The Wildest Version Of America’s Greatest Truck Is A 4×4 Limo With A Big Block V8

The limousine has long held a special place in American culture. If you want to do anything and look like a million bucks doing it, just roll up in a limo and step out into a crowd. Couples rent limos for weddings and parents rent limos to get their kids to prom. Usually, limos are built on a vehicle with status like a Lincoln or ostentatious like a Hummer. That’s why I can’t stop laughing at this 1999 Chevrolet K2500 limo. It’s based on a legendary GMT400 truck, has a 454 big block V8, four-wheel-drive, and a push bar. It’s like a limo for the farm and I can’t get enough of it.

If that opener wasn’t hilarious enough, its Bring a Trailer auction is even better. Don’t adjust your monitors, and your eyes aren’t failing you. The seller of this vehicle provided Bring a Trailer with sort of grainy low-resolution photos. Normally, this would be annoying, but it somehow adds to the awesomeness of this whole deal.

We’re all huge fans of the General Motors GMT400 platform at the Autopian. David Tracy thinks the GMT400 platform created America’s greatest trucks while resident Brit waved the American flag as he explained why the GMT400’s design remains legendary even after three decades. Heck, David loves GMT400 trucks so much that he bought one and I’m still trying to buy it from him.

Yet, through all of our love for the GMT400, I admit I never expected a GMT400 truck to show up in this variation. Who ordered the cowboy limo?

From A Limo Innovator

I expected this K2500 to have come from Texas or somewhere like that, but instead, it was built in my state of Illinois by Chicago Armor & Limousine. This company, despite having Chicago in its name, was actually located about an hour away on a good day. So not quite Chicago, but close enough.

Chicago Armor & Limousine was an entity created by Earle F. Moloney, a man who made his entire career in building limos. From Lehmann-Peterson, an Illinois-based Moloney company that builds Cadillac limos:

Engrained at an early age for automobile styling, Earle F. Moloney began as a self-made Coachbuilder at the young age of 18. His coach building origin began in a two-car garage with the idea that there was a growing market for custom stretched vehicles. He saw a void in the marketplace relating to the comfort and size of the limousines.

His innovative thinking and willingness to invest in his own ideas have made him the success he is today. Moloney Coachbuilders was a coast-to-coast phenomenon when it came to producing a custom limousine. Entering the automotive business in 1967 and establishing his coach building company. By the time Moloney was 37 years, he had already produced more than 14,000 limousines, armored security vehicles and specialty vehicles. In 1985, Moloney’s coach building company was the country’s largest converter of Cadillac, Lincoln and Mercedes-Benz limousines. His production facility was the hub from which 5 over-the-road Moloney-owned carriers transported Flagships, Grand Flagships, 6-door limousines and the company’s armored and custom vehicles.

[…]

Always an innovator, Moloney’s companies were the first to create rear-facing jump seats, a 4-door Cadillac convertible, a double cut conversion, and corporate cars. He was also the first to introduce the two-way intercom communication system, as well as the rear seat bar and radio controls.

It sounds like Moloney was a pretty big deal in the limo space. He sold his limo empire in 1986, taking a five-year break before opening up International Armor & Limousine and Chicago Armor & Limousine in 1991. The company’s advertising displayed stretch Cadillacs, but the firm did so much more.

According to the book, Stretch Limousines: 1928 Through 2001: Photo Archive, Chicago Armor & Limousine made bullet-resistant limos for governments, and if you check out page 114 you’ll find a beautiful GMC GMT400 Suburban being turned into a limo. Sadly, I could not find any brochures featuring the SUV limo, but the book figured the Suburban was probably destined to be an airport or resort shuttle.

Elongating A Suburban

The book also shows how Chicago Armor & Limousine made the K2500 on your screen today. The team took a stock K2500, cut it in half behind the B-pillar, moved the halves out 120 inches, and then welded a central section in, extending the frame and driveshaft. If you look at the underbody photos of this K2500, you can see where the 120-inch stretch was added in.

The vehicle’s frame adds a sort of lattice structure in the stretch area. Sure enough, the driveshaft is so long it’s basically in two postal codes. The result is a limo that’s both luxurious and laid back. I feel like a K2500 limo is going to have people way more curious than showing up in another stretched Lincoln Town Car.

