Rare Rides: The 2004 Joe Gibbs Racing Tahoe Is Fast and Confused
Customized and limited edition SUVs are nothing new to regular readers of Rare Rides. The striking Funkmaster Flex Expedition clouded eyes with tears of joy. Neiman Marcus once modified a Lincoln Blackwood, showing just how easily versatility and usefulness can be stripped from a Ford truck.
After those Ford and Lincoln examples, I think it’s time we took a look at a General Motors offering — perhaps a Tahoe. A supercharged, racing Tahoe.
Our subject today is a 2004 Chevrolet Tahoe, dressed with Joe Gibbs Limited Edition special sauce. The first thing to say is how well it would sit in a garage next to a GMT360 Chevrolet TrailBlazer SS. Their exterior treatments are remarkably similar. According to the listing (no longer active), Mr. Gibbs is a Super Bowl-winning football coach who also ran a successful team in NASCAR.
Your author doesn’t follow either of those sports, so someone in the B&B can fill us in on the accuracy of those statements.
As mentioned above, there are some SS-style changes with the front bumper.
Nobody will doubt you’re driving a Joe Gibbs Performance Tahoe, as the badges festooning the car are massive.
Special side skirts are also here, replacing the running boards you’d commonly find on almost all GMT800 vehicles.
Note the rear bumper, which has been taken from a Yukon Denali model of similar vintage. The D-pillar panels were taken from an Escalade.
The door handles bother me, so let’s talk about those briefly. Only base or LS models were available with matte black door handles. LT and LTZ trims had color-matched gloss handles. Modifying a vehicle to make it sporting and luxurious would make more sense if you used one of the versions which already contained luxury features.
Some sporty five-spoke deep-dish rims help the overall look here.
Under the hood, Mr. Gibbs has added a supercharger to the 5.3-liter LS V8, adding 100 extra horsepower (according to the ad copy). With 395 horsepower and fat tires, it should be decently quick.
You’ll find some interior modifications once you open the front door. The front seats have additional bolstering (these seem legitimately custom-made) and have suede inserts in the center portion. That’s for when you’re hammering this beast around the track! The modified seats require manual back adjustment, limited lower cushion adjustments, and there’s no power lumbar. No heated seats, either.
The middle seats get the same suede treatment, but do not have the embroidery like the front.
It’s not clear whether this third-row seat is a replacement or the original, but the ruching indicates it’s from a truck made between 2000 and 2002. For 2003, GMT800 models switched to a smooth-style seat with defined panels rather than ruching. There’s also a subwoofer that’ll be bouncing around back here, for reasons unknown.
You also get some white gauges, replacing the standard black ones.
In the dash, there’s an aftermarket Sony GPS unit, as well as a signed placard where there would normally be a small cubby. Below, there’s some hookup for an ancient cellular telephone from The Matrix II or something.
The Tahoe has covered almost 135,000 miles and seems well maintained. The eBay listing ended early, claiming the item was “no longer available.” So, expect to see it back online shortly.
What do you think this truck is worth?
[Images via eBay]
Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.
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I'm guessing this had chrome door handles and someone along the way replaced them with the matte black materials. It is very easy to swap the handles out. Dude, I murdered out my ride. The little bit I could see in the interior with electronic climate control, center console, and steering wheel controls, this doesn't look like GMT800 LS level trim. If it is, it was equipped stupidly a the LT version would have likely been cheaper versus checking off the boxes to equip it this way. GM had some serious stupidity on the GMT800 seats they provided customizers. I remember the North Face Edition Avalanche didn't have heated seats, power tilt, or power lumbar. The reason was they used a lower level seat frame for the customized trim, that negated these options. I'm sure some bean counter thought this was a very good idea. The Vortec 5.3L V8 takes to forced induction very well -- the stock 4-speed automatic if it isn't the HD model can take the HP, my question is what is the torque number. Bad things start to happen if you approach 450-475 pound feet. IIRC this was around 340 pound feet of torque out of the box NA.
I think it worth around $225K but I would only pay $18K for it now!