I’ve said this many times before, and I’m very thankful it’s still true: cars are not rational things. I mean, not even remotely. If cars were rational, there would only be a few basic models to cover the general transportation use cases, all parts would be standardized, nothing would be too fast or too slow or too fun, and I bet you wouldn’t even get to pick the color. They’d be like industrial washing machines or file cabinets or deli slicers or something like that.
Happily, though, that’s not the case at all. Cars are deeply, powerfully irrational things, all of humanity’s hopes and lusts and dreams and insecurities and fears and passions and fetishes all rendered in metal and plastic and rubber, set on four tires and launched out into the streets.
At this moment in history, I think there are two cars – well, trucks, really – that fully embrace this irrationality concept. One is very well known – the Tesla Cybertruck – and one is barely known at all: the Desert Power Wagon that I’m reviewing today. These are two machines that are essentially accomplishing the same goal, just from the exact opposite side. It’s like they’re the same amount of mass, but one is matter and the other antimatter. If they ever encounter one another, there will be a colossal explosion of powerful irrational energy.
I say this because both of these trucks are all about being the same general thing and accomplishing the same basic goal. The general thing is to be a huge, often cumbersome, heavy-ass truck that is technically quite capable of a lot of things, but those are all likely things they’ll never be used for. And the goal that both of these vehicles seek to accomplish – and both do accomplish that goal, remarkably well – is getting attention. What’s fascinating is how far apart these two vehicles are when it comes to how they accomplish this goal. The Cybertruck is a battery-electric vehicle designed to look like nothing else that came before it, while the Desert Power Wagon is a turbodiesel monster designed to look like a vehicle from the 1940s. They really couldn’t be any further apart, for two things that have such similar effects on the world around them.
Because the Desert Power Wagon is an absolute triumph when it comes to getting attention. Everyone who sees this thing turns to look, and they should. It feels like a Monster Truck, like Bigfoot, but somehow classed up, like shoving a Sasquatch in a tuxedo. The paint on this thing, for example, is just too damn beautiful to come off as a sideshow; that, and the elegant-yet-brutal 1940s design aesthetic of the Power Wagon combine to make this thing a strange enigma of wild overdone madness and, somehow, paradoxically, a bit of good taste. But just a bit.
The Heritage
The Desert Power Wagon is built by Desert Power Wagons, a company based near Wilmington, NC, and owned by Aaron Richardet, who also owns Osprey, a company that makes lovely bespoke restomod Land Rovers, which I’ve reviewed here before. These Desert Power Wagons are based, as you likely have guessed, on old Dodge Power Wagons that were built starting in 1945, and were derived from some of Dodge’s wartime trucks. Civilian versions of the Power Wagon became popular for all kinds of heavy-duty uses, from logging to mining to hauling cargo to going places where roads didn’t exist to do hard, filthy things, and so on.
The Power Wagon gained legendary status for its ability to accomplish just about anything other than being dainty and subtle, and the distinctive, vaguely post-Art Deco sort of styling never really changed during its whole long production run that, in various markets, extended all the way to 1980.
This new Power Wagon certainly looks like the original, but other than the cowl and windshield surround area, all of the sheet metal is new, as is the chassis, both of which are built by Tisdale Coachworks of Indiana. There never were actual double-cab pickup Power Wagons made by Dodge, for example, so from the B-pillar to the back of the cab is entirely Tisdale Coachwork’s extrapolation, which happily includes rear suicide doors:
The Look
I think by far the most successful thing about the Desert Power Wagon is that they managed to make something that looks both vintage yet modernized but without getting too over-the-top, somehow. I mean, this whole thing is wildly and dazzlingly over-the-top, but somehow I feel like the overall look just works. I really like how this thing looks, and if I had to drive a massive truck like this, I’d want it to have a look like this, with details like these cowl-mounted turn indicators:
The sheer scale of the thing, though. that takes some getting used to. This thing is big, big in every dimension, every axis, every part. Even the little parts of it are big, and sometimes if you’re inside it, you can forget how big it is until you climb out of it, down to the ground floor where the street is, and take a close look. Like the space between the bumper and the rest of the car:
That’s a lot of space. How much space? This much:
Enough to comfortably stand in, that’s how much! Can you think of another car with bumpers not integrated into the body, like a modern car, that has enough room to comfortably loiter between bumper and body? Everything about this is huge.
