For more years than can be counted on both one's finger and toes, Ford's F-150 has been the best-selling new vehicle in the US, making them pretty ubiquitous. Today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe ‘93 attempts to stand out from the crowd, but does it cost an arm and a leg?
Did you know that Willie Nelson wrote Patsy Cline's languid and smokey ballad, Crazy? Cline, who tragically died in a plane crash two years after its recording, had originally hated the song, and had difficulty with its range due to injuries suffered in a recent car accident. None of that has anything to do with yesterday's 1982 Grey Market Benz 280TE other than the fact that fully 85% of you thought the seller was nuts for asking so much for it, and whenever I see a result as lopsided as that, I start humming. . . Crazy.
I knew you'd love me as long as you wanted, and then someday you'd leave me for someone new. . .
Man, Outlaw Willie sure knew how lay down the heartache. Just like lovers, cars and trucks can sometimes wear out their welcome, fortunately however when they are ready for their walking papers, there's Craigslist rather than thrown furniture and immolated wardrobes. Sometimes those relationships - both personal and automotive - are doomed from the outset because one partner, while not fully embracing the personal defects of the other, feels strongly that they can change them.
That apparently was the intention of the owner of this 1993 Ford F150 Flareside as he has wrought changes to the truck equatable to the horrors Spencer Pratt visited upon Heidi Montag. And in the truck's defense, it couldn't say no.
Changes to the extended cab truck include a Chevy hood and Mercedes Grille, because what a 4,600-lb, electric green pick up lacks is presence. Out back, he has grafted - seemingly using leftover Hostess Ho Hos - a pair of tail lights from a ‘69 Caddy, giving the bed the look of something an inebriated Batman may have cobbled together at the last minute for fighting crime and picking up manure at the Home Depot.
That's all well and good and probably explainable by the proximity of the builder to high tension lines or large quantities of lead paint growing up. The interior is another matter. Painted bright yellow and black, driving this truck would be like giving the Bumble Bee Transformer a rectal exam, ALL THE FREAKIN' TIME. The sun visors and and headliner are now coated in faux black ostrich, and the passenger door now opens suicide fashion, making access to the behind the seat area even more difficult. One must apparently suffer for one's art.
The freaky and the deaky seem to have abated when it came to the mechanicals and the truck sports the smaller of the available V8s - the 5.0, and AOD automatic with column shifter. It's apparently 2-wheel drive, although for all I know it could be seven and a half-wheel drive, it wouldn't surprise me.
What would surprise me is the seller finding someone who shares his unique vision for this vehicle, or at least one who can come up with the $3,000 asking price, and doesn't argue with his breakfast cereal. Do you think that price is . . . um, okay, seriously, who would buy this thing other than some modern equivalent of PT Barnum? Still, it's Friday, and I'm feeling frisky for the weekend, so what do you say we chamber this bad boy and give it a shot before we dee-dee-mao for the day?
Should someone buy this thing just to take it out of the hands of its malefactor, and if so, is it worth that $3,000 price? Or, like the song says, is that just crazy?
You decide!
Jackson Miss Craigslist or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to Mark Howell for the hookup!
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