Barn Find ’66 Dodge Camper Special
Story and photos by John Gunnell
Someone told a woman that Dan McQuaid was into old cars. She asked him if he wanted to take a look at the yellow camper that her dad had left parked out in the barn. Dan never imagined that this “barn find” was going to be a real gem.
He traveled to Ishpeming. Mich., the second town west of his home, to see the truck. He had to crawl into the barn to take a look, because there was a tree that had grown in front of the barn door. The earth had heaved up past the level of the swinging doors. When he got inside the barn, he saw the Dodge. It was very dirty, but he could tell that it had been very well preserved. There were only 21,800 miles on the odometer.
In addition to the 38-year-old truck, the barn held a slide-in camper unit from the same era. The seats inside the camper still had the original plastic seat covers in place. In fact, the whole camper was as in the same well-preserved state that the pickup was in.
Dan agreed to purchase everything on the spot and the woman was open to that idea. They made arrangements to meet at the barn that weekend to get the two vintage travelers out and back on the road. The next day the daughter called him and explained that she was very upset because her mother, who was 90 years old, had heard of the plan to sell her husband’s property and insisted that there was no way that was going to happen. She said that the truck and camper were definitely not for sale.
“I was immediately worried that someone else would find out about them and sweet talk her into selling, “ Dan recalls today. ” Then, I would have missed out on a great find that I had gotten very close to buying.”
Dan remained tight-lipped about his discovery. He told very few people about what he had seen in the barn. He hoped that one day he’d get a call, but years went by and the phone didn’t ring. Each time Dan traveled near Ishpeming he would drive past the old homestead and check to see if the tree was still in front of the barn door. He knew that if the tree was still up, his “treasure” was still safe.
“I must have gone by there 30 times,” Dan said. “Each time we took a trip in our old cars, the Dodge and the camper would come up in our conversations.” Dan’s buddies would ask him, “Do you think you’ll ever get them?” He didn’t know what to tell them.
In April 2008, Dan had taken his lunch break and upon returning to work, there was a message that “a woman named Kathy had called about an old Dodge truck.” He knew that Kathy was the name of the daughter and called her immediately. She asked Dan if he was still interested in her dad’s truck and camper, because other people had found out about them and were bugging her to buy them. “You have waited so long, I wanted you to have first crack at them,” she explained and offered to meet him that Friday.
Dan didn’t get much sleep that Thursday night. When Friday came, he and some of his buddies set off for Ishpeming to free the treasures from their tomb. They looked like a logging crew with chainsaws to fell trees and shovels to dig into the earth. They brought all the equipment they could muster up for their archaeological dig.
They decided to free the camper first. This required cutting down the tree and digging the doors out of the ground. “There were no windows and it was dark as midnight in that barn,” Dan recalled. “In fact, no light had illuminated that camper for about 38 years, until we swung the barn doors open.”
The first thing Dan noticed was that the camper had been perched on tripod stands and they had sunk right through the wooden floor of the barn. Dan and his friends had to jack the camper up and put a small trailer under it before they could move it. The large camper barely fit through the doorway. The camper turned out to be a 1962 Del Rey Imperial Coach model in like-new condition.
Next came the extraction of the truck from the barn. It was a big 1-ton Camper Special that was covered with silt. Dan and his friends hooked a chain to it and pulled it out of the barn. Slowly, but surely the Dodge was dragged closer and closer to the door.
. According to the daughter, the truck had been bought new and was used once in a while through 1979. It had its original paint, tires, drive belts, glass and so on. Everything on the vehicle had obviously been untouched from the time it was new or at least for many years. The Dodge was loaded on a trailer to start its journey back to useful life.
After getting the truck and trailer home, Dan burned up lots of energy cleaning them up. He found many interesting items in the trailer including silverware, plates, maps and Dixie cups from the ‘60s and ‘70s. “The last time they used the camper in the ‘70s, I think they had every intention of taking it out again,” Dan believes. “But the aging process caught up to them more quickly than they expected and they never did get to use it again.”
Dan spent about three months cleaning both units and servicing the Dodge so it would run and could again haul the camper. The two were mated together for what was probably the first time in decades and on the second week in July of 2008, Dan and his friends drove the truck – with the camper mounted – to the Iola Old Car Show (www.iolaoldcarshow.com). “The attention it drew at the show was incredible,” Dan recalls. “After that weekend, I knew for certain that I had made quite a find.
The Dodge pickup is a 1966 three-quarter-ton Camper Special with a 318-cid 200-hp V8 hooked to a four-speed manual gearbox. The Camper Special package included heavy-duty suspension, which was essential for hauling a slide-in camper unit around. The truck has a radio and not much more in the way of factory options. Its original Daffodil Yellow paint was in good shape beneath all the dirt. It has a white-painted bumper and wheels and “bottle cap” hubcaps.
The Del Rey Imperial camper unit was made in Elkhart, Ind., and was described as a “coach” in factory literature. It is 90-in. wide. The front section that extends over the cab of the truck is called a Sky Lounge. It allows room for a small crossways bunk and has eerie-looking green Plexiglas windows. Del Rey listed 33 standard features for this model, which Dan has made into a sign for shows. Being a Mopar guy, he has also decorated the windows with stickers from the Dodge Ramchargers drag racing team of the early ‘60s, and decals from the 13th annual National Hot Rod Assoc. Nationals held in Indianapolis in 1967 .
