diplomat wins the award of the day, because this thing has enough “weird” to fill a Kenworth dump truck and it’s tag trailer in one shot. The new-for-1981 M-body, which is the shape most people are familiar with, did come in a two-door coupe version. The Mexican market got them with 360s and four-speeds and called them Magnums, while we got run-of-the-mill 318 wheezers and called them sales specials before being axed in 1982. Iacocca hated the M-body about as much as he hated the Aspens and refused to put any more money than necessary into their evolution…but someone in Indiana has done some evolution of their own. This relatively rare coupe is wearing the nose cone and fenders of a Chrysler Fifth Avenue (classy!) and it’s resting on the frame of a Dodge Ramcharger that has been fitted with heavy-duty axles. It’s the last thing anyone expects to see, that’s for damn sure. We’re hoping for a 1970s Ramcharger frame, betting it’s a small-block under the hood, and wonder just how hard it’d be to bring this beast to life. The seller says that fresh gas, a battery and some air in the tires and you should be good to go.

This isn’t for the faint-hearted or the wallflower type. This is as bold as walking into church wearing the Borat swimsuit with a water pistol full of vodka. But every now and then, you need a little bit of crazy in your life. How insane are you?