Some of the most amazing hardware shows up here at Power Wagon Central, and this 1947 Dodge Power Wagon crew cab might be the world’s finest example. Extensively modified and custom built to customer specifications by Power Wagon expert Dan Mininger at Precision Power Wagons, it’s everything you’d hope for in a vintage truck and everything you’d want in a daily driver. If the badass red Power Wagon with the Cummins turbo diesel we sold last year was the equivalent of a Camaro, this incredible truck is a BMW M5.

The original Power Wagon is still the world’s finest off-road machine, but in stock form, they’re pretty basic. Now don’t get me wrong, basic has its appeal and we like the stock ones just fine, but a lot of guys called about our other trucks and asked us things like, “Does it have air conditioning?” or “I’m six-foot-five, will I fit?” Well, with this truck, the answers to those familiar questions are both, “Yes!” This awesome crew cab is a truck you can drive to work every day, use to haul your fifth wheel camper into the wilderness, then crawl over rocks in areas so remote even satellites get lost looking for you. The awesomeness that is the Power Wagon look remains completely intact, from the black fenders and upright grille to the gracefully curved cab that’s the best of 1940s design. It’s just more… accessible.

Most guys know Dodge never really built a 4-door Power Wagon, not for civilian consumption anyway, so this one was extensively modified to give it a usable back seat and plenty of stretch-out space inside. The proportions are actually quite good and if the factory DID do it, this is pretty close to how it would look. In fact, check out some early factory export-model 4-door pickups from the early ‘60s and you’ll see this is pretty much EXACTLY how they did it. So it definitely looks right. Thanks to the guys at Precision Power Wagons, it fits together superbly with four doors that close easily and fit well, so you don’t have so slam the hell out of them to get them to close. We have build photos of the entire truck and you will be hard-pressed to see any of the surgery performed on the body and obviously today it’s finished to a very high level. The bed was modified and shortened, but the overall length is about the same, so the truck remains user-friendly around town and is easy to park. No, you won’t be hauling a stack of plywood home in it, but you weren’t going to do that anyway, so don’t go complaining that it’s not an 8-foot bed anymore. It will, however, handle anything that’ll fit without complaint and it is set up with both a class-IV receiver hitch out back and a fifth-wheel ball in the bed, so whatever you’re hauling, this truck will do it.

The paint is traditional Power Wagon Submarine Seawolf Green, the archetypal color on these trucks. It’s got just the right amount of yellow in it to look right, particularly with the black fenders and running boards, which were restored at the same time. It’s not show-quality paint simply because the intent was to use it as a real truck and take it into the brush, but any time we pull this truck out of the shop, even just into the parking lot, it draws a crowd. Believe me, this sucker doesn’t need concours paint to make an impact. That isn’t to say it doesn’t look good, because it certainly does, but you won’t be afraid to use it to its potential, either. The chrome badges are perhaps the best we’ve ever seen on a Power Wagon, the door handles have been rechromed, and all the weather seals are new so it seals up as well as a modern truck. And yes, the winch is still in place and still driven by a PTO from the engine, the Power Wagon’s most iconic feature. It’s got the cojones to pull down a redwood just off idle and you should see how quickly lesser traffic scurries out of the way on the street when you fill their rear-view mirrors with 10,000 pounds of Braden winch. Oh, and the cowl lights work, the headlights are HID units that cost $300 each, and there are LED back-up lights bright enough to serve as headlights on most other cars.

