They did not use W-2 heads. W-2 heads were over the counter only.

Ever since I was a kid the sight of those doing wheelies has cracked me up.

Yep, faster than the Corvette.

Buddy. You're supposed to say, buddy now.

Attached File

Lying Liars who Lie...

I don't believe the W-2 heads ever made it into production. So Dodge substituted some other heads.

Super cool trucks

Wrong about the alcohol...We were filling with ethanol-blended fuels in the upper Midwest as far back as around 1980 (maybe even a little earlier... can't remember the exact year)  We thought it was great because we didn't need to add Heet in the dead of winter to keep our gas lines from freezing, and it was even a little cheaper IIRC.

I remember seeing these at the pumps back in the '70s

LOL Chrysler - but let's give some benefit. At least someone characterized "optional". Nov of '77 so when testing was done a month or more prior (recall this was print cycle lead times) no idea where the project was but no doubt that was pre-prod. But also possibly some gamesmanship. Maybe the team honestly felt prod would get their setup. Still also credit as they/someone recognized the need for a conditional label (prolly legal ) Little idea the details of 70s BIG 3 dev to market process tho, so I'm speculating to an extent.

Mfgs change stuff prior to launch all the time and maybe the W2 and other stuff got lost in validation - cost, compliance, reliability - prolly all 3.

As whiskerz notes, you could buy them from Mopar (the Econo heads would bolt on I'd think) and install them yourself. Maybe that's what was meant by optional. Same for the Holley and aluminum hi-riser. Hell maybe even the aftermarket guys got the parts in there as a partnership, formal or informal.

It was still a cool idea that stemmed from an emissions play that lead to Detroit doing something interesting. It was the fastest American offering. There was still faster stuff, but none of it mainstream affordable for peeps in the late 70s. Which hurt given the previous 20 years.

It was legit fast production for the environment - just not as fast as the initial project demos.

Correct.  This has been debated a million times, but there has NEVER been a documented case of a production LRE truck being found to have W2s on it.

The were LRE trucks that were used as test beds during development of the W2.  

This was confirmed by Tom Hoover and Davr Koffel who were both balls deep on the creation/design of the W2.