Trucks! They’re big! They’re so darn big these days. There’s been a rebound with trucks like the Ford Maverick and the Hyundai Santa Cruz, but even those are big and hefty by classic minitrucking standards. Back in the day, you could get a lightweight pickup that had about as much steel in it as a small garden shed, and it would do your small jobs just fine. The Dodge Ram 50 was a great example of such a truck, and you could even get it with a diesel engine!
The Dodge Ram 50, initially known as the D50, wasn’t really a Dodge. It was a badge-engineering job, with Dodge putting its name on the Mitsubishi Triton from Japan. Mitsubishi itself also imported the truck at one point, calling it the Mighty Max, while Plymouth sold it for a few years as the Arrow Truck.
In the Malaise era, the larger trucks from the Big Three experimented with diesel power with middling success. The smaller Dodge Ram 50, though? It did diesel a damn sight better than the big boys at the time.
Diesel Truckin’
The D50 existed for one reason. Chevrolet had the LUV from Isuzu, and Ford had the Courier from Mazda. Thus, Chrysler had to have a small truck, too, and thus the D50 was born. It hit the market in 1979, years later than its rivals. However, when it dropped, it was the first model year of Mitsubishi’s new L200 generation Triton, so Dodge was at least debuting fresh product. It shared the truck with Plymouth until 1982, at which point the Arrow Truck was dropped, and Mitsubishi started selling the Mighty Max alongside Dodge.
By 1982, it was being sold as the Dodge Ram 50. That is unless you went for the new four-wheel-drive model. It was designated the Power Ram 50, in line with the naming scheme applied to its other truck lines. 1983 brought a facelift, too, which saw the Ram 50 get a smart quad-headlight front end to differentiate it from the Mitsubishi.
1983 was also the first year the Ram 50 scored a turbodiesel engine in the US. The engine of choice was the 2.3-liter Mitsubishi 4D55. Unlike the large, naturally-aspirated engines Chevy and Dodge had fiddled around with previously, the small four-cylinder featured a TC05 turbo delivering up to 12 psi of boost. That helped it breathe far better, giving it a solid output of 80 horsepower and 125 pound-feet of torque. That compared nicely to the 2.0-liter and 2.6-liter gas engines otherwise available on the Ram 50, which made 96 and 105 horsepower respectively.
This was all going on years before Dodge had thought about putting a Cummins turbo under the hood of its mainline pickup trucks. In fact, this was just three short years after Dodge had abandoned the Mitsubishi diesel option in its D150 and van lines. Poor sales had doomed the option, with Dodge not doing a whole lot to promote it, either. The common opinion was the naturally aspirated Mitsubishi 6DR5 was too gutless for the larger trucks anyway.
It’s quite instructive to compare the two engines. The 4.0-liter 6DR5 offered 105 horsepower and 169 pound-feet of torque. It was placed in trucks weighing in the vicinity of 3,800 pounds or more. Meanwhile, the Ram 50 had the turbodiesel 4D55 with 80 horsepower and 125 pound-feet of torque. It was also much lighter, sitting closer to 2,500 pounds. Where the 1978 D150 had a power to weight ratio of 36 pounds per horsepower, the little 1983 Ram 50 edged it out with 31.25 pounds per horsepower. Torque curves aren’t readily available, but it’s reasonable to assume the turbo helped to add some area under the curve lower in the rev range.
It’s also worth noting that the 4D55 had quite a strong career, also showing up in the Mitsubishi Galant Σ, Pajero, and Delica, among other applications. The engine would also land in the Ford Ranger from 1985 to 1987. The 4D5 engine family went on to spawn larger displacement engines in later years and picked up direct injection in later variants to improve performance.
Small Trucks Rule
As a smaller, cheaper truck, it had the additional benefit that less was expected of it. Nobody expected it to haul entire pallets of cement or for it to break land speed records. It was cheap and cheerful and was appreciated for those attributes. Plus, it had the diesel magic of better fuel efficiency. In contemporary brochures, Dodge claimed it was up to 25% better than the gasoline engine option. In 1983, it stated an estimated 30 mpg for the 2.3-liter turbodiesel with the overdrive manual transmission, compared to 24 mpg for the 2.0-liter gas engine.
Things got even better down the line. For 1984 and 1985, the turbodiesel was upgraded with a TD04 turbo with a wastegate. This allowed higher boost to be handled safely and took outputs up to 86 horsepower and 134 pound-feet of torque.
Dodge shifted quite a number of turbodiesel Ram 50s. Having been on sale for multiple model years, they’re far more common to find these days than a 1978 D150 diesel, for example. And, by virtue of being relatively reliable, far more still exist than Chevy trucks running the Oldsmobile diesel V8. Ford found success with International Harvester’s diesel engines in the mid-1980s, so the Ram 50 and Mighty Max probably weren’t the outright most successful diesel pickups of the era. Regardless, they did the job and did it well.
If you were to hunt one down today, the 4×4 Power Ram 50 models are the pick of the range. They saw top billing in Dodge’s advertisements, with a higher-riding stance and a tougher look overall. Even still, the rear-wheel-drive models have that charming diesel rumble and good fuel economy versus their gas-powered counterparts.