That said, it does fit in a standard-sized parking spot (just), so even if it feels massive, it’s still within the basic scale of public roads and facilities as we understand them.
How is it to drive?
The driving experience of the Desert Power Wagon entirely depends on the context it’s in, as you might expect. There are situations where it’s an absolute blast, where the noise is glorious and the torque intoxicating and the overall sensation of speed and motion is just a blast. And then there are times and places where it’s a massive, frustrating chore to navigate this lumbering mammoth around. The way it drives is very much a product of what this thing is, and there are places where the Desert Power Wagon should exist and places where maybe it shouldn’t bother.
Let’s go over exactly what it is, first. The chassis is bespoke and modern, made by those nice Tisdale people, and features a four-link suspension setup with Eibach Race Off-Road springs, and big shock absorbers that have remote reservoirs, which I’m told is good for thermal reasons. The axles are both from Dana, which is also my middle name, if you were curious, and there’s a 60 up front and an 80 at the rear. It’s an extremely capable off-roading setup, though I’m not sure many people who buy these are going to be taking them off-roading aggressively. I mean, maybe they will? They certainly could.
Moving all of this hardware around is a straight-six 6.7-liter Cummins turbodiesel, making 385 horsepower and an astonishing 930 foot-pounds of torque, along with a whole symphony of mechanical sounds, including a turbo whine that sounds like a jet airliner taking off from the bed of the truck.
Also, look at that, an old-school side-opening butterfly-type hood! What cars can you get that on today? None!
The acceleration from the turbodiesel is relentless and surprising, given the sheer mass of the thing. You’re not going to win every race off the line, but you’ll win far more than you’d guess, and you’ll look far more alarming doing so, too. The Desert Power Wagon has plenty of power, and, unlike an original Power Wagon, which topped out somewhere around 50 mph, this re-imagined Power Wagon can easily old 85+mph on the highway with the air conditioner at full blast without breaking a sweat.
Handling is, well, it’s pretty much what you think it will be on something like this. This is a long, heavy, tall truck on huge tires, and you’re not going to win any autocrosses in this thing. This is a machine happiest where there’s lots of room, lots of space, like the farm where your parents told you they sent that dog you had that bit that lady. Driving this thing on country roads and long highways and similar sort of spaces is fun. Navigating this thing through city streets or trying to park it in a dense, crowded parking lot full of expensive, litigious cars is a great way to transform a small lump of charcoal, carefully placed in your anus, into a diamond. It hardly needs to be said, but I’ll say it anyway: this isn’t a city car. It’s not good for that.
The brakes, which are big discs from Wilwood, are powerful and have good stopping power, but if you brake even moderately hard, that back end does have an unsettling urge to come and see what the front of the car is doing. On a straight, thankfully near-empty four-lane road, I braked with what I would consider medium-high pressure and soon found that I was facing the wrong direction. This was braking in a straight line, wheel straight, nothing wild or exotic. So, just keep that in mind.
The Interior and all the modernized crap
I really liked being inside the Desert Power Wagon, because they really did a great job of keeping the cabin feeling like a 1940s car, but there were enough sensible upgrades to give modern drivers a lot of what they want. The dash was very tastefully done, with a new instrument cluster fitting in the space of the original ’40s-era one, and a center-stack infotainment screen that has CarPlay and Android Auto and all that sort of thing. There’s a very effective A/C unit, too, and while it does take up the space once reserved for the glove box, these humid Carolina summers make that a sacrifice I’m very happy to make. Besides, there’s a nice big storage been in the center armrest.
Everything is trimmed in leather that smells great, and the overall interior quality is excellent.
Things generally felt good to touch, and the entire interior was updated in what I can only call a respectful manner. I appreciated the look a lot. I also liked that some very archaic details were retained, like a foot-operated high-beam switch:
…and windshield wipers that are mounted at the top of the windshields and move like this:
I can’t lie, I really like these old-school wipers. I’m told they run on modern electric motors now, though, and there’s an actual, usable windshield washer, so that’s good.
Also, for something this loud, the sound deadening in the interior isn’t too bad, but this is still a loud machine, especially at highway speeds. The aerodynamics of this thing are somewhere between a baked ham and a pinecone, facing sideways, so there’s really no way around a lot of that noise. Still, I think it could have been worse, so I was impressed.
