When Old is New Again (and Cooler than your Land Rover): Legacy Power Wagon

What’s better than owning a new truck? Taking home a re-vamped, revved-up, kitted-out OLD car with a certain 1940s charm which is impossible to replicate in modern vehicles: That’s what.

Auto restoration firm Legacy Classic Trucks can make just such a dream come true for you. For a price, of course. Their 1940s Dodge Power Wagon restorations have garnered some well-deserved attention from vintage enthusiasts and rev-heads alike. It even got Jay Leno’s attention, and he subsequently featured it on an episode of Jay Leno’s Garage.

“Legacy Power Wagon Conversion is the truck for the serious collector looking to recreate the ruggedness and integrity of the American West,” according to the Legacy website.

“With each Legacy Power Wagon Conversion requiring well over 1,000 hours, the Legacy Power Wagon Conversion has become one of the most coveted and sought-after trucks of today.”

Legacy have built over 60 Power Wagons, so it’s safe to say, they know what they’re doing. These hard-working trucks weren’t sitting in garages over past decades, getting a weekly polish and making the occasional trip to the general store. These were beasts of burden, being put to work anywhere from forestry to mining, back in their day. Needless to say, they need some tender loving care to caress them into the 21st century keepsakes they become at Legacy.

“We’ve tried to keep the package original, keep what’s great about the Dodge Power Wagon, but take the performance up to the next level,” says Legacy Classic Trucks founder, Winslow Bent, speaking with the Truck Trend Network.

And when they say ‘next level’, they mean it. Legacy have added the mod cons you’d expect in a new car such as air conditioning and some comfy suspension, but they’ve added more than a little grunt to the engine. A 6.2L GM E-Rod LSA V-8 engine produces 585 horsepower and a crazy 580 lb-ft of torque. Whatever you can throw at this truck, it can take. As comfortable cruising down main street as it is bush-bashing, the Legacy Power Wagon and its 40 inch wheels are enough to bring out the boy in any grown man (or woman, for that matter.)

Then again, Jay Leno wouldn’t see this truck in the hands of the glitterati or the California soccer moms.

“This is not something you make your Beverly Hills school run [with], like the Land Rover, you know. Where you pull into the mall and Buffy goes and gets her sneakers or whatever, I mean, it’s a real truck truck.”

Bent concurs:

“You keep it in the barn. You wanna go elk hunting, or fishing or something like that, this is a great way to get around.”

Alright, well he is from Wyoming, so it’s only fair that hunting, wearing flannel shirts and donning a trucker cap is par for the course on a regular day in the life of Winslow Bent. Heck, with a name like that we can just picture him slinging a slain elk into the tray of his Power Wagon and scooting on home for a chicken-fried steak. Nonetheless, this machine is going to tackle any task (mall trips or not) with aplomb. Plush interior, an engine to make the most composed of us break out in a drool and a paint job to turn heads (snap necks, perhaps); the Legacy Power Wagon is the stuff of…well, legends.