Stuck In The Muck

A few weeks ago, we talked about the insanity behind custom trucks. It’s really an age-old argument and one that went down in the offices of Rod and Custom Magazine back in 1955. See, the fellas were putting together a special issue covering custom trucks and for demonstration purposes, they built an early Chevy pickup with a dropped axle up front and 4″ blocks out back.

Much of the staff was gung-ho. Lowering a truck, they argued, improved center of gravity, handling, usability, etc… All of the arguments that I gave my own dad when I lowered my first truck. However, a few of the fellas on the staff (I’m betting the more senior members) came back with the same argument my old man did…

“It’s a truck. Trucks are for more than highway cruising and when that thing gets down to business it’s gonna fail.”

Never to shy away from a challenge, the gung-ho members decided to put their lowered truck to a test. They took it south of the border to Mexico and found the worse roads they could possibly find. Within minutes, they were stuck in the muck and found themselves walking the entire 40 miles back to the states.

Once they reached an Arizona border town, they called some buddies in Yuma, AZ that had a very peculiar hobby. They were dune buggy men… They took perfectly good Ford roadsters, shortened them, hacked them, threw on tall tires, and hit the dunes as often as they could. These fellas were so damned good at handling the sandy stuff that they got a reputation for being men of rescue. Hell, even Life Magazine ran a feature on them.

In any case, six “dune buggies” came and rescued our gung-ho men without so much as breaking a sweat. With the truck un-stuck, the fellas went back home to So-Cal with an excuse. Their truck didn’t get stuck because it was lowered… damnit. It was simply bogged in the sand and any stock variant would have done the same!

Rad.