Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Jeep is making my head explode. It’s a truck-based El Camino/Ranchero style single body pickup which is amazing, based off a desirable two-door Cherokee which a loss. Let’s see if its price tag can ultimately put the pin back in.
Did you know that model maker Tamiya has a superbly detailed 1/12th scale model of the Ferrari 288GTO available, and it only costs about $400? No? Well no matter, as you probably won’t be buying one, as for many spending more than a few bucks on a kit car seems a bridge too far.
Hence was the case with last Friday’s VW-based Invader GT5 kit car. That’s because it came with some assembly required and a price that indicated that it shouldn’t. The result was a 63% Crack Pipe loss and some grumbling that buying a car shouldn’t involve having to put it together.
To that end, let’s start the new week with a custom truck that’s seemingly had all the work already done on it. This 1994 Jeep Cherokee Sport has been converted from enclosed-cab, two-door sport utility (hence the moniker) to an open bed mini-truck that’s both rugged and cute as a hipster bug’s plug-adorned ear.
But wait, you’re asking with furrowed brow and unconsciously clenched butt cheeks, didn’t Jeep offer a pickup based on the Cherokee already? Something called the Comanche? Yes. Yes they did.
This however is not that. This custom rocks a mini-bed, one probably too small to accommodate a comfortable night for Goldilocks, but also one that’s been grafted, car/truck like, onto the Cherokee’s main body. It’s like nothing you’ve seen before, but still sufficiently familiar in profile so as not to freak you out.
You might think that such a major undertaking as the melding of Cherokee and Comanche might be the result of some significant damage having been inflicted on the former in the past. That doesn’t seem to be the case however. Whatever the impetus for its creation, this truck still comes with a clean title indicating that it’s not besmirched by flood or salvage in its history.
In its present, it presents as a really cool, and unique truck. The bodywork looks not only to be top notch—which is the best notch, just ask all the other notches that have to spend all day looking up at top notch’s ass—but also strangely well proportioned. It looks, dare I say it, like it came from the factory that way.
It’s also seemingly fully functional. The tailgate folds down, and the bed has been sprayed with protective bed liner. Up top there’s a sliding rear window to keep the interior relatively fart-free, and the whole thing rides on a 3-inch lift that gives it an unmistakeable air of badassery.
Inside everything is intact as well. Well, everything forward of the seat-backs. Behind that it’s pretty much all gone. The driver’s seat shows a bit of wear on the seat squab, but other than that it all seems fairly tidy and, more importantly, not half-assed at all in the pics.
Mechanically, it seems to be standard Cherokee Sport, and that’s where you might take issue with this conversion. There’s not all that many nice Cherokee Sport two-doors left in the world, and probably fewer still featuring the 4.0 inline six and five-speed manual drivetrain. As this is a Jeep, it’s a 4X4 too. Those are some swoon-worthy specs.
According to the ad, there’s a lot of new on the truck as well, including the windshield, some of the engine ancillaries, and the funky headlights which give the truck an unfortunately creepy and soulless continence.
All in all, as long as you don’t stare into those headlights too long, I think this is a rather well conceived custom, and like the best of movie CGI, its greatest accomplishment is perhaps its innocuousness. Ahh, but what is that all worth to potential interested parties?
The asking price is $10,000, and the seller is only entertaining serious offers. I guess that leaves me pretty much out seeing as I am considered the class clown. The rest of you could pull it off however, and it’s now time to vote on whether doing so would be worth your time. What do you think, is this custom Cherokee worth it’s $10K asking? Or, is that just too much to pickup this Jeep?
You decide!
Atlanta GA Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to theKublaiKhan for the hookup!
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