You want an antique truck because they're cheaper to title/insure, but what's the definition of "antique" in your area? Here it's anything 25+ years old, which means 96 (the first year of OBDII) trucks are now antiques. That means you could go with the last year of the Ford OBS, or start looking at 10th-gen F150s next year. Tons of parts for both still available, easy to work on, relatively cheap, etc.
I'm not going by the state criteria (25 years, or 15 for 'classic' that still requires safety inspections). I'm going by my self-set limit of 1979. After that we got a lot of plastics, a lot of emissions and much thinner metal.
The malaise era works really well for cheap classic cars. It works for trucks, too, but not quite as well. Have you priced some of the 70s trucks recently? Yeesh. Still cheap because of smog/malaise, but no bargains that I've found.
Still, your year limit means that you can shop 72-79 trucks and take advantage of the fact that they're less desirable with wheezer engines. Then you can head/cam swap it, or drop a crate motor in for $2500.
In those years you kinda can't go wrong with the big three. Dodges tend to bring the most money, cost the most to modify, and have some of the world's worst ergonomics. Let us know if you find anything. Covid (and recent trends in classic vehicles) have pricing messed up big time.
ddavidv said:A little more patina than I'd like but that's a very fair price right now for that.
Yep. I'd live with the "patina" before I paid 10 - 15 K for stuff that might be only a little better. Depends on how bad that is in person! Just a short while ago, I would not have even stopped on that ad at that price!
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