Yesterday, my main car-spotting operative on the West Coast, our own contributor Emily Velasco, sent me a genuinely fascinating picture of a car, taken by a friend of hers in Pomona, CA. As you can see up there, it’s a nice bright lime green 1970 BMW 2002, but quite skillfully converted into a pickup truck. It’s so good!
It made me realize that I’m a bit surprised I haven’t seen more BMW 2002 pickup truck conversions; the car is a pretty conventional front engine/rear-drive layout with a three-box body that should make a pickup conversion relatively easy.
Of course, “relatively” is doing a hell of a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. It’s never just about sawzalling off the rear half of the greenhouse and unbolting the trunk lid, of course. Doing something like this right takes actual skill, and whomever made this one seems to have plenty of that.
Looking at the truck compared to an unmodified 2002, you get a real sense of how much work went into this. Note how the normal trunk lid cuts all the way down to the chrome trim line. On the pickup, the whole body above the beltline has been re-made to form the upper sides of the bed.
The fantastic round taillights have been inset a bit to fit on the tailgate, which is held in place with what look like the same general sort of latches as what were used on small ’70s and ’80s mini trucks like the Chevy Luv:
So, those are a pretty period-correct choice, I think. The cab seems to have been cut right at the B-pillar and a whole new rear window and panel has been fabricated. It’s all so nice and clean!
I found that the truck, which seems to have been built by someone named Ben, is available to be rented on a site called Driveshare, which has a few more photos of it:
Look how nicely the bed is handled! It may have been lifted from another truck, as the description notes that this was built from three separate vehicles, and maybe one of those was a pickup truck.
In a quick look around, I’ve found two other BMW 2002 pickup trucks, but I’m not sure either is quite as well-done as this green one. There’s a burgundy one that’s very nice, but you can see the seam from the trunk lid on the side of the bed, and then there’s a white one that looks more like an actual workhorse kind of truck, hauling parts for a BMW mechanic.
If anyone knows more about this little truck buzzing around Pomona, spreading its own particular kind of verdant joy, please let me know in the comments!
I think this is a ute rather than a pick-up.
I love everything about it and painting it green is icing on the cake. Look at that sweet, green icing, flowing down.
The build quality on thatlkks fantastic. I’ve been assembling a fleet of cheap first gen highlander hybrids. I plan to make a truck out of at least one of them. If I can get my hands on the right deal of a model 3 or y I might try it too. I thought about it with a Prius when they were dirt cheap but now they are more then I’m paying for the Highlanders.
Whenever I see these I’m always reminded of Miss Agnes.
John D. McDonald’s character (1964-1985) drove a pick up truck converted from a wrecked 1936 Rolls Royce. It was the first I’ve heard of the idea (I started reading them around 1994) and I wonder where McDonald got the idea.
A surprising number of old prewar Rolls Royces (and other expensive cars) were converted into trucks of one kind or another, particularly during and immediately after the war. They were kind of cheap and often pretty worn out, might as well find a use fir them!
That “2002t” logo: “t” is for “truck” of course.