They rust out, fall apart and the Cummins under the hood outlasts the rest of the truck. How many times have you heard those jabs directed at first-gen trucks over the years? While some of that criticism may be warranted, it certainly can’t be applied to all ’89-’93 Dodges. Meet Tyler Turay’s ’93 D250 Club Cab, for example. His mint-condition ¾-ton Dodge sports a rust-free body and chassis, features a 6BT 5.9L that’s never been tampered with, and has 620,000 miles on the odometer. Despite its age and mileage, it’s essentially been trapped in time, thanks in large part to the original owner’s strict maintenance regimens, an uncompromising adherence to OEM replacement parts, cross-country driving style, and general avoidance of salt and humidity.
Upon returning to Missouri from Arizona, where the truck had liv ed for more than two decades, the original owner found himself at LinCo Diesel Performance, Tyler’s place of employment, inquiring about a low-idle issue. It was here that the prospect of the owner selling the truck piqued Tyler’s interest. “Finding a first-gen this clean and original was one thing,” he told us. “But the fact that it had so many miles on it, a nice interior, and being that it was a one-owner truck, I just couldn’t pass it up.” A suitcase worth of service records may have helped seal the deal, and Tyler soon found himself behind the wheel of a first-gen daily driver. In the pages that follow, we’ll take a walk around his well-preserved piece of diesel history.