Original Owner: ’84 Dodge Pickup Miraculously Returns for a Couple’s 30th Anniversary

As Don Novotny and his wife, Diane, approached their 30th wedding anniversary, they could look back on their share of ups and downs. Just two years before, in 2014, Diane was nearly killed in a car crash, and the couple had gone through a financial rough patch. But 2016 was looking good. Don had been working as a drywall finisher since 1984, and Diane worked in retail at Marshalls. Smoother roads—and retirement—lay ahead.

Don already had a project in mind. He wanted to find a 1984 Dodge D150 Prospector pickup and fix it up to look like the one he had bought new at 23, shortly before he met Diane. The Dodge had served him faithfully as a work truck for many years, and the couple had many fond memories of it. Diane was onboard.

Like the pickup itself, the reason for its purchase was primarily utilitarian. “I was working with my uncle, and I needed a pickup truck,” Don said.

His uncle suggested a Chevy, but Don chose the Ram when he saw it on the lot at Royal Dodge in Woodbury, a small town in southern New Jersey, less than 10 miles from Philadelphia. He paid about $12,000 for the well-equipped pickup in spring 1984. The dealer is still there, now called Performance Dodge and Ram.

Don and Diane married in 1986, and Don used the truck as a daily driver and work truck.

“I used to be a taper in Philadelphia and drove it there a lot. Then I was a taper in Jersey. I had a lot of sheetrock and mud loaded in that truck.”

The pickup was more than his work truck; it belongs in their memories of life together. “We drove the truck to Florida for our honeymoon,” he said. “It didn’t have A/C. It was windows rolled down and two vent windows open. When we drove back, I said, ‘I’m not stopping.’ I made it in 18 hours straight. It’s kind of scary driving 80 miles an hour with tractor-trailers coming at you in the middle of night. We were in our 20s, so it was easier then.”

Work trucks get worn, though. After 15 years and 95,000 miles, Don traded it in for a new Dodge Dakota at the same New Jersey dealership that had sold him the Prospector.

“You trade the truck. Life goes on,” he said, though the Dodge never fully left his thoughts. How it came back to him 17 years later, purely by happenstance, still boggles Don’s mind.

Factory Basics: 1984 Dodge Ram D150 Prospector

Forty years ago, most pickups were not the luxuriously outfitted family-size vehicles that you see on the road today. Don’s Dodge was just one of many unassuming, hard-working vehicles like it on the road, regardless of the brand.

This Dodge truck series was new back in 1972 and represented a considerable upgrade over the prior model, which had been in production since 1961, with a refresh in 1965. The D150 was the half-ton, two-wheel-drive model. (The 4×4 was the W150 and badged Power Ram.) The new-gen pickup gained independent front suspension, matching Chevy’s C10. Ford was still using a Twin I-Beam front end.

Like the Chevy, the Dodge’s exterior design showed softer, car-influenced lines, but the Dodge was no copycat. The ’73 Club Cab was the first full-size extended-cab model, beating the Ford SuperCab to market by a year.

Updates came through the 1970s, including trendy, stacked rectangular headlights for a few years. Dodge offered a series of special models and packages in that period, including the Warlock and Macho Power Wagon (really). The 1978–79 Li’l Red Express was the cure for sporty-car malaise, thanks to a souped-up, 360-cubic-inch, police-spec V-8, dual chrome-stack exhausts, and flashy graphics on the doors.

A tasteful design update in 1981 brought a new name, Ram, which would become a separate Chrysler brand in 2009. The front-end had a “bigger” look thanks to larger grille and headlight nacelles and a huge “DODGE” badge on the edge of the hood. For 1982, Dodge introduced the Prospector upgrade, which gave customers their choice of three different packages that bundled Royal SE trim with a range of comfortable and stylish features (at a discount, too, compared to adding the features piecemeal). Don’s truck had the 318-cubic-inch V-8, the TorqueFlite automatic, and Prospector package #3, which included:

• Royal SE trim 
• Bright low-mount mirrors
• Intermittent windshield wipers
• Bright grille
• Light package
• Two-tone paint 
• 30-gallon gas tank
• Oil pressure and coolant temperature gauges 
• Bright rear bumper and wheel covers
• Tinted glass
• Power brakes

Don later customized the truck by adding a Century bed cap and American Racing white “wagon wheels.”

