so, the quest is a little bit closer to being accomplished.
I bought a truck today and hauled it home. Me and Jeff (last440) went to look at it a few weeks ago after another car show in the Bay Area. this truck has been repainted and took a lot of looking at before I officially pulled the trigger on it to buy. It is an 80 obviously, but it is a painted over MACHO! It is a 360 4bbl, auto, tilt, dealer a/c, buckets and full size console, slider and light package. It also has a vintage audiovox am/fm/8-track/40 ch cb...and a panasonic floor mounted am/fm/cassette recorder in it too. One issue that we had was the core tag, but we came to a conclusion that it is probably an anomally that happened at the plant as some characters look weird. I took some pictures of it, and it is about as solid as one could hope for. Thanks to Bruce in Sac for passing me the deal. He found it in the foothills of Northern California....oddly enough I saw it listed, and thought it was just a power wagon(listed as a 79). So here are some pics....

Safe and sound.

That's a good day there!

That is SUPER cool I must say, just like the Macho home page, even a regular looking powerwagon could be hidin' something! So I'm assuming that the '80 machos are about as hard to find as an '81 eh?
Great find!
-Jimb

the 80 macho is a hard one to find for sure....but the 81 is next to impossible...
there was another 80 that surfaced in TN, painted over solid blue, and was a red macho....still for sale, but a lot of coin...

Congratulations on a great find! Nice looking truck!

so, I got up the nerve to call the 2nd owner, or long time owner since 1983. I talked on the phone about the truck and other things, but I will mention some about the truck....

so everyone remember the show "Simon and Simon".....yup...
so...here goes...

I had a call back from Robert, and he started off by asking how the ford was doing....ford, nope, I have the 80 dodge....he said yes, he had that truck since 83, and he was wanting one of those trucks like Ric drove. So he gets a phone call from his friend that worked at a dealership in Alhambra California (he lived up in northern CA mountains). He tells Robert that the dealer just took in one of those trucks like the one from the TV show. Robert immediately calls the sales department and wants to buy the truck. The salesman said that the truck was already getting "re-painted" and was going on their used car lot. He ended up getting on a plane and buying the truck...he said was a SUPER deal at the time, but couldn't remember the price. Robert said that it had 20k miles on it, the salesman told him it was a lease return from one of the movie studios.....(interesting....I thought so)...but he was never told which studio used it, but he was told it was used as a "prop" vehicle. He totally disliked the mile of blue tape stripe that the body shop put on it, but it was a good deal price wise...he mentioned it several times...
He added a dual fuel propane setup to the truck, and used it to go to work a 1/4 miles away. He was always razzed about how the truck looked with all of the striping that was on it. The original yellow wheels were sprayed black by the dealer, but he had to replace them because they had egg shaped holes for the lugs to tighten up to....hence the chrome jackmans that are on it now.Shortly after the propane setup was installed, it developed an electrical problem, he said was caused by the propane instalation...which caused the ammeter to melt down the wiring in the dash. This was in the 80's some time.. He fixed the electrical on it to work, and later loaned it to a friend who burn up the engine...the truck had about 60k miles on it then in the early 90's. He had the engine rebuilt and drove it some more, and had the transmission rebuilt at about 80K miles for some slipping. The truck got parked because the electrical problem came back and took out some more wiring behind the dash area...it was parked in about 2000 or so with 97k on the odo....
I bought it from Bruce, a buddy of mine that bought it from him....I think that he did not have the time or extra funds to get it going......going to cars shows is a good thing, as that is where I saw Bruce at...
Anyhow, later I will add a post of removal of the paint and the dash wiring....

Yes there very tough to find.I happen to luck onto my 80'Macho on craigs.Probably the only reason I got it is because the owner didn't add a pic of it to his listing.Mine is the same color as yours Sam sans the rollbar and not in near as good as shape as yours.Mine also has the single headlight setup.Does yours have a bench or bucket seats?I'm looking forward to seeing more pics of this one of yours.I'm glad you finally got 1!

thanks...
my truck has the buckets in it with dealer installed a.c. and tilt, otherwise probably a real stripper....
I do know of a ruff ruff 80 also yellow, but the guy wants 3k for it, and it is going to take a bed and it also has a roof mounted spot light...pluses in my book on it was that it was factory a.c., and had some good options....

any pictures of yours???

so, I did some more work on it today...
I pulled out the dash harness....there was some bad stuff that happened in the past with the ol gal...if it could talk..
pics

Dang, you'r not messing around.

Bed already looks better.