I think I would try to find an older 2door neon to put it into.
This is a little off topic but I have recently noticed pickups are greatly overbuilt compared to what they used to be. I remember when a basic work truck with the base motor would struggle to pull a large camper up a steep hill and the brakes would fade rather quickly. A half ton pickup meant you were getting close to the limit when you put a half ton of weight in the bed. Now a half ton pickup is RATED for something like one ton payload and you can go WAAAY over the rated capacity if you take care when driving. I have a 1999 3/4 ton ford that almost never has less than a ton of equipment on it, and I have an oversized flat bed mounted on it that is meant for a dually.
Yesterday I was impressed by the towing ability of a ford explorer. It had the optional engine, optional suspension, and extra low gears...a tow package I guess. Some aftermarket stuff too. That thing has way more grunt than a 3/4 ton pickup of 25 years ago. Before yesterday I always wrote off explorers as being “pretend” trucks. This makes me wonder why a person would buy a diesel one ton dually to pull a camper. That’s overkill by a factor of about 4.
Yes, but everyone and their brother has already done the SRT4 into older Neon swap and there’s no sleeper value there any more. A stupid fast minivan is always a surprise, not to mention hilarious.
As for the trucks: People kept seriously overloading their trucks, so makers responded with ever more enhancements so they would avoid customers leaving in disgust, even though they themselves caused the problem. Plus, the Asian makers showed up with real, serious, honest-to-God full-sized trucks for the first time and everyone *had* to go way up on payload ratings as everyone knows that you can overload a Japanese truck and it won’t complain.
As for the towing crew, depends on the weight of the camper. Also, the diesels still get better fuel mileage while towing and you can convert it to run on WVO in addition to diesel. Also, until relatively recently you couldn’t get a good-sized crew cab in the half-ton class. And with the advent of the PowerStroke 7.3, Cummins 5.9 24V and their successors, if you’re going to get a three quarter ton or one ton truck, you might as well get a diesel.
And yes, the recent Ford Explorers (prior to being converted into a Taurus wagon for 2011) were decent trucks at hauling, especially with the optional V8 but even the bone stock 4.0 V6 wasn’t really a slouch. Yes, it has more grunt than a 1980 F-350. That truck’s brawniest engine was the 400 cubic inch V8 pumping out an ‘earthshattering’ 136hp and ‘unbelievable’ 310lb/ft while weighing something like 6000lbs. The base engine, the 300cid inline six made 120/229, which makes a lot of people wonder why they bothered.
The last ‘truck’ Explorer with a V8 weighed in at about 4500lbs and had the 3 valve/cyl 4.6L/281cid engine out of the Mustang GT with some tweaks for better truck suitability as an option, making 292hp and 315lb/ft. Even the base V6 made 210hp and 254lb/ft. And it had to haul around 1500lbs less truck while having more usable cabin space.