Find of the Week: Ultimate Custom Hauler

If you're looking to tow a trailer with the longest and coolest tow vehicle around, then we've got the ultimate hauler. Our find of the week is part modern pickup, part classic pickup, part vintage Suburban, and part big rig. But it's 100-percent awesome. It's a 1954 custom Chevrolet Cabover Suburban, for sale in Oakville, Ontario.

Late model pickups and SUVs have amazing amounts of capability. They can tow more, they can haul more, and they can do more than anything from the 1950s. A pickup made since the 1990s will have more luxury and more reliability than classic truck drivers could ever dream of.

But they don't have style. Even the best looking modern trucks are still big square boxes. Straight lines, 90-degree angles, sharp edges. They don't look bad, but they don't have style.

1950s trucks have curves. They have chrome. The only straight lines are the bars in the grille. And even those are far from flat and boring.

But they have old, low-powered engines. They have manual steering and brakes that had trouble stopping them even when they were empty.

What if you could take the best of both worlds? Put a 1950s body on a modern chassis? You'd get upgraded capability and more style. It's becoming a common swap. Putting old truck bodies on modern truck frames. Some people are even putting vintage Ford truck bodies on Crown Victoria car frames. But that's been done.

What if you want something completely different. Something nobody else has. Well, this is what you might end up with.

It starts with the frame from a 1980s Chevrolet truck. It's a dual rear wheel model because the original owner wanted to use it to tow an RV. That frame has been stretched. By a lot. But it wasn't stretched in the middle, which is the usual way to do it. This frame was stretched in front of the engine.

That means that it's mid-engined. The engine is actually underneath of the cargo area of the passenger compartment. And that engine is a doozy. It's an 8.2L (502 ci) big block crate engine from Chevrolet that makes 440 hp and somewhere north of 500 lb-ft of torque. That's enough to get just about any trailer moving.

On top of that frame is the body. But not one body. That's not enough. This truck uses three different bodies. The first is a 1953 Chevrolet Suburban Carryall. That's where the passenger compartment came from. That third-generation Suburban was the inspiration for the Chevy HHR. The original looks much better, and it still looks good here.

That bulging hood comes from a 1954 Chevrolet cab over truck. That was Chevy's highway tractor from the 1950s. It shared the pickup nose with the Suburban but lifted up the hood and passenger compartment. The cab over needed that tall hood, and lifted the cab up. Way up. But the Suburban to cab over conversion has been done. So this one needed something even better. A bed.

At the back, the bed comes from a 1996 Chevrolet dually pickup truck. Under that bed is a custom Corvette taillight conversion, and inside the bed is a fifth-wheel trailer hitch setup. Now you have all the ingredients for the ultimate tow vehicle

Other modifications to the chassis include twin 132L fuel tanks, electric cooling fans, and an uprated transmission.

This custom hauler is updated on the inside too. There are four bucket seats with tweet upholstery and more adjustability than the 1950s bench. It has air conditioning, a new stereo, and even electric wipers instead of the original vacuum operated ones.

The shop that is selling this truck has used it as a show vehicle for the last 15 years. It was originally built by a shop in Alberta to tow a travel trailer, but the first owner sold it before it got a chance to do duty as a hauler.

If you're looking for a show truck that will turn heads and haul...things, then this could be exactly what you're looking for. You certainly aren't going to see another one on the road anytime soon. Or anytime ever.