This costs $385,000
I just wanted to let you know that before I get to the bad stuff, because I thought it was only fair to let you know the scale of money required to get in one of these.
Okay, the bad stuff
Before I get into my issues with the Desert Power Wagon, I want to be clear that I’m very happy this vehicle exists. It’s a vehicle that, when it drives by somewhere, the people around it notice, and mostly they seem to be excited or delighted or otherwise pleased to have seen it. It’s a huge, glistening blue interjection of fun and thrill into the mundanity of the normal car-scape. It provides a service to the community around it by de-boring life, at least a little bit, and I respect that immensely. There is absolutely a place for cars and trucks that do this, and I always will want them around. Always. So keep that all in mind while I bitch about some of the flaws in this expensive machine.
First, there are some serious visibility issues. The side mirrors are effectively just like their 1940s counterparts and work ok for what they are, which are simple round mirrors on brackets. The view to the rear isn’t great; the rear window is small, so to compensate for this, Desert Power Wagons installed a digital rear-view mirror. I’m not particularly fond of these but I can understand the motivation for installing them in the truck; in theory, it should help a lot.
And, the setup they have actually lets you see up to four separate camera feeds, and you can touch any of them to fill the screen – in theory, it should be great. But, in practice, it’s like this:
In most daylight situations, it’s generally fine. But once it becomes dusk (or dawn) and you start getting light hitting the rear-view camera, the screen blows out. At night, when cars have their lights on, it’s all but useless, just looking like images of the sun taken from probes in the orbit of Venus, or maybe Mercury. It’s worse than useless: it’s distracting.
The result of this is that rearward visibility in the Desert Power Wagon, especially at night, is terrible. And for a vehicle of this size and height, that’s a real liability, and makes driving at night so much more difficult than it needs to be.
There’s another visibility issue worth mentioning here, and this one truly baffles me. It’s this:
Not the powered step, that was a godsend to a gnome like myself; it’s up above the windshield there, where the sun visors aren’t.
There’s no sun visors in this thing. Why? You don’t realize how handy and useful sun visors are until your waving your hand in front of your face, muscle memories making you grab at the air, uselessly. Remember earlier when I told you about how I had to brake somewhat hard and the whole thing spun around? The reason I had to brake with any intensity at all was because I was driving East in the morning, and I could not see what was happening with traffic lights until I was far closer than I’d like, because the sun was shining right into the windshield and there were no visors around to help.
Why doesn’t this have sun visors? Cost cutting? To save $30 on a $385,000 car? It can’t be.
These may seem like minor complaints – and in some ways they are, which is good, because they should be easy to fix – but they directly affect the safety of driving this, and that’s a big deal.
Also, this door-opening lever, attractive as it is, confounded almost every passenger I had in the car. Oh, and the driver’s side rear door refused to open the whole time I had the car.
One more annoying small issue:
One of the power window switches fell into the dash housing when I tried to use it.
Now, Desert Power Wagons is a small company, and I think overall they do excellent, high-quality work. These kinds of things do happen. It’s less important that they happened than it is how the company deals with these issues, I think. A small company can make changes and fixes a lot quicker than a large one, so it’s possible by the time you’re in line to buy yours all of these issues will already have been solved. I’d like to think that’ll be the case.
What I think
Despite my complaints, I’m still happy the Desert Power Wagon exists. It’s an attention-grabby, idiosyncratic throwback that doesn’t exactly make a lot of sense, but it does make a lot of smiles and wonder, and I think that’s a pretty good tradeoff. The Cybertruck is flawed in many ways as well, and I’m glad that exists, too, for similar reasons. The target people who may buy this I think are very different from the Cybertruck people, and, if I’m honest, I’m not entirely sure just who the people are who will plop down nearly $400,000 for something like this, but I do believe they are out there, and I believe that when they do get their hands on their very own Desert Power Wagon, they’re going to be quite pleased, even with all of the questionable parts.
This is not a rational vehicle. And I couldn’t be happier about that.
This is way old and probably won’t be read by anyone, but neither the front nor the rear end are Dana units – the front is a 9.5″ AAM unit as used in HD 2500/3500 Dodge pickups, and the rear is an 11.5 AAM unit, likely the same application, although GM trucks also used them.
The givaway, besides the shape of the diffs, is the number of bolts on the cover, as all Danas, from the tiny 30 to the massive 80, use 10 bolts.
