Small Survivor: 1980 Plymouth Arrow Truck
Plymouth sold the Plymouth Arrow in either a car or a truck from the mid-1970s to the early-1980s in the US and it’s fairly unusual to see either of them today. They were rebadged Mitsubishis and this 1980 Plymouth Arrow Truck looks like a nice example. It’s listed here on eBay in beautiful San Diego, California and there is a $6,950 buy-it-now price or you can make an offer.
I’ll try not to bore you with more stories about my related pickup, a 1980 Dodge D-50 Sport, which I’ve shown here too many times. Well ok, you forced me, here it is. Mine is a level above this Plymouth Arrow with bucket seats, more gauges, and a 5-speed rather than a 4-speed as this truck has, but this looks like a very nice example. The seller says that this one has AC but it’s not currently working and the title is from Arizona.
Plymouth made the Arrow Truck from 1979 to 1982 and they were rebadged Mitsubishi Forte trucks which Dodge also used for their Dodge D-50 and Dodge Ram 50 pickups. Mitsubishi also offered them as the Forte in Japan and eventually, the Mighty Max here in the US. The seller has provided a great video here on YouTube showing almost every square inch of this truck. Very well done, as in no production values, music, overdubbed script – just video showing the truck. Yes, the tailgate and those tail light surrounds have been repainted.
This one looks nice inside but I would like to see under that seat cover, I was hoping that the YouTube video would reveal that. It should have nice plaid (is that an oxymoron?) seat fabric like the pattern on the door panels. If you’re 6′-0″ tall or less there should be enough room for you inside. If you’re 6′-5″ tall, there isn’t enough room inside, unfortunately. Not being an extra cab, the seat only goes back so far in these so they’re not made for tall people. My dash has about a 1″ split in the left corner of it, I may need to check into a pad as this one has.
The engine looks stock which is great. Mine has a Weber carb conversion and that stupid tiny chrome rectangular air cleaner, I like this look much better. This one is Mitsubishi’s 2.0L inline-four compared to my 2.6L four. The seller says that it runs great and it appears to be a nice example. Have any of you owned one of these small rebadged Mitsubishi trucks?
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Comments
“Me and my Arrow”,,,and here come the eggs,,,the D50 and Arrow were good trucks, not great, no offense to SG, it was a stop gap measure, like Mazda(Ford) and Isusu( GM) until Dodge got their heads out of their rears and made the Dakota. I truly believe, Detroit didn’t think this small pickup fad would last, requiring complete new tooling, that might cost them a vacation home or 2, and these showed America, this was no fad, and the S-10/Ranger/Dakota were okay, but just proved, we were in new territory, and we never regained the small pickup business. Being pre-F.I., in order to meet emission standards, they had yards of vacuum lines and sensors, all in it’s infancy, and eventually, gave up on carburetors altogether. And no, a “Weber” is not what I consider a “fix” either. Nice find.
Yes, the big three blew it. Reality really kicking them in the head these days with five buck gas on our doorsteps. Imagine the wisdom of canceling all the small cars and trucks in their line ups! The Asian companies will inherit the earth. I used to think sadly about that prospect but now I just shake my head and understand why.
We have our absurd CAFE regulatory scheme to blame for the disappearance of truly compact trucks (and most reasonably-priced wagons) from the US market:
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2012/10/how-cafe-killed-compact-trucks-and-station-wagons/
SubGothius, I agree with the CAFE stuff but I also blame big trucks and SUVs on company greed. They get to make more profit on them. Plus, if all you have and all you advertise (to get fickle and slow minded consumers drooling) is high priced monstrosities, then that is what the public buys. So, now the fact of double price gas is her as so many of us have warned others about, suddenly they are caught with their pants down and all the world gets to see those soiled brown stained undies. This time I do not want my tax dollars bailing them out.
I’ve got a second-gen version of this truck (same basic mechanicals with a new body/interior), been active in enthusiast groups/forums (esp. the MightyRam50 forum), and can attest a Weber carb swap is absolutely the tried-and-true, de-facto standard fix for most issues related to the stock induction system on these — better performance, fuel economy, emissions, simplicity, and reliability.
The stock carb was an ancient Mikuni design originally engineered for performance, not economy or emissions, upon which they’d gradually built up a Rube Goldberg contraption of gizmos, sensors and vacuum hoses all hooked into an enormous electronic control box, to help it remain drivable in various special-case scenarios while meeting increasingly-strict emissions and economy regulations.
