A bizarre Baja-themed conversion gives the classic American truck a second chance at life.
This is something you won’t see every single day. And we don’t mean a street-legal Baja truck. This custom-tube chassis houses a Diamond T body. It is well-known and respected by old-school truckers, especially those in the south. These classic rigs were popular in World War II in the 1940s and 1950s, and they eventually went out of business in the 1960s. It’s very rare to find one in any state, let alone repurposed into the most powerful Diamond T since the 6×6 transports that fought the Axis in Europe.
The cab is specifically from a 1946 Diamond T and was fused to an off-road tube-frame chassis by Tim Odell of North Carolina. Odell owns a custom fabrication shop called Vice Unlimited He was in the heart NASCAR country and found this truck in a junkyard. He had the talent and tools to make it happen and you can see the Baja machine in this video. Hoonigan AutoFocus Video is the product of his vision, craftsmanship and two years of laborious after-hours work. It’s amazing! epic.
Technically, Odell views this as an Ultra4 racer that has shades of Prerunner. It is insured and road legal in North Carolina. The truck does have some creature comforts, such as heat and air conditioning. However, the latter isn’t yet hooked up. The main control center of the truck is an iPad. It handles functions like lights and fires up the turbocharged, 6.0-liter V8 behind the driver. The engine produces 650 horsepower through a typical GM-sourced 4L80 auto, but it also has high and low range gearboxes that can be used for four-wheel-drive crawling or two-wheel drive for desert shenanigans. We like shenanigans
This chassis is well-suited to shenanigans. Odell designed and built everything. We mean everything, from the custom headlight brackets to his chassis structure and custom brake rotors. The Hummer H1 portal axles are used upfront, while the rear has a trick pump that drives the driveshaft to lubricate and lubricate the gear. The engine is now housed in a 30-gallon fuel tank, while the firewall of the Diamond T has been moved eight inches forward to accommodate the electronic components.
Diamond T is the body that Odell found in the junkyard. He repaired areas that were too worn and replaced the inner skins of the doors with pop-out windows. The exterior patina has been preserved with a satin topcoat. This is good, as he clearly enjoys getting his rig dirty. In the video he says he also loves taking it to car shows, and while he could make it a legit Ultra4 racer with a few minor changes, for now it’s just a truly unique build that brings new life to a gone-but-not-forgotten trucking nameplate from U.S. history.