Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Range Rover has had its bed made. It’s up to you to say whether its price is worth sleeping on.
With its copious rust, and plethora of non-original parts, yesterday’s 1980 DeTomaso Dodge 024 was deemed unworthy of its $4,500 asking price by an overwhelming 93% to 7% margin. Truth be told, with only 75 ponies to its name, it wasn’t all that good a car to begin with, not withstanding its cool Italian. . . um, Argentinian bona-fides.
Range Rovers have generally been considered to be pretty good when new. Capable, luxurious, handsome, they’ve always been an intriguing package. Of course, drive one off the lot and the dealer’s magic incantation holding the cars together wears off allowing all hell to break loose, or at the very minimum, a shit-storm of stuff to break.
That intrinsically British tradition of veddy expensive cars actually having been made from the worst crap parts imaginable is perhaps not as beloved as is the Monarchy and eating peas with your knife, but it’s just as real. And that’s why today you can usually pick up an old Range Rover for. . . oh, somewhere in the neighborhood of free.
At ten large, today’s custom 1994 Range Rover - converted into an open bed pickup - is far from free, but its apparent condition and the changes made to it may just warrant that price.
Starting with a 4-door rather than the never officially imported here duo porte, the builders of this custom have taken much of the greenhouse away, leaving only the windscreen, front door glass and repurposed hatch in back to keep company with a pair of skinny sidelights just aft of each remaining door. Much like it was before the surgery, the pillars are all painted matte black to give the roof a floating effect.
Having used the short doors of the four door edition makes this truck’s proportions a little odd. That is until you park it next to an early Bronco or maybe the uber rare Jeep Gaucho, and then it kind of looks okay.
All the work appears to have been professionally done, and there’s nothing amateurish about its presentation. The metallic silver-grey paint is nice and shiny and the factory five spoke alloys are about as butch as they come.
Inside the two spoke steering wheel and wide expanse of dash seem serviceable, which is probably more than can be said for the old school cell phone mounted to the tunnel. Aside from the novelty and kitsch I don’t know why people leave those things in older cars like this.
Power for this Range Rover is provided by a 3.9-litre fuel injected edition of the Buick/Rover V8, which at the time was factory spec’d at 182-bhp and 232 ft-lbs of torque. That’s mated to a 4-speed automatic which in turn is married to a two-speed transfer case driving all four of its beefy tires. No word in the ad whether it’s currently suspended on air or steel, however.
As we noted yesterday, there’s a new Range Rover Sport just around the corner, and of course the new top of the heap Range Rover is a technological tour de force that capable of traversing any hardscrabble surface shy of flowing lava while keeping you safely ensconced in its extravagant Kardashian womb-like interior.
Of course, not only will neither of those new trucks let you carry home your bags of cow manure in the olfactory isolation of an external bed, but they’ll also each probably serve up a big ol’ honkin’ slice of depreciation pie just for driving off the lot.
This truck has had its depreciation day in the sun, and has been cut up like a deck of cards and reshuffled into a neat pickup truck form. And for that, the seller of this clear title truck is asking $10,000. Do you think he’s asking a bit too much? Or, is that too great a price to make this a home on the Range?
You decide!
Seattle Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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