It’s not healthy to live in the past, but it’s still good to take a nostaligic look back in time to see where you’ve been.
Every year, we choose four trucks that stood out during the previous 12 months for various reasons. Here are our picks, and rationale, from 2011.
Clean, Green Chevy
February 2011
Most trucks get more and more thrashed as the years wear on, but Peter Verboom and his ’55 Chevy have bucked the trend. Peter bought the vintage machine a quarter of a century ago, and it’s been evolving and improving ever since.
02.11
Peter actually bucked another trend by building the classic machine into a go-fast truck instead of turning it into a Friday-night drive-in special. Handing it over to Chris Robinson of CST Performance Suspension, Peter commissioned a build on par with the best machinery we’ve seen. As a result, this thing flies high, lands smooth, and lives to tell about it. Best of all, it’s got a windshield and a license plate, so the good times aren’t confined to OHV areas. What’s cooler than that?
Mighty Mopar
August 2011
Editor Jerrod Jones is a bona fide Mopar maven, but this choice is more than just a nod to his taste and expertise.
Like Verboom’s ’55 Chevy, this ’75 Dodge W100 is vintage iron fitted with modern suspension, a windshield, and a license plate. Sam Cothrun and the crew at Samco Fabrication created something that rips through the dunes and can take to the trail thanks to fully functional four-wheel drive.
08.11
Why do we like old iron? It reminds us of simpler times, is usually cheaper to purchase in the first place, and comes with fewer (or none at all) electronic babysitters to tell us how to drive. The trick is getting older engines to run as powerfully and reliably as their newer counterparts, but thanks to a slew of quality aftermarket parts available today, that’s entirely attainable.
Dodge is different, and it takes an independent thinker to put TLC (time, love, and cash) into an old-school Mopar product while everyone else is busy building Fords, Chevys, and Toyotas.