I'm a Redneck - what can Hyundai offer me?

Hyundai 'Considering' RWR Car-based Korean El Camino.

I'm an actual redneck. I like me some grillin and some beer drinkin. I enjoy watching TV in my underpants and baseball cap. It's not fitted. I got it for free.

Until now, if I was looking for a car/truck combination to do me some haulin - in the $8 thousand dollar range - I only had one choice. All my kinfolk and items I find on the curbside had to fit into an 1988 Chevy El Camino. If I the my goverment check had just arrived and the OTB was closed, maybe I'd treat myself to a GMC.

Ko Rean cars were out of the question. Plus I saw the way those po-lice beat that Rodney King fella in front of his stolen Excel.

Now, Hyundai is ready to give me yet another option. They've been doing some hootin and a holarin about their new, rear-wheel-drive Korean Kamino Koncept. Their new rear-wheel-drive platform will mean all kinds of Caprice-like gems with one of them ten year, 100,000 mile warranties. Your youngins and their mamas have never had it so good.

It probably won't happen anytime soon - but we'll be here - getting drunk and smoking crystal meth until those Korean fellas get their shit together. (link to Pickuptruck.com story)

Pickup Spot: Expensive gas, now James Inhofe and Korea - are Trucks screwed?

First, a bit of poli-sci background. James Inhofe was, until just after the mid-terms, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Because he doesn't beleive in global warming, American drivers have cheerfully been left alone when it came to cutting down on ice cap-melting V8s. And that was pretty good...for us, not the ice caps. Screw those.

Now, James, who compared Al Gore's whale hugging, tree kissing, flick to Hitler's Mein Kompf, is gone. And a democrat is taking his place. Good for the environment, bad for big, fat, fun trucks. Are trucks in trouble? Will we still be able to highlight the quality with which we f*ck using the immense size of our truck? We'll see.

In the meantime, here's the latest in truckdom:

We've been looking forward to the H3T - based on the concept GM showed off like three years ago, before the H3 was even out (left). Now, it looks like we're getting closer to production. And the pictures just posted on AutoBlog (below) made our mouths fill with vomit, as dreams of our new Hummer H3T pickup fizzled away. Might as well just get a Ranger.



Jeep, meanwhile, also gave up its concept truck ambitions and settled for a bit of welding to chop down the Wrangler into a Wrangler with a pickup bed. Again, the concept - cool. The actual truck we'll be seeing soon? Well, you have to really like the front end of Wranglers (as I do) to give a crap. We've got high hopes for the extended cab. There's no room for stuff behind the seats in this one Plus, let's home a real-Jeep-style soft top is coming too. The convertible Dakotas are getting pretty old, we need a convertible truck! (SSR is not a truck)

Finally, check out what the Koreans are threatening us with now. No, it's not a brilliant white light being the last thing we all see before being vaporised. That's a different Korea. South Korea just plan to nuke America's truck industry. As opposed to Jeep and Hummer, this is the real demilitirized zone right here:

Instead of playing soldier, the concept sketches from Kia and Hyundai look like Titan-style pickups where you sit on leather watching big screens not playing G.I.Joe in a truck based on another truck based on a civilian version of an army truck.