The sucker’s pretty tall, too, but that’s not a worry. Open a door and powered steps descend from under the running boards to make climbing in easy, and this is a very welcome improvement for anyone shorter than Shaq. Inside you’ll find beautiful dark tan leather buckets up front and a matching bench in back, all commandeered from a Ford King Ranch pickup. The leather’s in excellent shape and the contrast between the handsome hides and the green paint is simply gorgeous. The seats are also heated and air-conditioned and have power adjustments in every possible direction, and all of it works properly. A tilt column with a more traditional steering wheel makes it easy to get comfortable for all-day cruises, and the pedals are laid out in conventional fashion, including the accelerator which has been relocated from up on the transmission tunnel where the factory put it. A full array of Classic Instruments gauges are the right choice, big and easy to read with a vintage look, and a small, unobtrusive lower dashboard was fabricated to handle switches for the heated/air-conditioned seats and the HVAC ducts. It has a very polished, professional look. And speaking of HVAC, there’s a full Vintage Air system that has a chill setting roughly equivalent to “meat locker” and a heater that can be set to “Thanksgiving turkey,” and the defroster vents remain fully functional, too, because we didn’t have to move the firewall one bit. Black carpets anchor the whole interior and carry heavy-duty floor mats that were trimmed to fit perfectly and the doors were upholstered to help soften the interior a bit. Overhead there’s a custom-stitched headliner that fits beautifully and really dresses up the cabin in a big way. Finally, there’s a powerful Pioneer AM/FM/CD stereo system that sounds great, mostly thanks to the acres of sound-deadening materials used throughout the cabin. I know, I know, but I’m sure there’s some whiny guy out there who will say it’s not crude enough to be a Power Wagon anymore, but for those of us who prefer a little civilization, this truck offers an awesome combination.

But here’s what you really want to know about: the hardware, and it’s extremely impressive. The engine is a brand-new, just-out-of-the-crate Cummins 4BT turbo diesel modified to the tune of about 400 pounds of torque. It’s a neat fit in the Power Wagon’s engine bay and doesn’t necessitate any firewall mods, so you’ve got plenty of room for the good stuff like A/C and, you know, your legs. Professional engineering from Precision Power Wagons gets it in there with an OEM look and it starts and runs like it was built by one of the Big Three. These engines are insanely reliable and even if you decide to use this truck as your daily driver, you can probably measure engine life in decades rather than years. It’s got a big-rig feel and sound and with all that torque on tap at like 800 RPM, it’s punchy as hell around town. Power steering with Hydro-Boost for the giant 4-wheel disc brakes mean that it swings around the grocery store parking lot as easily as your wife’s minivan and you never feel like you’re getting over your head with that much braking power at your disposal.

Behind the engine you’ll find an NV4500 5-speed transmission whose ratios are ideally suited to the diesel’s torque curve. In fact, in around-town driving, you can safely ignore 1st and 5th gears, and it’ll idle along at about 3 MPH in first if you just want to crawl through the rough stuff. The NP405 2-speed transfer case gives you the usual choices and feeds a pair of built SOLID Dana 60 axles with 4.10 gears inside. Custom drive shafts make it all work, and the hardware is so grossly over-built that you’ll have to do something seriously stupid to hurt this truck. The springs are custom units with fabricated perches that ride well but don’t give up carrying capacity, a big improvement over the factory bricks, and oversized shocks are fitted to keep things under control. The aforementioned disc brakes measure 13 inches all around and live behind some gorgeous 2-piece wheels fitted with 20-inch Mercedes-Benz Unimog-spec Continental tires that cost $1400. Each.

How does it drive? Amazingly. Open the door and the drop-down running boards greet you with LED safety lights and four seconds after you close the door, they retract again. The seat is immensely comfortable, being an OEM design, and it’s built for all-day driving in a truck. Turn the key and the Cummins springs to life with a big rig bark and a faint turbo whistle that grows as you accelerate. Clutch action is light thanks to a hydraulic throw-out bearing and the brakes are better than your sports sedan. The commanding seating position lets you look down on the guys in their garden-variety Dodge Ram 4x4s and there’s nothing like the view out over that Power Wagon hood. The shifter moves easily through the gears, the A/C blows cold, the stereo sounds great, and, well, the damned things just works like it rolled out of the showroom with $500 million worth of OEM R&D behind it. Hell, even the ride quality is pretty darned good. We took it to a show last week and used the winch to yank a truck out of some soft grass and had more cameras on us than Jennifer Lawrence at the Oscars. Everybody loves a Power Wagon and few have ever seen one with this truck’s abilities.

There’s an outfit in Colorado turning out some decent hardware that takes the Power Wagon and gives it a resto-mod makeover. They’re pretty nice. But the waiting list is two years and their prices for a crew cab start at $180,000 before you start adding options. So if you’re the impatient type or just want something that’s even better at a discounted price, well, then this truck is what you’ve been waiting for. No compromises and built by the best in the business, ready to rock. Expensive? Only if you don’t believe that you get what you pay for. There are simply none finer than this.