Gold Rush: The Dodge Deora Is the World's Coolest Skateboard
[This story first appeared in the premier issue of MotorTrend Classic in 2005] Concept car? Custom? the Dodge Deora is both. It started as an idea for one of the most radical, cutting-edge customs ever made and became a concept vehicle shown by Chrysler. Built over two years and at a cost of $10,000, the Dodge Deora would stun the custom-car world and become an automotive icon that transcended the niche world of the chop-'n'-channel crowd. You probably have never seen the Deora in the metal; but if you were a car-crazy kid in the late 1960s, chances are you built the plastic, scale-model kit or loop-the-looped the Hot Wheels version in your living room.
The Dodge Deora, a radical custom concept by Mike and Larry Alexander and designer Harry Bentley Bradley, became an automotive icon. Built on a Dodge A100, it featured a unique cab-forward design and innovative engineering, gaining fame in the 1960s as a model kit and Hot Wheels car.
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Detroit-based customizers Mike and Larry Alexander rightly take the credit for painstakingly crafting the Deora. But the radical cab-forward styling is actually the work of a former GM designer and Art Center lecturer, Harry Bentley Bradley. The Alexander brothers first noticed Bradley while he was still studying automotive design at New York's Pratt Institute. Bradley was a regular contributor to the sketchpad pages of magazines that specialized in customizing, such as Rodding and Re-styling, Customs Illustrated , and Rod & Custom . Within weeks of his arrival at GM Design Staff in 1962, he and the Alexanders had forged a relationship that would result in more than 10 Bradley-designed custom cars over the next eight years. The Deora is the most famous by far.
The Deora project started in 1964 when the Detroit-based Alexander brothers decided they wanted to build a custom pickup based on one of Detroit's new cab-over pickups. They asked Harry Bradley to design a vehicle based on Chrysler's recently launched A100, figuring they'd get the company to supply them with a truck if they liked what they saw. But if Chrysler wouldn't play, the Alexanders had a back-up plan: They would approach cross-town rival Ford, which had its own cab-over pickup, the Econoline. "Of the three cab-forward pickups on the market at the time, the Dodge was unquestionably the homeliest," Bradley recalls.
"What I wanted to do was get rid of that phone-booth cab and integrate the upper with the lower," he says. There would be no doors. "I didn't want cutlines. We were always told at GM to play down cutlines. If cutlines were wonderful, Ferraris would have them running all down their sides. I always thought of it as a conceptual proposal, rather than a customizing solution." To actually get passengers inside, Bradley proposed a front-opening hatch built using the lift-up rear window from a 1960 Ford station wagon.
Mike and Larry Alexander loved Bradley's proposal. Surprisingly, so did Chrysler, which handed over a stripped A100 to be chopped beyond recognition. The Alexanders cropped the stock cab sheetmetal right down to the floorpan. When the roof, the first of the new parts, was tacked in place, it nearly rested right on top of the stock steering column. Bradley had originally intended the front hatch to be a top-hinged one-piece affair, like the tailgate of a modern hatchback or European sport wagon. But the narrow A-pillars just weren't strong enough to support it. The Alexander brothers instead developed a split-door arrangement, with the 1960 Ford window hinged at the top and controlled by an electric motor, and a handbuilt lower panel between the headlights that swung on a center pivot.
Engineering it all to work was every bit as complex as it sounds. In place of the stock steering column, the Alexanders fabricated a horizontal strut that rotated forward from the left body side--to allow the driver to get in and out--and locked into place when you wanted to drive. The steering wheel was a drag-racer-style butterfly item; steering inputs were transmitted via a sprocket and a chain running through the strut to a vertical shaft in the left body side. Fortunately, the standard A100 pedals came through the floor, like those in a Porsche 911, and didn't have to be moved. Hurst engineers developed a special linkage to connect the floor-mounted shifter to the Chrysler three-speed manual transmission.
