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Karlmann King
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Karlmann King
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Karlmann King
I can just picture it. The boys are sitting around the campfire talking trucks, and one guy says, “Hey, let’s take an F-550, make it ugly as sin, like a reject from a B sci-fi movie, and charge like almost three million bucks for it. Whad-da-ya think, eh?” The next guy over looks at him like he has his head screwed on backwards on says, ‘That’s a stupid idea’, they go back to talking about fishing and that’s the end of it.
The same thing happened with a European design team, except they thought that a stealth bomber looked sexy and there was no one with enough common sense to say, ‘That’s a stupid idea’, so they built it.
Starting with a $47,000 commercial cab chassis, the exterior designers were smoking some of Justin Trudeau’s bad weed and were only able to weld together flat metal sheets finished in matte rattle-can black. The accessory lighting simulating a face on the grille could be dimples, or fangs, or tears because it looks so fugly. Unfortunately ugly isn’t just skin deep.
The interior designers went for a 4th Reich meets PeeWee Herman as the Dark Lord ambiance, and succeeded. A faux night sky twinkles over a plethora of fabrics, colours, angles and curves with nauseating delight. Someone must have looked to the Great White North for some inspiration as it does have a PS4, satellite TV, coffee maker for the morning after, and a beer fridge for the night before.
For 2.2 million dollars you’re probably thinking they must have spent it on the engine and drivetrain. I can only imagine that the powertrain guys showed up for one morning, waved their Harry Potter wands, said ‘Expeliousum’, collected their checks and hit the road in a real truck. The 6.8L gas V-10 reportly generates a meager 398 horsepower (297 kW) to push 4,500 kg (9920 lbs) of truck ((6000 kg (13230 lbs) if you tick the box for bulletproofing)) up to an embarrassingly low-for-the-money 140 kph (87mph).
You do get 40/14.5R20 tires, solid axles front and rear, and air suspension with this Chinese built truck.
The moral of this story? Stupid campfire ideas should go up in smoke.
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