It’s my friend’s girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend’s father’s slammed, single cab, short bed, straight pipped, crusty ass “mini truck”. And it might’ve been one of the most fun things I’ve ever driven.

To be blunt with y’all, I’ve been fortunate enough to have gotten my grubby little college student hands on a lot of diverse and sometimes expensive metal (or carbon). But this ‘truck’, exists in a realm outside of that world.

Often on this site I’ve talked about the joy and freedom of driving a car that you don’t care about. This might just be the ultimate expression of that. While it’s not at the same level of mechanical atrophy as the na Miata I wrote about early (it would over heat after 10 minutes), this baby truck was not too far off.

It was low, and somehow managed to be both too squishy and stiff at the same time. It would veer off into whatever direction it pleased, and driving straight meant having the wheel cocked at a 45 degree angle. Wires and misc crap dangled from the steering column, which was completely exposed due to the key being lost.

You go to press the clutch, and oh god it feels like a pillow. The 5 speed manual ranks amongst the funniest and worst things I’ve ever used. You throw the lever across a gap as wide as Olympus Mons and it just sorta finds its way to a gear, which is usually the right one. There is no feeling in that lever, no weight, and almost no resistance. Building on that, shifting can be done with an odd amount of speed, due to the lack of resistance. Performing a heel-toe in this thing is an experience all on its own. Mashing the throttle to force the poor engine to build up enough revs to downshift smoothly within the time it takes to actually shift gears. It became an art-form of its own.

It had two seats, but we fit three people in it. The radio was only able to pick up the Latino station in Daytona, which prompted me to yell in Spanish for most of the drive.

The whole thing is loud. Loud because of the radio, loud from the wind down windows being open, and loud from the exhaust. I’m pretty sure there was some sorta exhaust on it. Maybe. It was loud 4 cylinder screeching into the night begging for someone to dump it into the nearest canal.

There’s no power steering, no power anything actually. The steering feedback wasn’t complete garbage, which was a surprise. And around the few corners we have here, it was scarily competent. I’m not sure if the truck’s weight, suspension, and tires all made it handle, or if it just gave an enhanced sensation of speed mixed with the utter chaos that was occurring in the truck.

There really isn’t much more to dissect about it. It’s a trashed and modded “mini truck”, driven by an idiot being egged on by two great friends to keep abusing the poor thing. I had probably an hour to understand it, and in that time, it was treated it like a rental go kart, it’s value was worth about as much.