Last Call: Monster Truck Miata

Colby Buchanan

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This week I gave you guys the Woodie Bronco and the Modern Foxbody but what about the monster truck Miata!? This beast is so funny that it actually works. Obviously most people think about the cute little two0seater when they hear Miata so this is basically a physical oxymoron. The cut fenders and massive tires give it a nice rugged feel and the tow hitch is a nice touch too. I’m so curious about what it would be like to drive this thing. The owner @alan_kyle has some videos of him throwing it around and they all make me smile. This is the definition of a car built purely for fun and I love it for that.

Last Call indicates the end of Hooniverse’s broadcast day. It’s meant to be an open forum for anyone and anything. Thread jacking is not only accepted, it’s encouraged.

About

Colby Buchanan

Colby Buchanan

My name is Colby Buchanan and I love all things car-related all the way from rusted 240sx’s to McLaren Senna’s and of course I have a soft spot for American Muscle. You can spot me in my bone stock ’06 350z named MackenZ.

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23 responses to “Last Call: Monster Truck Miata”

  1. Wayne Moyer Avatar
    Wayne Moyer

    I just want to believe it has its stock motor. That way there is no possible way the top speed is any higher than 15.

    Reply
    1. outback_ute Avatar
      outback_ute

      I am prepared to change my mind if it has been done properly (can’t find a build thread), but I suspect there is enough backyard hackery that this thing has no place on public roads

      As Scoutdude noted this has larger tyres than most safari/rally Miatas so they sit a lot further outboard, and I gather there has been cutting of structural stuff for clearance

      Reply
  2. Scoutdude Avatar
    Scoutdude

    That has to be the tallest tires I’ve seen on a Miata before. There are couple lifted rally cross style Miatas around here. The owner of one works at my local Costco, in the tire shop I presume. Another employee, again I suspect a tire shop employee and one lowered about as low as you can go. Of course they like to park them next to each other when they can.

    Reply
    1. nanoop Avatar
      nanoop

      As ever so often, the truth is somewhere in the middle!

      Reply
  3. Batshitbox Avatar
    Batshitbox

    I got one word for ya: “Dune Buggy”.

    Reply
  4. 0A5599 Avatar
    0A5599

    https://hooniverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/save-the-sidewalls-shirt.png

    Reply
  5. Fuhrman16 Avatar
    Fuhrman16

    Is that really were the stock location for the fuel filler is on a Miata? I guess I never payed that close attention to one.

    Reply
    1. crank_case Avatar
      crank_case

      Yep.

      Reply
  6. Zentropy Avatar
    Zentropy

    I’m guessing it’s just a Miata body on a 4×4 truck frame, which is a decades-old tactic that I don’t care for. I admittedly like lifted Crown Vics, Foxbodies, Subarus, etc., but car bodies dropped onto truck frames are just lazy engineering coupled with unremarkable taste.

    If it is an actual lifted Miata, I don’t see how it could move under its own power.

    Edited: Ok, I’ll take that back. Quick Google research shows many builds using modified stock suspensions that could fit this size tire. Most appear to supercharge the engine to deal with the extra mass. Color me surprised, and corrected.

    Reply
  7. danleym Avatar
    danleym

    Made me smile, I have a soft spot for lifted cars with big ass all terrains. I don’t care about practicality or how it was engineered, I’m not critiquing from a standpoint of whether I would spend my money on it, it simply makes me smile when I see it so I like it.

    Reply
  8. Batshitbox Avatar
    Batshitbox

    Odd coincidence:
    Cruising out to do laundry yesterday my homie and I were passed by a Nissan Skyline, or what posed as a Skyline. It said “Skyline” across the back but the rear window tint, and distance, prevented us from seeing if it was RHD.
    However! When we got to the laudromat we parked behind a Nissan Homy GT Cruise, which definitely was RHD!

    So it’s possible I saw two RHD Nissans in one 25 minute drive to the laundromat. Just seeing a Homy is rare enough, I’ve seen a few Delicas but this was the first Homy I’d encountered.

    Reply
    1. Scoutdude Avatar
      Scoutdude

      I’ve seen quite a few Delicias around western WA and a fair number of Skylines too. The Nissan Vans I’ve seen around here aren’t really Vans but crew cab pickups that almost all of them had been outfitted as a fire truck. There are a number of people who import cars from Japan an occasionally Europe under the 25 year rule. What catches my eye when they come up are the Pajero Mini, Cappuccino, and Autozam.

      Reply
    2. Sjalabais Avatar
      Sjalabais

      Somebody just recently talked about van prices, and that this one went for 14k$ is nuts, to my mind. These are awesome vehicles, no doubt, especially in top trim, but that kind of money buys a lot of other stuff, too.

      Reply
      1. Batshitbox Avatar
        Batshitbox

        Sure! $14K USD will get you a lot of van! For instance, if you’re sights are set on a 1993 4WD camper van you can have this 1-ton Ford for a mere $15,000 (Don’t expose it to daylight, or ever look at the passenger’s side) All accommodations hand made by artisanal Santa Cruz Hippies!

        And if you’ve got $18,000 and are dedicated to the 20th century vans, this Ford conversion van once touched MORGAN FREEMAN’S ass!

        For just under 5 figures, someone will grab this hi-roof wheelchair van to rip out the wheelchair bits and flip it as an empty shell for about $12,000. Because VAN LIFE!

        Finally, this ol’ Chev is probably the cheapest camper passenger van you’ll find. Rollin’ on 24-inch rims “and new tires with good size to go right over pot holes” and packing a rebuilt… um, everything.