The diesel model was eventually dropped in 1986, and in 1987 the Ram 50 changed over to the new second-generation Mitsubishi Triton. In that form, the Ram 50 name would continue until 1994, when it was eventually dropped. At that point, Dodge was doing well with the mid-sized Dakota and its larger mainline trucks, and smaller trucks were beginning their slow march out of the American market.
The Ram 50 is an example of a diesel pickup done right. It had a reliable engine with good fuel economy and a turbo that helped it get up to speed in a reasonable length of time. Dodge might not have mastered the diesel truck itself until years later, but this diminutive import from Mitsubishi helped show it the way.
Image credits: Dodge
Much like the Montero/Raider, it kicked ass because it was a Mitsubishi of the era. Man, they used to make some really good vehicles. As a Montero owner who finally found a mechanic to do the valve stem seals (I don’t have a garage that I can leave splayed out for days) that era of Mitsubishi was special in a very simple, utilitarian, serviceable, and capable way.
Yeah, I miss small trucks, they do rule…all the old ones especially Toyota…I also LUV saying I LUV the Chevy LUV! Ha ha
The 1980 Volkswagen Pickup stopped by to say ‘Hello!’…
The fact there was a Plymouth version just reminded me how amazing it was that it seemed a market necessity for damn near every mainstream brand (and some not-so mainstream) to have a small truck somewhere in the lineup in the early 1980s. Yeah, badge engineered accounted for a lot of that, but still.
Isuzu also had a diesel in the 80s, I forget whether it had a turbo. I’m amused the Range diesel had the same engine. .
As far as ive ever seen, it and the s10 with the c303 didnt have a turbo, but definitely needed one
As a reminder, yes, small trucks (especially the Mighty Max) do indeed rule. Keep in mind that they do not rule for long trips, however, if you are over, say 5’6″ tall. Get one with the extended cab. It won’t fit passengers worth a darn, but it’ll let you move the seat back just a tad more usually.
Yeah I’d kill for an extended cab in the 4×4 configuration.
I never thought about the Big 3’s small trucks in the late 70s all being Japanese
It wasn’t just Australia that loved a bit of badge engineering, it turned out!
Met a guy a few years ago with a 4d55-powered Ranger. At the time the truck had passed 350k miles and still being driven daily.
Champion reliability it seems!
I have a second-gen Mighty Max, not a diesel but it’s a really useful mini truck and lots of fun to bomb around town in. I have way more “interesting” cars in the garage but somehow the Mitsu sees the most use. There’s something fun about the honest simplicity.
The second gen really does look awesome. The 4×4 Dodge versions were particularly badass IMO. Great sticker packs and the like.
Never owned one of these, but drove the diesel 4×4 version for work one summer. Really liked it. Tractable, economical, useful, and attractive. Saw one for sale a couple of years ago that had been well-maintained. I wish I’d been in a position to buy it then.
I’d like to hear more about the “exclusive high efficiency fluid drive coupling between the engine and clutch”. Is it a fancy description of a dual mass flywheel?
A couple of my cars have a fluid drive coupling between the engine and clutch. The coupling is composed of all the oil being shot out of the leaky rear main seal and coating the clutch disk.
I had one Ram 50, but with the gas engine. Great truck too. Better than my friends Luv. I blew the engine at like 100K miles, and soured a used gray market engine for it. A friend and I replaced the engine in my apartment parking lot over the weekend.
Misread as you replaced the engine in the apartment. I knew those trucks were small, but damn.
These are great little trucks. My dad had three different versions over the last 15 years that he was driving as his daily vehicle up until last summer. The engines were not power house nor fast, but got good fuel economy. Good trucks!!
The 2.6L gasoline version used the same G54B as the Starion/Conquest, only without the turbo. I always wanted to swap one in to one of these little trucks.
I thought about trying to fit one of those in my Dodge Challenger at one point. I was stymied by the Starion/Conquest never being imported into Canada.
Same series of engine at least. The turbo G54B had a few tweaks like 7:1 compression (that’s not a typo), a different crank, piston cooling jets, different valves and probably some other odds and ends I’m not thinking of.
That said, the Starion turbo system totally swaps over and can be ran reliably at modest boost without swapping the whole engine out.
There was an old Starion in the local salvage yard that I’d been picking parts off of to keep my Conquest running. It still had the engine and transmission in it and the neighbor had a D50 for sale. If I’d had any money at all back then I would have made it happen but now it only lives in my dreams.
Et tu, Brute? I’ve had a Conquest since about 2003. They definitely take some work to find parts for and keep running.
I haven’t had one in years but I grew up in them. My mom bought one new in ’87 then my dad bought one and when that got totaled he got an ’88 and put the wrecked ’87 in the garage for me. I spent 2 years working on it to get it running by the time I turned 16. I kept it for years and eventually moved on to the AWD DSMs before finally getting burned out on Mitz all together. I’d love to have another one again but I’ve heard how hard they are to find parts for these days. They still take my breath away every time I see one though.
Yeah, it’s pretty well used parts only for a lot of components, although there has been a couple individuals lately that have gone about getting reproduction parts made; I just fear the market is too small to stay afloat.
Performance wise it’s pretty well all DIY. There’s nothing out there for them.
They were rare even back in the 80s and 90s, absolutely nobody knew what they were.
Had a friend in high school with a ram 50. talk about a fun beater of a little truck.
And they still rebadge the Triton as Ram 1200 in other markets!