Posted on 02/13/2005 4:49:41 PM PST by The Loan Arranger
JASPER, Texas (AP) - For some drivers, even a Hummer may not be enough. At a curb weight of more than 3.5 tons, the Humvee-inspired Hummer H1 is no skinny guy who gets sand kicked in his face. But the Bad Boy Heavy Muscle Truck, a dressed-up military vehicle more than twice as heavy, is being billed as bigger, badder and more bodacious.
"It's the rugged Bubba," said Daniel Ayres, president and CEO of Homeland Defense Vehicles LLC and its division Bad Boy Trucks.
The East Texas company aims to market the machine to civilians with disposable cash and a hankering for more protection from the outside world. A $379,000 version made its public debut in January at the Dallas Safari Club convention.
For a base price of $225,000 - nearly twice the Hummer H1 wagon's base price of $117,508 - consumers can get a basic version of the 10-foot-tall Bad Boy that can drive through five feet of water, climb a 60-degree grade, tow six tons and keep rolling even with a quarter-sized hole in the tire's sidewall.
(AP) Daniel Ayres, president and CEO of Homeland Defense Vehicles LLC and its Bad Boy Trucks division,...
The price goes up from there, depending on options. Drivers can get infrared cameras that peer through darkness. The flat-nosed cab can be bulletproof, and house a mini-safe behind three leather seats. The dash can include a satellite phone, a two-way radio and a global-positioning system - all alongside DVD, MP3 and CD players and a flip-out LCD screen.
For $750,000, buyers can get the fully loaded "NBC" version that can, Ayres said, detect and block out fallout from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons by over-pressurizing the cab with filtered, clean air much like an aircraft.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
You've gotta read this article! "Kiss My Megatruck, Dude
When the world is in perfect, ultra-macho harmony, you get a 9-foot-tall, 14,500-pound SUV" by Mark Morford in SF Gate.
Aww, screw it. I mean, really. You just gotta love this thing.
You just gotta love the fact that some semitruck company somewhere called International Truck and Engine Corp. is now coming out with what they claim is the world's largest production pickup, called the CXT, all 9 feet high and 8 feet wide, a whopping 21 feet long and 14,500 pounds and 18 million excruciating earthly groans of it.
And in most states that don't give a crap for their roads or the environment or any human life that might be existing in the various passenger cars surrounding it, you don't need a commercial truck license to own or drive the CXT, a vehicle that makes the Hummer H2 look like a Honda Civic and that makes all the manly thick-necked boys go, ooohhhyeessss, and that the company itself claims, oh so tellingly, will absolutely guarantee your title of "king of the dirt pile."
See, there is this point. There is this point where it all becomes just beyond silly and absurd and surreal. There is this threshold you reach where you finally just have to toss in the moral and spiritual and intellectual and commonsensical towel and just laugh out loud and shake your head and sigh and then run off to the woods with a bottle of fine sake and the collected Coltrane. This is what you have to do. Especially when faced with such wicked absurdities as, say, Kraft Lunchables. Or John Ashcroft. Or Dr. Phil. Or the CXT.
And, for a brief, shining moment, I had thought the cute little Hummer H2 had this particular point of macho absurdity nailed -- defined it, owned it, sneered at it and ran over it 200 times with its big crushing 22-inch monster rims and said ha ha ha, I am the one, beeyatch, no vehicle is sillier and no vehicle is more moronic and no vehicle is more perfectly representative of the aggro-macho-gluttonous attitude of America and no vehicle better symbolizes our childish and cartoonish and ultimately sad stance toward how we treat the planet and how we view ourselves and our role in the world.
Not anymore. The CXT makes the Hummer whimper and cower and suck its thumb. The CXT is by far the biggest baddest dumbest production pickup in American history, and no one is even trying to debate that fact, no one even coming anywhere near defending the thing as anything other than every monosyllabic frat boy's wettest of wet automotive dreams because even the most die-hard knobby-brained SUV fanatic takes one look at the CXT and goes, holy crap, that thing is sort of, you know, ridiculous. But in a really badass sort of way.
