Buy This Gargantuan 2008 International MXT If New Trucks Are Still Too Small for You
It makes a new Ram TRX look like a kid’s toy.
International isn't a name often associated with modern pickup trucks, having built its last Light Line pickup in 1975. Even though it was a poor seller, this truck wouldn't represent International's last stab at consumer pickups. That honor belongs to the MXT, an utterly excessive blend of medium-duty commercial truck and military vehicle that dwarfed even the humongous Hummer H1.
Launched in 2007, according to an archived Navistar release, as the final member of International's Extreme Truck (or XT) series, the MXT was closely related to International's MXT-MV armored personnel carrier, and derived its M either from the military model or simply the word most, depending on who you ask. It was based on the company's DuraStar medium-duty truck chassis, making it ludicrously large for a pickup truck, coming in at 252 inches long, 96 wide, and 91 tall. That makes it around the length of a crew-cab, short-bed 2021 Ford Super Duty, but about a foot taller and more than one foot wider—and approximately 20 inches longer, 8 inches wider, and a staggering 11 inches taller than a new Ram 1500 TRX. This is a big boy.
At more than 10,500 pounds, its engine is quite thirsty, too. Anecdotes online suggest it got around 10 mpg, giving it a total range of about 400 miles on a full 40-gallon tank. Said tank fed a 6.0-liter Navistar VT365 turbodiesel V8—shared at the time with the Super Duty—which in this application produced an advertised 300 horsepower and 530 pound-feet of torque. This is communicated through a five-speed Allison 2200 RDS automatic transmission to a two-speed transfer case, likely a Magna MP1528 according to service literature. These all allowed the MXT a then-impressive two-ton payload rating, and the capability to haul up to 15,500 pounds.
Being less of a commercial truck than what Navistar openly called an "image truck," the MXT's interior was outfitted more lavishly than anything else in International's lineup. All seats were upholstered in leather, from the front captain's chairs to the three-wide bench out back, though it could be swapped for captains' chairs in the luxurious Limited package.
This trim further cranked up the MXT's eccentricity, adding ivory gauge faces, plush pile carpeting, and the kind of onboard technology that'll make Gen Z's equivalent to Radwooders gush a decade from now. We're talking DVD navigation, a concussive sound system with 6.5-inch speakers, screens in the headrests, and even a PlayStation 3.
Such extravagance was priced accordingly, with Navistar's 2007 release advertising a starting MSRP of $89,500, or more than $114,000 adjusted for inflation. Though well-charted truck territory in the 2020s, that evidently crossed the line of too much truck in 2008, as various sources online indicate the XT series sold poorly, though actual volume is never specified. As a result, International canceled the XT series as a whole in 2008, and the apparently small number of trucks sold by then means MXTs rarely hit the market.
When they do, though, they sell for serious money, with Classic.com registering prices from the upper five figures to over $200,000. If you have that kind of cash and need to tower over some of the largest rides already out there, you can squabble over the 2008 MXT currently listed on Bring A Trailer, one we suspect will sell on the lower end of that price range due to its relatively high mileage.
Don't be too surprised if the winning bidder winds up writing a six-figure check after the auction's end on Sunday, though.
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