All those assorted add-ons may have done the trick well enough when these trucks were new, but over the years they’ve just become points of failure, and new replacement parts for them have largely become hard to find and/or wildly expensive, and rebuilding the Mikuni carb itself (if you can even find the proper rebuild kits) is an unusually challenging chore not for newbies or the faint of heart.
The simple and effective solution to that collapsing house of cards is to simply chuck it all in favor of a genuine made-in-Spain Weber DGEV or DFEV (not a Chinese clone, which aren’t finished to the same tolerances and thus can’t be tuned properly for all conditions) — unless you live someplace like Cali that requires a visual emissions inspection confirming all-original parts are in-place and functional, in which case you’re pretty much stuck buying an off-the-shelf remanufatured stock Mikuni and hoping nothing else in the rats’ nest fails.
I wish there was one picture of inside the bed and an underbody view. interesting little truck. I like it. :)
My dad had the 1981 or 82 Dodge D-50 4×4 I believe there were two engines and his was the 2.2 liter. it was a good little truck for what he used it for. The only thing I didn’t like about it was there was no a/c and we lived in southeast Arkansas.
had a few d50 including diesel,not that great on fuel 2.6 was the common motor,timing chain trouble.diesel,cracked heads.
I own one of these and I would not be without it. Great for light hauling, parts store, and the girls drive it even with a 4 speed and no PS. It’s a 2 Litre, the
indestructible engine Mitsubishi made and it will run forever. Install timing chain at 150,000 miles and you’ll get another 800 years out of it. The real reason this truck stopped selling is that the dealers could not get any service income out of the product. They are too well made.
I had a black 1987 Ram 50 back about 2004. A good shape little truck for mid Michigan. Loved it!
I’ve always liked these. I had the car version of the Arrow with the small 1.6L and auto. Dependable but slooooow. I dont have the production numbers but ford and gm sold a lot of s10/s15. And rangers. I have a mint 79 Toyota and an 84 ranger. Both have their pluses and minuses. Ranger is much more of a substantial, well built pickup in terms of body and interior but they toyota has the edge in the engine department. Toyota body is very very light steel and most of them rusted badly.
This arrow pickup looks pretty decent and I’m actually surprised that the price isnt in the stratosphere
Wasn’t this featured not too long ago?
In 1980 I was going to buy one,only the Plymouth
version,White w/Gold stripes,as it seemed that everyone
had a Black one w/Gold stripes.
I went into the dealer.Salesman said they didn’t
have any in stock.He didn’t get back to me & let me
know if he could get one,so I bought a new Toyota SR5-
Longbed instead.
I’m guessing that this won’t pass a California
smog test,as it’s registered in Arizona.
Hey, sir. This is the only other 1980 Plymouth Arrow that we’ve shown on Barn Finds. https://barnfinds.com/1950-arrow-1980-plymouth-arrow-truck/
I give Subgothius 100 points just for entertaining me with his theory of carburetors built by mikuni lol, I have used many mikunis on motorcycles to great success but I do not doubt of the horrors & wisdom of exiling a carburetor that relies on a snakehead of sorts to run well & should be banished forever . Sometimes the truth is so much fun to read about real or imagined
Mikuni made a wide variety of carb designs for different applications, just like Weber or Holley or any other. When I gripe on the stock Mikuni setup in these trucks, I don’t mean to trash all Mikunis ever, everywhere.
Motorcycle Mikunis are fine, even admirable, but different and much simpler than OEM car/truck Mikunis, which were also fine enough for their time when they were originally designed to be simple and maximize performance with little regard for economy or emissions.
The problems in this particular application come from the cruft of accumulated modifications and add-ons over the ensuing decades, trying to extend the life and usefulness of, by then, an ancient design, getting it to meet economy and emissions targets its original designers never anticipated, as a low-cost last-ditch stop-gap before Mitsubishi inevitably had to replace it with fuel injection.
The Weber DF-/DG-series were a much newer design, engineered from scratch to run clean and efficient, as well as perform well without any add-on do-dads. They manage to do with precise engineering and calibration of air and fuel passages alone what the stock Mikuni setup did less-well with a couple shoeboxes-full of add-on gizmos, hoses, sensors and electronics.
Weber or not, looks like a great candidate for a heni swap !
Auction update: this one sold for $3,800! That’s $3,150 lower than their asking price so it pays to make an offer.