Shorty Shoebox-amino Astounds, Confounds

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

Not many of us wake up in the morning and say to ourselves, “I think I’m going to shorten and narrow a ’57 Chevy wagon, give it a truck bed, and install a 427 with a 5-speed!”

Check out the powered bed-cover! The owner of this incredible machine, however, did say that to himself, and I spotted the result parked in front of a Denver wrecking yard. He didn’t have a lot to say about his creation, no doubt because he’s burned out from all the constant questions lobbed at him from dudes with eyeballs bugged out of their heads in amazed Rat Fink fashion, but I was able to get the summary of what he’d done.

The best part? This beast gets driven on the street for everyday errands such as junkyard shopping expeditions. If only someone would do this for a Studebaker Scotsman wagon…





Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Night_Sailor Night_Sailor on Aug 14, 2011

    I know the guy who ownes that car...his name is...Batman!

  • Detroitcarguy313 Detroitcarguy313 on Feb 12, 2012

    that thing is ugly. Not as bad as the majority of "Donks" (Chevy Caprices/Ford Crown Vics ruined with ugly oversized rims) but ugly none the less.

  • ArialATOMV8 All I hope is that the 4Runner stays rugged and reliable.
  • Arthur Dailey Good. Whatever upsets the Chinese government is fine with me. And yes they are probably monitoring this thread/site.
  • Jalop1991 WTO--the BBB of the international trade world.
  • Dukeisduke If this is really a supplier issue (Dana-Spicer? American Axle?), Kia should step up and say they're going to repair the vehicles (the electronic parking brake change is a temporary fix) and lean on or sue the supplier to force them to reimburse Kia Motors for the cost of the recall.Neglecting the shaft repairs are just going to make for some expensive repairs for the owners down the road.
  • MaintenanceCosts But we were all told that Joe Biden does whatever China commands him to!
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