HOW THE LITTLE (LI’L) RED EXPRESS TOOK AWAY CAR GUY SADNESS IN THE LATE 1970S

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The 1960s was a tough act to follow for the 1970s.

The music was timeless in the Sixties thanks to the Beatles, and there was serious muscle in the cars from that era.

There was a ruthless effort to bury performance vehicles during the 1970s, mostly due to a suffocating mountain of red tape specifically designed to terminate the muscle car in North America.

The crash-landing for performance vehicles continued throughout the 1970s as Detroit adjusted to the new reality in their midst. Big blocks were generally found in giant land yachts like the Cadillacs, Lincolns and Imperials during the 1970s, but their engines’ horses had been gelded to conform to rigid new emission rules.

The result was a giant void where even the Corvettes from the 1970s were a pale shadow of their former selves in terms of brute force performance.

The one notable exception to the rule was the first-gen Dodge Little (aka Li’l) Red Express pickup trucks, specifically the 1978 models. Mother Mopar found a loophole in the rulebook and trotted out a wild-looking pickup that enjoyed a one-year run as a beast mode truck.

The ’78 Dodge Little Red Express was sold with one engine: a Police Interceptor 360 small block that produced about 225 horsepower in 1978. The horsepower numbers are modest by 21st century standards, but they were enough to propel the free-breathing factory hot rod pickup into the fastest production vehicle in 1978.

Chrysler learned trucks over 6000 lbs were not subjected to tougher emission rules that included catalytic convertors, so they bulked up the Little Red Express models to 6100 lbs to run leaded fuel and dump the EPA’s restricted exhaust regulations while letting the 360 breathe a lot better with 440 spec mufflers. Mopar beefed up the engine’s internal components such as its cam.

Mopar also beefed up the LoadFlite (truck version of TorqueFlite) 3-speed automatic transmission so it could handle the extra power from the unconventional 360 under the Little Red’s hood. The wizardry behind the Little Red Express was largely due to a Mopar powertrain engineer named Tom Hoover because he found the loophole in the EPA red tape.

Hoover was a more-power guy who created Chrysler’s legendary 413 Wedge, 426 Max Wedge, and the company’s most famous big block monster, the 426 Hemi. The 1978 Dodge Little Express was his answer to any question about the death of muscle in the Seventies.

The 1978 Little Red Express also looked the part of a street warrior because of its loud red paint job and wild-looking exhaust stacks mounted behind both sides of the truck’s cab. The muscled-out pickup was an in-your-face truck that took no prisoners on the street or track in ’78.

The 1978 Dodge Little (L’il) Red Express beat up the competition and became an iconic part of a decade that had lost its way in terms of brute force performance vehicles.

By 1979, the honeymoon was over for the Little Red Express because the red tape loophole was closed, and the truck needed catalytic convertors to comply with the revisions.

BY: Jim Sutherland

Jim Sutherland is a veteran automotive writer whose work has been published by many major print and online publications. The list includes Calgary Herald, The Truth About Cars, Red Deer Advocate, RPM Magazine, Edmonton Journal, Montreal Gazette, Windsor Star, Vancouver Province, and Post Media Wheels Section. 

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