Shop Builds Luxury Single Cab, Short Bed Chevy Silverados Because GM Won’t
There’s a lot of cutting involved, but these shorty Silverado High Country clones are impressive.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a new single cab, short bed truck hanging around a dealer lot these days. Ford and Chevy still make them, albeit in tiny numbers compared to crew cabs, but even then, they're all in basic work truck spec. For a lot of people, that's fine; others, however, want all the amenities of a high-trimmed Silverado in a shorty pickup. Hersa Motors in Hidalgo, Texas, builds custom rides that fit the bill exactly.
These High Country clones start out as single cab, long beds, and the shop buys them secondhand specifically to convert them. When I asked if they were brought up from Mexico, where Chevy has long sold pickups in this configuration, Hersa Motors' Julio Hernandez explained to me that most are old U-Haul trucks. They then get brought back to the garage where the frame is shortened and the bodywork gets underway.
"Most of the time, they have an accident [on their history report]," said Hernandez, who helps run the company with his cousin and partner Erick Saenz. "So we fix them and customize them at the same time." Two of them in the past had rebuilt titles, which he says they disclosed to the customers, while the rest have had clean titles.
Most of the trucks have low mileage as a result. One key difference between them and genuine top-trim Chevys is that Hersa's are usually powered by 5.3-liter V8s rather than the 6.2-liter you'd normally find in a High Country. They still make 355 horsepower and 383 pound-feet of torque, so it's not like they're exactly slow.
The grilles, bumpers, and interior components are the same as the real ones because that's where they're sourced from. Hernandez explained that they use legit Chevy parts wherever possible, save for the upgraded sound systems that they install in every one. That's part of Hersa's specialty, in a way; each of their trucks can bump with the best of 'em.
"We spent almost a year doing the red truck," Hernandez told me. It's the fifth shorty they've built, and they've driven a ton of business to the shop. "We've sold them for around $46,000 to $51,000. Those trucks actually aren't for making money; they're for advertising."
The numbers they pull on social media serve as proof. I first saw the red High Country replica in a Facebook post that had hundreds of shares, and Hersa Motors has over 15,000 followers on TikTok with several videos surpassing 100,000 views. They're unquestionably unique, especially since hugely lifted four-doors are the norm now.
Hersa has cranked out another single cab, short bed Chevy since I talked to Hernandez, though he mentioned his plans for it back then. He let me know that it'd ride on 26-inch wheels rather than the 22s that the others had, giving it that much extra flair. Not everyone's about that look, but one thing's for sure: It's striking to see a decked-out shorty with this much attention to detail.
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