Fast Pickups: Used Car Reminder
Posted by Doug DeMuro in Used Car Reminder on | 3 comments
Let’s say you’re the kind of person who likes pickup trucks. You probably enjoy haulin’ stuff, going to tractor pulls, and drawing dicks on your friends’ faces when they pass out drunk. In other words, you’re a classy, classy individual.
Now, let’s say you also like sports cars. And for some reason you decide you want to combine these polar opposites, kind of like when they came out with wild cherry M&Ms. Yes, that exists. For the two people reading this who are inexplicably nodding in excitement, the latest Used Car Reminder is for you.
Let’s start with the GMC Syclone, which was a hotted-up version of the compact GMC Sonoma made in 1991 (and very briefly in 1992). At a time when no one was making anything exciting and the S-Class had 228 horsepower, the Syclone had all-wheel drive, boy-racer ground effects, and an interior that may have looked cheap but was actually very Superleggera. It also required 4.3 liters and a turbocharger to produce 280 horsepower.
But for all its flaws, the Syclone could hit 60 in the low 4s and run the quarter in 13 flat, which makes it better than most modern BMW M cars. Not bad for a 20-year-old truck with a four-speed automatic that was designed by people whose previous sports car experience involved making a GMC Safari with fog lights.
Crazy though the Syclone was, it would be out-absurded ten years later by Dodge, who pulled the 8.3-liter V10 out of its Viper sports car to create the Dodge Ram SRT-10. Not only did they make a 500-horsepower pickup, but they gave it a stick shift. And then they did a Crew Cab version, so you could carry around your friends as you cruised for chicks coming out of the tattoo shops on the main streets of Tennessee. Somehow, this thing also did 0-to-60 in around 4 seconds, probably thanks to a shift lever that looked and felt like a baseball bat jammed into the truck’s floor.
These days, a nice Syclone runs about $10k, while a Ram SRT-10 is available in the mid-$20k range. Both would make an entrance at the tractor pull. Just don’t pass out near any friends with access to Sharpies.
3 Responses to “ “Fast Pickups: Used Car Reminder”
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I don’t think it’s fair that you pick on the Syclone and it’s follow-on the GMC Typhoon this way. These trucks used the power plant from the Buick GNX, which was the fasted car in the USA at the time. The Syclone was tested against many contemporary sports cars, including Corvettes, 300ZX’s and Ferraris, and beat most of them most of the time.
Maybe having all that performance in a truck is silly, but GM had discontinued all the RWD platforms that year and there wasn’t much left to put that power plant in. The Typhoon SUV, was much more practical with 4 doors and 5 seats and certainly not more ridiculous than an AMG Hammer 4-door.
On the Dodge SRT10 pickup, the regular cab was only available with a manual, and the crew cab was only available with an autotragic. Strange.
Jeep had a quick little pickup in the downsized Commanche. The 4.0 liter coupled with some low gearing put it in the 5-second club IIRC. But with most Jeeps, they seemed to depreciate quickly.