The Dodge Shelby Dakota Was A V8 Muscle Truck That Was Loaded With '80s Charm

When one thinks of Caroll Shelby and the history of the Shelby American brand in general, his many collaborations with Ford are surely what first comes to mind. It could be the legendary Ford-powered Shelby Cobras of the 1960s, the Le Mans-winning Ford GT40, or perhaps one of the many modern Ford products that have borne the Shelby name. However, between those eras there was a period when the Shelby name wasn't found on Fords, but on Dodge vehicles.

The Shelby-Dodge connection was a big part of the American performance car scene during the 1980s, but at the time, Dodge didn't make a traditional rear-drive, V8-powered performance car to rival the Ford Mustang or the Chevrolet Corvette. Instead, the Shelby touch was applied to Dodge's front-drive, turbocharged compact cars, which resulted in wild creations like the Dodge Omni Shelby GLHS. However, one unique V8-powered Shelby-Dodge vehicle was produced during this time. It just happened to be a pickup truck rather than a sports car.

The truck was known as the Dodge Shelby Dakota, and it was produced in limited numbers for the 1989 model year only. Looking back on it today, the Shelby Dakota certainly isn't the most prestigious Shelby product ever made, and it's definitely not the fastest. It is, however, one of the more unique vehicles ever to wear the Shelby name, and a time warp back to the formative years of the high-performance American sport truck.

After spending much of the 1980s partnering with Dodge to build front-drive, four-cylinder performance cars like the underrated Dodge Shelby CSX, the Shelby Dakota was a bit of a throwback for Shelby American. For Caroll Shelby himself, the Dakota represented a return to his V8-powered roots, and for the Shelby and Dodge brands, the truck was a notable foray into America's growing sport truck market. 

The truck was based on the first-generation Dodge Dakota, which had been on the market for a few years, and up to that point was only available with four-cylinder and V6 engines. The Shelby Dakota needed to have a V8, though, and fitting Chrysler's 5.2-liter small-block into the Dakota's engine bay required the cooling fan to be removed and replaced with blower motors mounted in the radiator. 

Apart from the V8 engine under the hood, the rest of the Shelby touches on the truck were relatively modest, with the truck sharing its underpinnings with the standard Dodge Dakota Sport. There were, of course, some aesthetic tweaks like unique wheels, driving lights, some distinctly '80s graphic stripes, and of course that all-important Shelby branding. 

With a V8 under the hood, the Shelby Dakota may have sounded like a muscle car, but this was still the 1980s — performance standards weren't like today's. The 5.2 V8 was only rated at 175 hp, and in Car and Driver's testing, the '89 Shelby Dakota needed 8.7 seconds to hit 60 mph. For the time, it was quick for a pickup truck, though not quite a barn-burner. Still, for Shelby fans and old-school Mopar purists, this was as close as it got to a 1980s Dodge-Shelby muscle machine. With only 1,500 Shelby Dakotas made, the truck was also guaranteed to become a bit of a collector's item. 

Just as important is how the Shelby Dakota helped lay the groundwork for future high-performance pickup trucks to come. By the time the mid-'90s had rolled around, the muscle truck market was booming, with pickups like Ford's SVT F-150 Lightning, the Chevy Silverado 454 SS, as well as the turbocharged, all-wheel-drive GMC Syclone. 

Carroll Shelby, meanwhile, would wrap up his corporate partnership with Dodge shortly after the Shelby Dakota arrived, but not before he lent a helping hand in creating and inspiring the Dodge Viper — which was modeled on Shelby's no-frills sports cars of the '60s. 15 years after the modest Shelby Dakota, the Dodge performance truck had come full circle, with the 500-hp, V10-powered Dodge Ram SRT-10 dropping jaws as the "Viper with a pickup bed".