When it comes to automotive artistic expression, Chevy's Suburban offers a generous canvas. Today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe custom '98 may be more urban than suburban, but is its price a work of art?
Poor Steve Saleen, first he chooses a monastic haircut that only serves to highlight his male pattern baldness, and then he lets a car like yesterday's 2005 Focus S121 N2O escape his factory doors, just prior to selling the place off. Now, I'm not saying that Ford front-driver, with its body kit made from 100% douchebag, was the cause of Saleen selling his company, but the 61% of you who called it a Crack Pipe day may have felt it reasonable to think that it did. For those of you who felt that 2F2F Ford wasn't ostentatious enough, today we'll be rockin' your suburbs.
To say that the Suburban has been a staple of both Chevy's fleet and polygamist's driveways is like saying you'd like to motorboat Scarlett Johansson. I mean, it's pretty much a given. But while ubiquitous, Chevy's baleen whale of a sport ute has never been a ride that you'd have the expectation would rate a primo valet spot at the fine dining establishment of your choice.
That's until today, mo-fos!
You know, a couple of weeks ago when I described Canada as the ice hockey capital of North America, I was chided that the proper description is hockey capital of the world. That's totally correct, and equally appropriate for today's contender, as this Canadian custom 1998 Chevy Suburban will likely have you saying What the Puck?!
What indeed, as like Micheal Jackson's monkey, this ‘burban has been touched in some disturbing ways. Overall it looks like what a gaggle of teens would drive to a Motorhead concert — if it were in an old John Hughes film. Sporting tri-tone paint with orange flames licking at the doorhandles, both the flip-forward hood and the split back doors have been muralized with skull art. The headlights look like they are from some sort of Range Rover, and flank a billet grille sandwiched between a chrome bumper and likewise blindness-inducing bug deflector. In fact all the pimp-my-ride exterior checkboxes have been filled as the expected Lambo doors do attest. Overall, the quality of the work looks first-rate, even if the execution may not have universal appeal.
On the inside, it's like getting a billet to the brain, and the overall styling mix of polished metal and swathes of ostrich — yes, ostrich — creates a cabin experience that's like being in the world's most high-tech aviary. Video screens and even more flames abound, but the piece de resistance, written on the back of the center console are these words Big Willie Style. Who the hell wouldn't want to roll big willie style? And as you'd want to announce your big willie stylings while you roll, you'll be down with the fact that the entire rear section of this Suburban's cabin is filled with what is either a sound system designed to sonically neuter cats at 100 yards, or a secret weapon to be used against the Martians. This being old school Canadian, you can easily imagine Alanis Morissette coming out of those massive speakers at 150 decibels. You oughta' know!
Underhood is the stock 5.7-litre Vortec V8, and in ‘98 that engine managed 255-bhp. Big Willie has K&N'd it, but otherwise there doesn't seem to be much to talk about in there, unless you have some sort of freaky yellow loom wrap fetish. If you do, you might also like the donkalicious 24" DUBs which look like some sort of Klingon sex toys. Mileage? Well, there's 178K on the billet-bound odo, but overall the truck doesn't give off the appearance of that kind of miles, and as it's rear-drive only, you can be pretty assured they've been mostly on-road.
This Suburban is like an ass-plode of awesome and there's so much going on — Flames! Skullz! Ostrich! — that it seems inconceivable that it has but only one price. Canada soft-landed out of the recent recession, and hence their dollar no longer plays Robin to the American buck's Batman. That means this truck's $13,980 price tag will probably be the same no matter if you say ‘eh?' or ‘hey, could you spare some change?'
So, what do you think of $13,980 for the chance to roll Big Willie Style? Is that a price that would give you a Canada goose? Or, is this one suburban that needs refurbin'?
You decide!
eh-Bay or go here if the ad disappears. H/T to Zero-Hope for the hookup!
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