A truck for people who need hauling power

By RICHARD WILLIAMSON

Scripps Howard News Service

One of the most amazing things about Las Vegas at night is how subdued people seem amid the magnificent excess of flashing lights and outsized entertainment.

All along the Strip, pedestrians crowd the sidewalks, dumbstruck by blazing pirate ships, fiery volcanoes or synchronized fountains dancing 200-feet high on a pool the length of a football field. On one side of Las Vegas Boulevard, the skyline of New York is circumnavigated by a roller coaster, while on the other an ersatz Eiffel Tower marks the make-believe milieu of Hotel Paris. At the Luxor, an inscrutable sphinx guards the entrance to an enormous glass pyramid topped off by a beacon probing more than a mile into the night sky.

In the morning, visitors sober up to a city that has lost its flash and dazzle, a slightly up-tempo version of Phoenix. That's when I first saw the Dodge Dakota Quad Cab.

"Hey, what's a nice truck like you doing in a place like this?" I thought.

If any vehicle ever represented family values, it's the Dakota Quad.

Equipped with four doors and seats for six, the new version of the mid-size pickup is roomy enough for a good-sized ranch family, with capacity for a full load of hay and the power to pull a trailer full of pure-bred quarter horses. Heck, it might even be strong enough to pull a trailer full of pure-bred half-horses.

Since the Strip is not the best place to test a 4-wheel-drive pickup, we decided to get the Dodge out of hell.

You don't have to travel far from downtown Vegas to discover a remarkably different world. Just a few miles north of town on Interstate 15, you take Exit 64 to the Great Basin Highway, where signs of what we laughingly call "civilization" begin to fall away rapidly.

Soon, we're linked up with 169 East that travels through the appropriately named Valley of Fire with its oddly shaped sandstone formations called the Seven Sisters. The faces of the sisters almost seem to echo the image of the Sphinx --- the real one, badly weathered and marred by the cannon fire of Napoleon in Egypt.

As impressive as the light show of Las Vegas at night is the silence of the desert in the daytime. We have been traveling for nearly 60 miles in our Quad Cab caravan and seen not a sign of wildlife.

The 4x4 Sport version of the Quad cab is as quiet as a car, soaking up the bumps and potholes with surprising agility and hardly a trace of harshness. The handlers at Dodge don't like to call this truck a "hybrid," which is a recently coined term for a truck that shares the characteristics of a sport utility vehicle.

The reason they don't want to confuse the Dakota Quad with an SUV is they already have one --- the Dodge Durango, a vehicle with three rows of seats and no truck bed.

Among the target Quad buyers are: people who have never owned a truck but need space for cargo and kinfolk; previous truck owners who need a larger cabin; and SUVers who are tired of trashing their vehicles by hauling cargo.

"It will be the first pickup truck that can be used as an everyday car," said Jim Julow, vice president of Dodge Car & Truck Division.

Actually, full-size pickups from General Motors and Ford have offered four-door extended cabs for the past year. But the Dakota, as Dodge ads point out, is different.

Larger than compact pickups like the Ford Ranger and Chevrolet S- 10 and slightly smaller than the Ford F-Series and Chevy Silverado, Dakota has a niche all to itself. Truly, the back seat is different, not a flimsy jump seat, but a real split bench that can be manipulated to create an interior cargo compartment.

With two V8 engines available, the Dakota surpasses the power of the Ranger and S-10. With a 5-foot, 3-inch bed, the Dakota Quad is adaptable for most uses while allowing the truck to fit in a standard garage.

With a base price of $19,490 for the 4x2 model and $22,135 for the 4x4, the Quad Cab costs about $1,500 more than the Dakota Club Cab, $3,000 less than a full-size Dodge Ram Quad Cab and $6,000 less than a Durango.

Before departing the Valley of Fire, we take the Quad Cab off- road for a sojourn through a creek bed called Echo Wash. It appears to have been a few decades since this arroyo's last wash, but we actually encounter mud when we come to a spring bubbling out of the rock wall. Instinctively, I fear getting stuck before remembering that I'm driving a 4x4 that was designed for much worse than this.

A few miles outside the Valley of Fire, we come to an even stranger sight, an oasis of vivid green lawns amid the gray desert of Nevada. What is this? Area 51?

No, it's an island of prosperity called Reflection Bay. Apparently, a few of the many wealthy emigres to Nevada decided to build a lake, surround it with Spanish-tiled mansions and a golf course. It's also the place where we spot our first wildlife, a roadrunner darting across a recently paved cul de sac with no sign of Wile E. Coyote in pursuit.

Not content to let us just drive the trucks mindlessly through the desert, the Dodge Boys hook up a two-ton house trailer to the back to prove what a great tow vehicle the Dakota makes. Now, I really feel like a snowbird.

Yes, the Dakota Quad can pull a home away from home without breaking stride. Even with the air conditioner running at full blast, the Quad hauls the trailer up a hill with Olympian grace.

Soon, we're encountering the ragged perimeter of Vegas again. Miles from the strip, motels few of us have ever heard of are pitching their "loose" slots and cheap prime-rib buffets.

As the sun sinks slowly in the west, the first lights twinkle in the distance, signaling the revival of nightlife in Las Vegas.New, four-door, six-passenger version of Dodge Dakota.

- PLUSES: Comfort, power, versatility, price.

- MINUSES: Fuel economy.

- BOTTOM LINE: Dodge got it right. This Dakota is different.

Copyright 1999
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.