To make room for occupants, the Alexanders moved the slant-six engine rearward 15 inches. It intruded well into the pickup bed, but as the Deora was never actually going to haul anything, it didn't matter. They also moved the radiator to the pickup bed and placed it ahead of the rear axle. Holes cut into the bottom of the bed allowed electric fans to draw through cooling air. It was a neat idea, but it meant the fuel tank had to be moved from its standard position behind the rear axle to the pickup bed just behind the cab. To hide everything, the bed was covered with a hard tonneau secured by chrome hood-lock pins.
At its first public showing, the Deora caused a sensation, with Chrysler claiming it represented a major advance in modern vehicle styling. Even now, more than 40 years after it was first drawn, the Deora looks modern. Of course, it was designed in an era before crash tests and crumple zones, and that slammed cabin is a tight fit for most people. "The Alexanders were small guys," says Bradley.
Those with a sharp eye for detail and a good memory will recognize a surprising number of Ford parts used on this "official" Chrysler custom. Apart from the 1960 Ford tailgate, the rear window is from a 1960 Ford sedan, and those side vents (for the exhausts) are actually 1964-1/2 Mustang taillight bezels. The ingenious taillights, hidden under the wood veneer panel across the rear and visible only when reflected in the angled chrome strip underneath, are the sequential turn-signal units from a Thunderbird. "Chrysler never seemed to understand we used Ford parts to build this car," says Bradley.
Although driveable--"Mike and Larry's customs were always well engineered," says Bradley--Chrysler leased the car for a year to appear on its stand at car shows. At the 1967 Detroit Autorama, one of the country's leading custom shows, the Deora won nine awards, including the coveted Ridler Award. In 1968, it became one of the 16 cars in the original Hot Wheels lineup when Bradley left GM to join Mattel. "At one stage, Mattel figured out that every kid in America had 1.3 Hot Wheels cars," says Bradley. That meant a lot of Deoras. "I don't think many knew it was a real vehicle."
Chrysler leased the Deora for a second year, but asked for changes, including a coat of lime green pearl paint. When the lease was not renewed at the end of the year, the Alexander brothers sold the Deora to custom-car enthusiast Al Davis, whose son, Al Jr., still owns it. Al Davis Sr. died in March 1970, and the Deora was put into storage. "I was 12 at the time," says Davis. "When I was 18 or 19, I pulled it out, restored it--though not to original condition--and put it back on the show circuit. I won a championship with it in 1982 and used the money as a down payment on a house."
Davis pulled the Deora out of storage in 1998 and asked Harry Bradley to help restore it to its original 1967 look. The color is greener than the original gold--Mike Alexander kept none of the original paint numbers--and Harry Bradley remade the exhaust boxes from templates supplied by Alexander so the Mustang taillight bezels could be refitted. As usual, the detail stuff took time to find, but the only pieces missing are the center console between the seats and the special Firestone tires made for it in the 1960s--the engineering drawings were rediscovered recently at Firestone, but the dies were destroyed years ago.
The Deora starred at the 50th-anniversary Detroit Autorama in 2002 as part of a special display of classic Alexander brothers customs. "The reaction was unbelievable." More than 40 years on, the Dodge Deora is still turning heads. Except one. To this day, the man who designed it, Harry Bentley Bradley, has never seen the finished truck and is in no hurry to do so. "Building a custom is more engrossing than owning one," he says. Detroit Copies VW
The Dodge A100 was the last in a string of smallish, forward-control pickups launched by Detroit automakers around this time--Jeep had kicked off the vogue in 1956 with the launch of its 4WD Willys FC-150 styled by Brooks Stevens; Ford had followed with the Econoline. GM, most radically of all, used Corvair running gear to produce the rear-engine Chevy Loadside and Rampside pickups, trucks whose layout most closely resembled the inspiration for all these vehicles, VW's Transporter pickup.
Although the A100's power--it used Chrysler's 170- and 225-cubic-inch slant-six engines, mounted between the front seats--and its interior package were perhaps the best of the bunch, consumers' enthusiasm for forward-control trucks lagged behind that of the automakers by the time it launched for 1964. Chevy had already killed off its Corvair-powered pickups, and Econoline pickup sales were slow. Ford axed the Econoline pickup after 1967; the A100 lasted barely two years more.
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