Oh sure, the company says the CXT is a "severe" truck for "professional" use. Oh sure, they say it will be sold mostly to hardcore contractors and landscapers and boat racers and people with massive amounts of nonarable acreage that needs to have 200,000 pounds of rocks hauled across it on a daily basis. It doesn't matter.
Because this ain't simply a work truck. It's also designed for the "discriminating" blue-collar redneck with $115,000 to spare, given how you can order the CXT with every imaginable luxury; there's even a "customized black International CXT with ghosted green flames that has a leather interior with wood-grain trim, reclining captain chairs, a fold-down bench that can be used as a bed, an overhead compartment with drop-down DVD, an XM satellite premium radio system and a rear-mounted camera." I mean, how cool is that? Answer: totally mega manly cool. Dude.
After all, this is the BushCo era, baby. This country is all about excess and earthly abuse and Texas-sized faux machismo masquerading as true patriotism. Why even try to hide your gluttony anymore? Be proud of it, says the GOP -- er, the CXT. Get yourself a monster truck and ride around in towering titanic style and protect the crumbling lie of what makes America strong, because it sure as hell ain't our amazing religious diversity and it ain't affirmative action or intelligent diplomacy or deep respect for our allies and it sure as hell ain't same-sex marriage or feminine energy or spiritual openness or pathetic little hybrid cars, you liberal twit.
It's Rambo, baby. It's 7 miles per gallon of diesel, downhill. It's monster pickup trucks the size of a large studio apartment.
So then. Let's do it. Let's just get it over with. Let's all get a CXT. I mean, what the hell, right? Let's just give in and stomp around like we own the goddamn place and burn up all the remaining oil a fast as possible, maul the roads and gag the air and wipe out all those silly Priuses and Mini Coopers and all those annoying gnatlike bicycles once and for all.
It will just be, after all, so much fun, until the hurricanes strike and the earthquakes rumble and the exhausted Earth finally shudders and recoils and opens up wide and swallows us whole.
But you'll be OK. You'll be safely ensconced in your CXT, loving the fact that in Hell, it's all "off road."
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/09/22/notes092204.DTL&nl=fix
the site www.usa6x6.com has some very cool trucks.
The truck for people with more money than good sense.
Now that's the REAL Power Wagon! My dad's carpool buddy had one of those when we were kids. Too cool.
BTW, in the realm of trucks for us mortals, although I'm a Chevy guy, the new Dodge Megacab looks pretty interesting:
Enough room for the family, plus a decent cargo bed. Reclining REAR seats that will fold flat to provide 22 cubic feet of interior cargo space with rear doors that open to nearly ninety degrees to allow easy access to the back. Also has a hemi standard in the 1500 and choice of a Cummins turbo diesel in the 2500 and 3500.
If you think the truck is expensive, wait until someone actually tries out it's off-raod capabilities. Can you imagine the towing bill for this baby if/when it reaches the limit of it's capabilities? Now THAT will really separate the men from the boys!
You mean these kinds of vehicles hack off Mrs. Morford? Cool! Sign me up, pardner! I am practically tingling at the thought of the kind of horse trailer that thing could pull (and I suppose my having domesticated members of the equine tribe also gets the knickers in a knot). Man, if I only had the extra 115 grand. Not to use it, just to hack these people off.
I think the key to selling these things will be the options that enable it to be converted into a mobile home. Rich people will buy it as a mobile office and deduct it from their taxes.
Men have told me all my life " AW honey you can do anything in my truck" I did not believe them then but maybe I will now!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL
I just checked my wallet, and I don't seem to have $379,000 to spare. Pity.
What on EARTH is that!??
Bucket Excavator used a lot in Europe.
Bucket Excavator used a lot in Europe.
Man, did you bring back OLD MEMORIES!
Nothing like a huge milling machine for the Earth. Check out the stairways leading up to the control room, much less the size of those people in comparison.
Oh boy! I can't wait to see those driving all around town tricked out with chrome and spinners!
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