I’ve been obsessed with these things for some time, and I know I’m not the only one because of how many companies have started making restomod versions in the past few years.
However, another obsession of mine is that Ram/Stellantis has the perfect opportunity to cash in on this because of how close in style the Jeep Gladiator is. With a few changes to the sheet metal (and maybe some freestanding headlights?), they could have their own modern version for much less.
If nothing else, it would be nice to see it done for an Easter Jeep Safari, if they would allow a Dodge/Ram variant in on that.
Yep I dig it. One of the better “custom” quad cabs I have seen in a while. they did a really nice job with the sheet metal. I’m curious how much of it is new custom and how much is reused old. Like, did they use two cabs to build it? Or just one where they cut the back free and moved it backward, then built the rest?
I’ve built a suicide door quad cab out of two truck cabs before. Crikey its a lot of work. But mine is a Datsun 720, not a big ole beast. But if I ever decided I really wanted a full size quad cab, IH 70’s has one thats great, the IH Loadstar is pretty amazing and probably this size and the 40s IH quad cab built by Halfass Kustoms called the General is pretty amazing. So I guess what I’m getting at is, I would probably build an International.
Like the premise, meh on the execution. Vintage’s Bronco using a modern Bronco with classic looking body panels is a better execution than this.
Was it just me who saw the condensation INSIDE that spotlight lens?
Good eye, but that’s the turn signal.
The camera fails show just how much effort big car companies put in to their sensor tuning. My 2016 Honda has a superb backup camera that can adjust to bright headlights, black no moon nights, and blazing sun. The 360 camera on my Ford is like something from NASA.
I do not like the interior. At all. I know why they did it. I understand why “normal” people would want that. But as a person who is decidedly not normal, having a bolstered leather seat instead of a vinyl bench and — gasps be-gasped — an infotainment unit and a cupholder in a Power Wagon feels like…
Like the Star Wars Special Editions where Lucas shoved in a dated ’90s CGI Jabba.
Like adding escalators to the Appalachian Trail.
Like adding an auto-aim system to a longbow.
It removes the difficulty and discomfort that is part of the vehicle’s appeal and brings in the basest most common features of modern vehicles that makes them homogeneous enough that a Power Wagon is distinct.
I love the classic Power Wagons and even the newer ones are awesome. This one is unique w/ the suicide doors and everything…yeah, the things you mentioned could be improved along w/ throwing the “infotainment screen” in the trash.
Also, it’s a ripoff so lower the price.
I mean, yeah a lot of it is labor so I’d find a cheap old one, rebuild the engine or find a good one, and fix it all up myself for half to three quarters the price. It would be a single cab so not exactly the same and yeah, a lot of work went into customizing this one’s cab too.
What a beast!
I had the military original version, the M37, complete with the Braden 8 ton PTO winch. I could have bought 1000 of them from the Marines (I paid $385 for mine at auction at the Yermo Annex in Barstow) for that price. Honestly it was not exactly a pleasant truck to drive. In fact it was an act of endurance to drive it more than 45 minutes. Loud, hard to steer, smelly, drank fuel and the best part, you went through all that and it was…pitifully slow. Yes to pay something creeping up on a half million for anything that reminded me of that truck would be akin to madness. Besides my man parts are normal sized so I don’t need the advert.
“The brakes, which are big discs from Wilwood, are powerful and have good stopping power, but if you brake even moderately hard, that back end does have an unsettling urge to come and see what the front of the car is doing. On a straight, thankfully near-empty four-lane road, I braked with what I would consider medium-high pressure and soon found that I was facing the wrong direction. This was braking in a straight line, wheel straight, nothing wild or exotic. So, just keep that in mind.”
Squirrelly back ends under braking gets your attention, I hope it didn’t cause any lavish pants. Close to average U.S. home price, and no ABS?
ABS isn’t the problem, crew cab pickups without ABS manage to stop without spinning out. There’s some other chassis tuning issue here. ABS may fix, or help, the problem, but I suspect it would be a bandaid.
Suspension oscillation. The front end’s heavy, and the truck has a weight gradient trending up to it. If you look at the rear suspension it’s a perfectly vertically mounted solid axle. It has no way to travel forward, so the only thing it can do is travel up. Even leaf springs allow some forward movement as the leaves compress. Without that forward movement the oscillation gets worse until the tires aren’t making contact with the road.
