Yahoo Autos Hum Like A Dinosaur, Bite Like A T-REX With This Jurassic Truck
Because the Hummer H1 just wasn't already overflowing with powerful, rippling torrents of masculinity, there was once a company with the subtle name of Jurassic Truck Company, with its sole offering: the T-REX.
Back in the halcyon good-ol'-days of pre-9/11, cheap-gas, SUV-booming America, the Arlington, Texas-based company (what'd you expect, Nova Scotia?) set out with little more than a dream, a scant $350,000, a network of twelve dealerships across the American West, and a vision to best AM General at its own game-for far less. An unassembled kit would've ran you $16,500, while a rolling chassis complete with 6.0-liter General Motors V8 would've been $27,900. In the heady days of 1999, an AM General Hummer would've cost a minimum of $70,000-so a steel-bodied copy with a canvas roof would've been the bargain of the soon-to-be-ending century.
Jurassic co-founder Tim Barton "got the basic dimensions for his fiberglass T-REX bodies by spending two hot days at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas, measuring salvage Humvee bodies," said a Chicago Tribune article from January 23, 2000. Barton, a Dallas native who spent 30 years in the stunt vehicle business, originally returned to Texas to build a 700-horsepower V12 supercar called the X1. When that fell through, he wanted to build modified Hummers for stunt work. AM General turned him down. Instead, Barton doubled down, proving the veracity of the adage: if you can't beat 'em, copy the hell out of 'em, and then try not to get sued.
"If we get to 800 or 1,000 sales a year, and we can reach that, we'll pass the Hummer," Barton told the paper.
"AM General officials say they are not worried," notes the Tribune.
Presumably, a majority of these went to novelty-themed off-road tours in Ruidoso, New Mexico, where-loaded up with retirees-they do triple and sometimes quadruple duty a day having their automatic transmissions overheated by college kids on summer break.
If you're thinking of starting your own adventure tour, and a fleet of star-spangled H2s is just too much, you could do no worse than to head down to San Antonio, where you could pick this up for the price of two H2s and then singlehandedly retake the Alamo if you were so inclined.
Jurassic built just 115 T-REXs before it folded. This is only the second Jurassic built, which makes it The Lost World of the automotive taxonomy. 2000 pounds lighter than a Hummer! touts the seller. (You know what else is 2000 pounds lighter than a Hummer? Nearly every other vehicle on Earth.) As red as an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie poster, it's got everything you need to forcibly take over your own federal wildlife reserve: CB and Marine band radios, onboard air compressor, 35-inch Mickey Thompson Baja Belted tires, 8000-pound winch which could allow you to rescue a Hummer H1, balanced and blueprinted 383 LT1 stroker engine.
Helpfully, the seller points out that you can even swap out the front bodywork for a genuine Hummer H1 grille, thereby bringing Barton's and Jurassic's original vision to full circle.
"It's so butt-ugly, it's cute," Barton told a newspaper in 1999. "We think it will have that appeal for the next ten years."
If you agree, then pick up the phone, call a man named "Hawkeye Wills," and prepare to co-star in your own Eighties action TV series. Adventure is out there!
Images via Craigslist