Prospecting for Truck Gold

Because Don had traded the truck into the same dealer about 12 miles away from his home in Harrisonville in the same New Jersey county, he wondered if it might still be in the area. That said, combing Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for it seemed like a lottery-level long shot. He figured that another 1984 D150 Prospector would work, and he could have it repainted and equipped to match the one he remembered.

Then fate stepped in. A couple of weeks after telling his idea to Diane, Don received a call to tape and finish a bathroom at an apartment complex in West Deptford, one town over from the Dodge dealer. He’d never been to that location before.

“I was there for only three days to tape it, coat it, and sand it,” he said. “Well, Lord behold, I saw a truck that looked like mine just sitting in the parking lot with no tags on it.”

He took a closer look. “I saw some marks on the truck that I was sure were the ones I made when I owned it,” he said. “There was a mark on the seats that I know I did from a putty knife that was in my pocket.”

The other tell-tale was a large scratch he’d put on the right side while negotiating the narrow driveway between two low brick walls at Diane’s parents’ house.

He remembers the moment vividly: “I had the truck for two weeks. I was fairly new with Diane, and now her parents could hear me cussing up a storm.

“But I never had it repaired, so that’s how I knew that was my truck.”

Don managed to contain his excitement, and wrote down the truck’s VIN. Not knowing who owned the truck, he left his card on the windshield. At home, he checked the VIN against an old document. It felt like seeing the lottery numbers match up.

It was his truck.

A few days later, the owner called Don, who could not hold back the fact that this was the truck he bought new 32 years before.

“I told him the whole story. He told me to bring my wife over. We went up there, and I was taking some pictures. And then he said, ‘I was going to junk the truck, so you can have it if you want.’ He just gave it to us.”

Don and Diane had their 30th anniversary gift.

Returning the Truck to 1984 Glory

Don was not sure if the seller was the second owner or perhaps the third. The pickup was a little rough, but it ran.

“Overall, it looked pretty good,” he said. “It showed 160,000 miles. There was the usual normal rust around the wheel wells. The paint was faded, and it needed some body work. The seat was ripped up, but the dash was in really good shape.”

Don handled the body work and rust repairs himself and brought the truck to a Maaco shop in West Deptford. The wagon wheels and cap he’d installed in 1984 were gone, but luck was with him again. He found the same cap on Facebook Marketplace in his local area. Then he found a set of the wheels on Marketplace about 80 miles away in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Freshly painted, with the wheels and cap, the truck looked like it had when Don owned it back in the ’80s. The mileage was a concern, but the truck ran well, so he left the engine alone. In 2022, the timing chain went, and the 318 grenaded itself. Don replaced it with a 318 Magnum from 1999 and installed a Holley four-barrel carburetor and a three-inch exhaust.

New, the 318 Magnum had throttle-body fuel injection and was rated at 230 hp and 300 lb-ft of torque. That was a healthy jump over the 143 hp and 252 lb-ft from the truck’s original 318 with its two-barrel carb.

“I was able to drop the newer motor right in. It’s still running the original transmission and rear,” Don said.

Don collects diecast model cars, and when he saw that Greenlight had come out with a 1982 Dodge Prospector painted like his, he bought three.

Prospector Memories

In addition to its work schedule, the Dodge served as a daily driver and occasional fun truck for Don and Diane.

“We went camping at the shore at a campground in Wildwood. We put a little bed back there and slept in it. We did that a couple of times,” Don said. “And we used it to go to Phillies baseball games. At one game, a car in front of me in the parking lot caught fire, and I’m like, ‘I gotta get my truck out of here!’”

Despite the lack of four-wheel drive, Don had no issues driving in winter weather.

“In one of those big snowstorms, that thing trudged right through the snow without a problem. A week later, I drove under an overpass and a piece of ice fell and broke my windshield. I was thinking, ‘Is this an omen?’”

Don and Diane both retired at 62, and they now enjoy using the classic pickup for grocery shopping, heading to an occasional local cruise night, or just puttering around their rural area on a Sunday afternoon.

“I want to say the truck found me again, because within two weeks of looking for one like it, I found my original truck, and within a month it was sitting in my driveway. It was headed to the junkyard, too. I would never have seen it again. It had to be fate.”

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Car: 1984 Dodge D150 Prospector

Owner: Don and Diane Novotny

Home: Harrisonville, NJ

Delivery Date: Spring, 1984

Miles on car: About 170,000

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Are you the original owner of a classic car, or do you know someone who is? Send us a photo and a bit of background to tips@hagerty.com with ORIGINAL OWNER in the subject line—you might get featured in our next installment!