        Reply
        1. Sjalabais Avatar
          Sjalabais

          That is truly insane. We may have just identified the one vehicle class where the Norwegian car marked possibly dusts the US. But no V8s and V10s here, only diesels:

          https://www.finn.no/car/used/search.html?body_type=10&filters=

          (divide by 9 for USD)

          Here is an iconic POS priced exactly like my Centennial, that makes me feel real good about the bargain I took home…I’d probably start van life with something like this.

          Reply
        2. Sjalabais Avatar
          Sjalabais

          That is truly insane. We may have just identified the one vehicle class where the Norwegian car marked possibly dusts the US. But no V8s and V10s here, only diesels:

          https://www.finn.no/car/used/search.html?body_type=10&filters=

          (divide by 9 for USD)

          Here is an iconic POS priced exactly like my Centennial, that makes me feel real good about the bargain I took home…I’d probably start van life with something like this.

          Reply
    3. Scoutdude Avatar
      Scoutdude

      Even odder coincidence. Today I was out driving with the wife and we passed a Skyline, it too had darkly tinted rear windows, but un-tinted fronts. So as we got at just the correct vantage point I pointed it out and said “hey that car doesn’t have a driver”, and then of course pulled farther forward to where the driver sitting on the wrong side of the vehicle could be seen. We soon exited that freeway on to another and what did I merge in front of but a Delicia!

      The big JDM surprise of the day though was a High Top Conversion Hiace that I passed as it was pulling into a grocery store. Just like the others the “driver’s” side seat was empty.

      Reply
      1. Batshitbox Avatar
        Batshitbox

        That’s nuts! Now I’m going to be looking at everything to see if it’s RHD. There’s probably a lot more of them than I think, but up ’til now if it wasn’t directly in front of my nose I wouldn’t notice. (Though, I can tell a Delica at a fair distance.)

        There was a guy in SF that had a RHD Scout (other than yours truly) and when asked if it was a Postal Scout he said no, it was Australian. I have a hard time believing anyone prior to 2010 would pay to have an Australian Scout shipped over here unless the US Military was involved. I didn’t look at his truck to see if it was 4WD, I don’t think I’ve seen a 4WD/RHD Scout.

        Reply
        1. Scoutdude Avatar
          Scoutdude

          Yeah I have a hard time believing that someone would have imported a Scout from down under, unless for example it was on the government’s dime.

          Surprisingly many years ago there was a ex postal Scout II near where I lived at the time, it was 4wd.

          The other thing was the IH would build you a RHD Scout for other purposes. I’ve seen stories of people who have found them, in pickup form that had been weed control trucks and they were also used by utilities for meter reading too. So definitely possible to have a non-postal US market Scout.

          And yeah there are probably a lot more out there that go unnoticed. The Delicia is easy to pick out since the few Japanese forward control vans we did get are mostly gone. The Skyline and the big billboard on the back make them stand out, at least from behind.

          The sneaky ones to me are the Toyota SUVs. There are a number of JDM variants of the Landcruiser and 4Runner that look a lot like the ones we got in the US but the details aren’t quite right. Then you look a little closer and find it is a Surf for example and of course that it is RHD.

          Reply
          1. Batshitbox Avatar
            Batshitbox

            I think (I’m not positive) that for Rural Route Delivery you had to have your own vehicle, and that Scouts & Jeeps were available (Jeeps up until quite recently) in RHD to anyone who spec’d it. Certainly the tooling for that was based on fleet sales. The build sheet for my RHD Scout 80 showed it was a dealership floor model from Turlock, CA.

          2. Scoutdude Avatar
            Scoutdude

            Yeah the contract carriers supply their own vehicles. The wife of a guy I used to work with was a contract carrier so he kept 3 long ago retired by the postal service DJ’s for her. Two were usually kept ready to roll and the third was a parts vehicle.

            That is surprising, IH dealers didn’t keep lots of vehicles in stock and I wouldn’t expect them to order a RHD for a floor model.

            I do remember reading an old review of one of the first of the Scouts and there being a note that they designed for RHD from the start, in case they got a postal contract. They stuck with that for many years as they kept the driver’s side steering arm with a hole for a RHD drag link until I think the end of the SII.

        2. outback_ute Avatar
          outback_ute

          I think all Scouts in Australia would have been 4wd. FWIW I haven’t seen a lhd one…

          Using lhd vehicles for rural mail delivery isn’t done here incidentally.

          Reply
  9. Sjalabais Avatar
    Sjalabais

    Currently, I am equal parts embarrassed and happy about a recent purchase. Embarrassed because the know-all that is Facebook brought me an ad for a “spray on ceramic coating”, which sounds ridiculous, but it is also cheap, and it speaks to the not-really-a-detailer and also lazy-as-they-come part of me. So I bought it: Gyeon Q2M WetCoat. This stuff is like RainX for the entire car: A water repellent that is applied in a very simple and quick way. Some reviewers compare this to a ceramic coating and get away with it because it contains silicadioxide. I don’t have these high hopes.

    What is astonishing though, is that one would apply this after the car is already cleaned with a shampoo – I use a, cough, “shampoo and wax”-quick fix. Nonetheless, the WetCoat feels like “Photoshop in a bottle”, as the paint comes through with more depth, colour and live after applying it. I have no idea how this works, but it is impressive, and the reason why I used 3/4s of my 500ml bottle on all three cars right away…it’s a Korean product that is worth the money unless you really expect a ceramic coating. After a long drive including stretches of gravel road, I could just flush off most of the dirt. But, like RainX, the coating on the windshield is a bit weird. In direct sunlight, it is somewhat reflective/gooey and reduces visibility.

    https://streamable.com/d9kk4q

    Reply