There’s a Drivable 6×6, 750-HP Truck Chassis for Sale, and I Have Ideas
With a 75,000-pound GVWR, it can mount almost anything you can think of and then some.
I’m kind of over 6x6 pickups. Go big or go home, boys: skip the Ram 3500 and use a heavy-duty 6x6 bare chassis or just don’t bother at all. Fortunately, such a rig is for sale right now, and it should be your canvas for… Whatever you please, really.
Shared on Twitter by Car and Driver's Ezra Dyer, the chassis is listed for sale on Repurposed Materials. It was apparently manufactured by an unnamed company for a “specialty vehicle,” which was never completed as the company stopped production. Its intended use isn’t known, but may be hinted at by the listing, which suggests turning it into an Alaskan expedition vehicle.
It has the power to be that or any number of other things, as it’s propelled by an 18.1-liter Caterpillar C18 turbodiesel straight-six. It produces up to 746 horsepower and 2,736 pound-feet of torque, which travel through an automatic box—speeds not specified—to all six wheels. With a 75,000-pound gross vehicle weight rating, it’s ready to be anything you want, and I have no shortage of ideas for what that could be.
The first thing that came to my mind was to make the mother of all hi-rails—those trucks (or UTVs) with drop-down train wheels. They’re usually used for track maintenance, but I’d use mine to travel abandoned rail lines and go glamping in remote places.
I’m also all about the idea my coworker Peter dropped in Slack: a two-story RV with a balcony, a grill, and a lawn on the roof. It’s more feasible than you’d expect, as a typical mobile home reportedly comes in at only about 40,000 pounds. That should easily fit on this chassis with load to spare for Peter’s inevitable herb and vegetable garden. And of course, interior carpeting from the C7 Corvette—not so much because his blood type is GM, but because his cat seems to like the stuff.
Perhaps best of all is that this setup would still be cheaper than buying a house in a lot of places, as the chassis is listed at $250,000. I would wish you luck securing a mortgage for a 6x6 chassis, let alone build expenses, but it won’t be needed. Odds are that whoever will end up buying this thing already has that cash sitting around anyway.
Got a tip or question for the author? You can reach them here: james@thedrive.com
