Quote: What ever happened to the Dodge trucks all the Chrysler teams had in the late sixties and early seventies? Have you guys seen any of these at your local tracks? They where very cool and also a part of Chrysler racing history.
This is Paul Rossi's old carhauler. 1976 Dodge D800 medium duty. Timperman Bros. Box. 413, 5 speed, 2 speed rear, air brakes. According to Dave Koffel Sr., who was head of Chrysler drag race program at the time, Mopar built 7 or 8 of these and handed them out to their factory backed super stock racers at the time: Rossi, Leal, Hagen, etc. I bought it 2 years ago from a Louisiana racer who had bought it from Rossi. I contacted Paul to learn more about the truck and he told me an interesting story: When asked why the VIN shows the truck as a D600 - 1.5 ton, yet all the equipment on the truck is from a D800 - 2.5 ton, he had this explanation. The D800 with air brakes would require a CDL. The factory backed teams often had many different truck drivers and not all of them had a CDL. To circumvent the log book problem, Chrysler rebadged the trucks as the lighter GVW D600 and thus put them in the non-CDL catagory ( sort of). While of questionable motive, the ruse worked and none of the teams had trouble from the law.
