A Land Rover Discovery Pickup Is the Midsize Truck We Really Need
Bring back the LR4 and do this with it!
Land Rover only offered its Defender series with a pickup body option, leaving hard-working Range Rover and Discovery fans with aftermarket options. By the time the LR4-generation Discovery came out in 2009, very few people thought of the mid-range Land Rover as a utility vehicle anyway, which is why the SUV wasn't exactly engineered to be a pickup truck. However, that wouldn't stop an experienced fabricator such as VA-K Innovation in Mexico, which spent five months figuring out how to turn an LR4 into a luxury pickup truck.
After carefully examining Land Rover's integrated body on frame chassis, VA-K's crew based just outside the city of Guadalajara extended the frame using the standard tubular steel method, adding OEM parts where possible with custom electronics for the power rear window and LED lighting.
As of now, their tall-bedded creation remains a one-off completed for an undisclosed sum, but the company told The Drive it's not opposed to making more in the future. The next one should probably take less than five months, for what it's worth.
The LR4 was available with a 5.0-liter V8 producing 370 horsepower and 376 pound-feet of torque, which may not put this in the sport truck zone just yet. However, as we well know, there's no limit to what such a compact pickup could do with a supercharger bolted on.
As it turns out, the LR4 pickup wasn't VA-K Innovation's first wild build. Quite recently, they also turned a 1993 Lincoln Town Car into a retro cocktail of 1950s Bentley with the Spirit of Ecstasy flying figure of Rolls-Royce as a grille ornament.
So far, neither the Goodwood nor the Crewe factory cared to comment.
Yes, it's a bit like Japanese Mitsuoka met The Car from 1977, but such is the way of the converted Bentley-Rolls Town Car from down south.
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