My buddy Dan has owned some very cool rides over the years, but this one was, in my opinion, his best. It's a 2001 Ford Explorer Sport Trac- not the first vehicle that comes to mind when you think of building a custom! But over the course of about five years Dan built a wild custom truck that earned him a lot of trophies and a few magazine features, including the cover of Minitruckin Magazine!
Although it went through a few "generations" of customization, my favorite is the final version, after being body dropped:
It's laid out on 22" Sinister Devine wheels, with fully custom air suspension front and rear (nobody makes ANYTHING to drop these trucks, so Dan had to figure just about everything out for himself!).
The graphics were painted by Cashman Customs in Concord, CA, and they extend into the interior panels- everything from the dash to the pillar trim was sanded, smoothed, and airbrushed! Custom two-tone leather replaced the stock cloth seat fabric and allowed for the deletion of the front headrests. Before the giant sliding ragtop, Dan had a flip-down video monitor in the headliner, but after cutting that giant hole in the roof the front monitor provided the video entertainment, with two 10" subs and a host of separates filling the sound duties.
Sadly, every project comes to an end. And like me, when Dan finishes a project, he gets bored... and sells it! The Sport Trac was sold to a local guy, who drove it for a while and actually worked near our old shop- which sucked when new damage showed up on it! After about a year everyone lost track of it, and the last I heard it was in pretty bad shape. Unfortunately, custom trucks live a hard life after their original builder lets them go- the subsequent owners don't respect the work that went into them, and have no idea how to fix them when something breaks.
Dan is on to other projects, though- he's currently building a '53 Ford that is chopped, 'bagged, and has a lot of neat "traditional" custom touches- I'll post up on it when he gets it back together!
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