The Chevy LUV pickup truck…if there was ever an endangered species of pickup, this one’s on the list. A rebadged Isuzu Faster, the LUV, along with the Ford Courier and imports from Datsun and Toyota, kicked off the mini-truck market in the States. Originally designed to be small, nimble and efficient little movers, most have either been modified to within the final inch of their life, are rotting somewhere, or have met the dark end of the junkyard. After riding in quite a few of these growing up, I’m quite fine with any of those solutions…stock, these things were uninspiring and thrashy. But all things can be cured with an infusion of cubic inches, and the LUV takes to a small-block like none other. Give it some cubes, give it a bottle to suck on, and give it plenty of space to run and you’ll have to go get plastic surgery to get the smile peeled from your face. Just make sure you’re well under five-foot-ten if you want to get wild…I left a dent the perfect shape of my cranium in the roof sheetmetal of one of these little trucks once.