It was 2006.  It was discovered as an unwanted vehicle parked in a co-worker’s mom’s driveway for 5 years.  It was the right price - free. It had stopped running and she didn't want it in her driveway anymore!  It started after 4 hr and 3 cans of engine start spray.  We brought it to the bird house, where it would live for 5 years. The car waited for about a month, while we realized what we were about to do.

Strip it down to what we deemed essential - The cab was connected with 4 bolts, the bed was connected with 4 bolts - that was the easy part.  We pulled out the transmission & engine and  traded them for two 6-packs of corona with limes - not sounding hard yet.

Clean 30 years of dirt and oil off it. Easier said than done.

Raise the cab up 4 feet - don't debate about it, just get er done. We know we wanted the cab up high.  This meant that we needed to transpose the steering wheel, brakes, gas petal, emergency brake, and well, the cab itself.

What to create? We came up with a lot of car themes before we got to this point.  But it was difficult to pick the right theme until we could see the chassis.  All we knew at this point was that the cab was going to be raised 4 feet, we were going to use an electric motor, and we were going to need to power that motor. 

We knew that we wanted to have a place to sit.  We wanted it to be close to the ground to make it easy to get up and down.  We wanted a vehicle that was going to be friendly to the people of the playa.  The next nine months went quickly as we developed our first prototype mutant vehicle to present to Black Rock City... The Hilux.

Stephen Wahl – Mark Siminoff – Bobby Buchser