Chevy had the El Camino. Ford, the Ranchero. Dodge had the little Rampage mini truck and also the Magnum wagon, but never anything like El Camino. Smyth Performance stepped in to fill that gap several years ago with the conversion of a pickup truck for the Dodge Charger, which we’d like to call a Dodge Ranchargero. You can buy and build one yourself, but if you want to get to the owning and driving phase, it’s on sale at Cars & Bids.
For those who need to make a pickup where there was none before, Smyth offers kits to convert a variety of vehicles – New Beetle, Jetta, Audi A4, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Subaru WRX. The parts cost about $3 grand, but the labor, that’s up to you.
It’s a massive transformation, turning a 2006 Charger sedan into a unibody truck, but this hides the surgical scars well given the black paint. The small quarter window looks only partial in some photos, but fine in others. The truck appears to have late 2000s Dodge Caravan taillights, and the tailgate may be from a Dakota. The listing says the rear window is from a Chevy Colorado and also mentions “several structural reinforcements” – which were certainly necessary given the amount of structure that was taken away. Smyth’s kit makes a bed out of aluminum; it exudes a Tesla Cybertruck/metal shop class vibe that is at odds with the exterior.
This Ranchargero (Chargero?) of course has a 5.7 liter Hemi and a pair of nice 20 inch Hellcat wheels. The seller bought the Charger in 2018 and the conversion was completed in 2020. The odometer reads 68,000 miles and unsurprisingly only 300 miles have been driven in the past three years.
At the time of writing, the bidding stands at $5,000, a fraction of what the build must have cost in sweat power. There’s still plenty of time to change that, though, as bidding won’t close until next Tuesday, July 13. Is this your kind of thing?
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