Vehicle suspension has cambered springs, shocks, links, and trailing arms for this very reason, despite intuition saying that it’s taking up more space than necessary. Letting the suspension move from side to side or front to back in a controlled manner keeps the oscillations from becoming self-sustaining.
Let’s talk about something completely different, what’s going on with balloon guy?
That’s Gonzo from the Muppet Show. He appears in other photos in this article as well. It’s a fun little Easter egg.
Thanks! It looks so familiar, I was sifting through my brain trying to figure it out
Did I miss the bed length in the description? 8ft box or 6.5ft box?
Also at over $385K, I do not think this will be driven much and not off-roaded much.
It’s a short bed for sure, somewhere in the 6′-6 1/2′ ballpark.
Cool looking truck, but, as a driver, the three things I see most are; the view out the window, the dash, and the steering wheel. With that in mind, why would somebody go to all the effort to create a period-looking car and then stuff an ugly off the shelf custom billet tilting steering wheel in front of my face?!!! It kills the entire experience for me. The next thing I notice is the trendy “custom” upholstery that would have been better (and period correct) in simple ribbed leather. Add in the lack of visors and poor visibility, and I’d have to pass despite loving the outside.
I’ve always liked the looks of the classic Power Wagen a lot. A local wrecking yard/towing company had a vintage Power Waqen Tow Truck in purple sit in their yard with a For Sale sign on it. I never stopped to check it any further. I was afraid that if I stopped, I would buy it. I had no use for this magnificent piece of machinery, and no place to park it, but oh, I wanted it. It took several months for it to not be there anymore. But, oh such a great looking purple truck. I would have found an extremely wrecked period-correct wreck to tow around to car shows.
Now THIS is a pickup truck!
I like cool weird stuff, but I’ll disagree on one point. Anyone who thinks that a vehicle hanging nearly a meter past the front of a parking spot while its backed fully to the line (leaving zero margin for error for the driver behind) is “fitting in a parking spot” is wrong and part of a problem. This thing is unsuited for use in an urban environment. I’ve spent too many brain power and stress adrenaline credits already, trying to navigate city streets shared by Raptors and 3xx(x)-series trucks that are driven by bros with no use case for them other than ego boosters.
I gave up even trying to park my F350 longbed crewcab in any parking space. Any SINGLE parking space. I find a set of parking spaces (usually four) to plant that beast in. Having a full extended over-cab camper installed doesn’t help either.
What do you suggest a guy does if his vehicle sticks out of the parking spot a little? Just give up, “well I guess I didn’t really need to go to Walmart that bad anyways”, and leave? Gotta park somewhere man.
Even my single cab 1995 F150, absolutely tiny compared to the Power Wagon and most other new pickups, is noticeably longer than some parking spots, because parking spot sizes are extremely variable.
“What do you suggest a guy does…”
The reason why sticking out is bad is that it 1. Makes driving down the between-rows lane difficult and (damage-wise) dangerous for every car passing by it, especially when there are two cars which normally could pass by each other and now one has to come to a full stop, which then backs up behind them. 2. Makes it difficult for the people in the three spaces in the row opposite the long vehicle to back out of or into their spaces. In a tight lot, it can make the space opposite unusable.
What I suggest a guy does is either have a vehicle that doesn’t inconvenience thirty total strangers for every five minutes you’re in the store, or park way far away to limit your effect on the general unhappiness of the world. I know people who legit use these large vehicles for their business, and they are generally considerate and park at the far end.
Well, I do park way at the back of the parking lot, whether I want to or not, because I physically cannot turn into a parking spot if there are many other cars around. Furthermore, no part of the article or any comment on this article could be even slightly construed as representing an unwillingness to park in the back of the lot. I’m not really sure what you’re mad about; that driving the specialized and low-production vehicle in the article creates a minor issue for the driver, and so the driver gets better exercise?
This beast should never be anywhere near a parking lot. Seems intended to live on a billionaire’s ranch in Montana.
Still waiting on the “EVs allow us to style cars with more freedom” platform to get us full circle back to these bad boys
The visual Easter eggs remind me of those “you fools – deepfakes are everywhere!” news articles that try to get everyone all riled up, and usually end with telling you that you need to trust the media more.
