Dodge Once Made The Coolest Cab Over Trucks In The World – The Story of The L600 and L700 Here

Nov 03, 2016BangShift XL, XL Big Truck Feature, XL Truck Feature9

Dodge Once Made The Coolest Cab Over Trucks In The World – The Story of The L600 and L700 Here

(By Greg Rourke) – We love old trucks here at BangShift, and I love cabovers in particular. Medium duty cabovers are now dominated by offshore produced trucks, but once upon a time we made them here on American soil. The Big Three all made them, in addition to IH, Mack and others. Our story involves one particular Dodge model.

We all remember the Dodge A100 model, which was available as a van or pickup…think the Little Red Wagon. They were a good looking little truck. When Dodge entered the medium duty cabover market, they noticed they already had a cab they could use, and plopped it down on a much heavier chassis then the pickup models. This resulted in a somewhat awkward looking, yet functional truck.

The L600 and L700 models were produced from 1966 to 1971. The L600 only had gas engines available, while the L700 had gas or diesel. The base engine was a slant six, then a few V8 gassers, and finally a Perkins or Cummins diesel. Options included dual sun visors, a cigar lighter, and a passenger seat. Wow, talk about luxury. These were meant to be workhorses, with a tight turning radius and great visibility for working on crowded city streets.
The first of these I noticed was TV Tommy Ivo’s transporter with the glass sides, two nitro diggers inside and a Corvette on the roof. I figured it was a one-off creation, made to keep the overall length legal.  As I so often am, I was incorrect. And while I found the A100 as the best looking of the 60’s vans, these L700’s are somewhat awkward looking, in my opinion. Again, function over form here.

They must not have been a big seller, as they were only around for a few years. And just a short time later Dodge was out of the big truck game altogether. Luckily we still have a few left, and  folks who saw things that I didn’t.

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9 thoughts on “Dodge Once Made The Coolest Cab Over Trucks In The World – The Story of The L600 and L700 Here”

  1. rcupp

    You say you like them, obviously you haven’t had the thrill of driving one for a work day!!

    Junk rough riding short wheelbase pos death machines!
    Yep…

  2. Race Car Alex

    One day! One day, I will own one of these and plop a 12v cummins in it. Ive seen them, I love them, I want one

  3. Matt Cramer

    That is one overworked slant six, putting it in a tractor-trailer! I wonder how they geared it?

  4. Chevy Hatin' Mad Geordie

    Send that cute truck-dozer over to me and I’ll use it to good effect at my local LS society branch meeting’s car park……

  5. skylark_1967

    You can still buy the 1/25 scale plastic model kit of this truck. Check eBay or your hobby store. It is made from the original tooling when this kit was first released in the ’60’s. You can also buy the reissue of the Little Red Wagon, which can be built as the wheel stander or the stock pickup, complete with dog dish hub caps.

  7. 69rrboy

    Very cool!

    If you’ve never been in an A100 pickup or van before…next time you see one ask the owner for a short ride and go around some turns at speed. It’s a VERY strange sensation being on top of and slightly ahead of the front tires! I’m sure one of these would be the same.

  8. SSNOVA427

    Back in the day our family company bought three of these as day cabs for city runs. The rest of the 20 or so fleet were cracker box jimmies(GMC) .The Dodges were such POS the drivers fought over who was driving them.

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