But it’s even better than that because this has to be competing with the Lincoln for one of the most bulletproof limos on the road. Part of why the GMT400 is such a legend is its classic design. Click here to read Adrian Clarke’s breakdown. But style couldn’t do it alone. GM says it overbuilt this truck on purpose, but made sure to make it nice enough to keep as a daily driver, from my retrospective:

To ensure the trucks could still handle the work, engineers sent out about 40 trucks, half were rear-wheel-drive and the other half were four-wheel-drive, into the field. Customers would use the truck as they would normally while General Motors measured what they were doing with loads. Engineers then recreated those loads during development to make sure the truck could handle it. They also intentionally overloaded trucks and then took them for testing because General Motors knew pickup owners sometimes ignore ratings.

The cab was also to be a vast improvement over previous full-size trucks. Remember, these trucks were meant to be daily drivers now. For engineers, this meant designing a cab that didn’t allow an intrusive amount of outside noise in. To do this, engineers pinpointed the sources of noises and added sound deadening in those areas. Streamlining the cab and the mirrors also meant less wind noise. In its promotional video, GM claimed the GMT400’s quiet cab compares favorably to a European luxury car from the era.

The seats had to be cushy, able to restrain child car seats, and there had to be enough legroom for tall drivers, while the climate control had to be easy to operate. Engineers went so far as to create a plastic dummy to simulate a driver. That dummy was then placed in the cab and its angles were measured against medical data gathered by GM and universities about the optimal body part angles for comfort. GM says the GMT400 cab was designed to be comfortable for everyone from a small woman to a hulking football player.

The GMT400 has some modernity like fuel injection and a whole heaping of power, yet it’s also old-school enough that you still see lots of people using these as farm trucks and work trucks. I get why David calls the GMT400 America’s greatest truck.

Normally, a K2500 Suburban packages the GMT400 platform into a 4×4 for the whole family. This one was a beauty when it was new, too. It shipped from the factory with four-wheel-drive and a 454 big block V8. All of those cubes are pumping out 290 horsepower and a diesel-ish 410 lb-ft of torque. Fuel economy? Don’t ask, because it’s probably not good.

However, I can say that at 348 inches, or 29 feet long, this limo is longer than that Monday you just had. Yes, I might have stolen that joke from my favorite car YouTuber.

Things get even better inside. The cab of the K2500 limo looks like a luxury GM truck from the era. The driver and a passenger get to sit in leather thrones and an entirely untouched dashboard featuring a column shifter and what appears to be functional 4×4 selectors. Your clues to the whole limo deal are the speakers, video monitor, and partition to the rear.

Things get weird in the rear. This limo seats 10, and if you hadn’t noticed by now, half of the seats in this K2500 came from the SUV it was based on. Leather was an option for the original SUV and the coachbuilder didn’t let those seats go to waste. Technically, this limo has four rows of seats, but the four people sitting in the third and fourth rows have it the worst. The limo is basically just a regular K2500 back there.

The five people who get to sit in the second row (where the 120 inches of metal was grafted on) have access to a minibar, a really tiny television, and an entertainment system with a cassette stereo and a DVD player. The rear compartment does have its own HVAC vents and controls, but that’s it.

All of this is making me laugh even more. Imagine seeing this limo rolling up and then you get told to sit in the far end of the fourth row while your friends get to watch a movie on the tiny screen several feet forward. I love it. This limo is so absurd that you can’t take it seriously. Honestly, that might be my favorite kind of limo.

Then I remember that oh yeah, this thing also has four-wheel-drive, a big block V8, and a push bar on the front. Don’t ask about the breakover angle, I’m pretty sure that’s just a laughing emoji. It’s all too funny. Oh, and it has a trailer hitch in case you want to take the fishing boat to the lake.

Records also indicate that the limo has driven all of just 14,080 miles over 26 years. The frame and cleanliness of the engine bay appear to confirm the low miles, but the axles look like they’ve been parked at the bottom of a lake for the past two decades. Maybe it was parked outside given its length.

If you’re having as much of a laugh as I am, the truck is currently bidding at $18,000 with a day to go on Bring a Trailer. Once you pick your limo up from Andover, Massachusetts, you’ll have one weird party rig. Or, just keep it as the most ridiculous daily driver. Just try to keep yourself from having too much fun with that four-wheel-drive.