Nice truck, but I definitely prefer the Legacy Power Wagon Conversion out of Wyoming. Legacy offers choices of single, extended, or double cab, plus a Carryall wagon model. You can choose between a 6.2 Liter, Chevy LS3, 50-State, V-8, 430hp, a 408 Legacy Magnum V8, EFI, 425 HP, a 3.9 Liter Cummins Turbo-Diesel, 480ft/lbs Torque, or a 6.2 Liter, Chevy LSA, Supercharged, V-8, 620hp. Starting price range from $325k to $475k with an extensive options list. Plus, just about any color you want. Just my opinion, but I like having more choices, especially if I’m spending this kind of moola, which, of course, I never will.
This is a cool, good looking vehicle, but $385,000 is just crazy! (☉̃ₒ☉)
So it’s not a restomod at all, it’s effectively a reproduction Power Wagon?
It doesn’t look like it is *that* big in the parking lot picture, similar size to any other crew cab short bed pickup. Maybe a Mega Cab when you include that long front bumper. It looks big because height adds a lot of visual mass, but seems like the footprint is not too out of line.
The 6.7 Cummins is an interesting choice, it looks like it is absolutely STUFFED under that narrow butterfly hood.
Does it really brake that poorly that you spun out while braking in a straight line on dry pavement? That is shockingly bad, and would prompt a major recall if this was made by any major manufacturer. I have never driven any vehicle which was even close to doing so, even on wet pavement, even with a trailer. I really wonder what causes that and what the solution is, because there are many similar vehicles which definitely do not have that problem.
And is Jason’s middle name really Dana?
Not saying this is the reason, but I remember more than one commercial driver telling me that the way some trucks are outfitted to carry heavy weight, if there’s little to no load, they have to be very light on the brakes or it’ll fishtail. This is a pretty serious rig, maybe it fits that profile.
Yeah, semis brake pretty terrible if there is no weight on the back. That’s just because there is so little weight on the rear axles(extremely front heavy weight distribution). I’m guessing that this Power Wagon has a more normal distribution, although I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a little lighter in the back than other CCSB pickups.
“So it’s not a restomod at all, it’s effectively a reproduction Power Wagon?”
I was wondering the same thing.
I’m guessing it’s a “restomod” in that they use the VIN from a vintage Power Wagon.
If it was sold as a newly manufactured vehicle, there would at least be some sort of emissions testing.
I do enjoy the original Power Wagons and I am similarly glad that this exists.
Do we have any details on where the old-school version was sold until 1980? Because that sounds intriguing.
Also, is the person all right who was flying away with the balloons in the “fits in a parking spot” picture? 😮
I love the review and am ambivalent as hell about the truck because I just got back from two weeks driving a rented Suburban (yes I am a Dad) and as a daily driver noooooooooooooooo thank you.
However have to make a comment regarding sun visors. It’s late summer so the setting sun is clear and presently directly in the eyes of oncoming motorists when setting. Have you ever waited at a stop light, in front, and observed the lead oncoming driver staring into the sun with naked eyes, squinting and squirming with effort because the sun’s angle is RIGHT into their pupils? Have you ever tried to nonverbally communicate a suggested course correction, by perhaps waggling your own sun visor up and down in a suggestive manner, only to be ignored by said oncoming driver?
My thought is: what else doesn’t that person know about their car’s equipment and how it works, or how to use it? It’s a sun shade for chrissakes. Flip it down.
Personally, I avoid using those visors unless absolutely mission-critical necessary. Maybe just because my eyes are already close to the roof of the car, but those visors usually block my horizon which just gives me anxiety.
Respect that, but I’m the opposite, I flip mine down or to the side pretty much the whole time I’m in a vehicle. No direct sun for me, skin cancer is no joke.
This is really cool (not the price though) but I think a 6bt/12v cummins would have been cooler in it and much easier to upkeep.
Agreed. Although I’m guessing that not a lot of folks are willing to pay $400k for 180hp. You could always hop up the 12v, they’re good for that, but now it becomes more difficult to put a good warranty on it. Which they better be doing for $400k.
Yeah it is pretty easy to beef up a 12V. I am assuming the 6.7 they are tossing in these are a crate engines that is warrantied as you said it should be for 400k. But yeah a 12v would much better fit the whole old school style of these power wagons both in the looks and sounds department. (I am biased since I own a 1st gen)