Truth be told there are always about a dozen vehicles you see at SEMA that are totally awesome, brilliantly done, and about as useful as a slotted spoon in a soup eating contest. This International Metro ice cream truck is one of them. I am in love with the thing. The paint and craftsmanship on the truck is beyond words and the stance is cool. It has an injected small block Chevy engine that basically sits right next to the driver and there is an untold amount of money into the truck. All this said, what the hell happens to a rig like this after the show is over, after it hits the local car show scene for a while, and after the shop or the owner looks around and says, “Well, that was fun.” Chances are it gets sold for pennies on the dollar to the next guy and ends up sitting in a collection or is parked in the corner of a furniture store or something. Again, it sounds like I am speaking ill of the Metro and I am not. It just seems that stuff like this has a shelf life and once it runs out, the thing really takes a nose dive in what it is worth to people.
As this thing was parked outside there was not any sort of information on the builder or the owner. We’d love to give those people props because the work is top shelf. We have never seen a Metro in the modern times bought as a project that was not half rotted to death. We’re thinking that there was untold hours of work put into the body before any of the actual hot rodding stuff happened.
The paint on the truck is absolutely awesome and that’s the takeaway for us. The finish on the Metro is just amazing and we loved spending some time looking at it. When you add in the small block with the FAST EZ-EFI stack injection, the MSD ignition, and what we’re assuming is an overdrive transmission, you can cruise it down the road and keep those pesky kids that’ll be chasing you at bay!
Scroll down to check out the photos for the International Metro ice cream truck –
PJ Burchett from B Rod or Custom in Knoxville, Tennessee built the ice cream truck. PJ is an absolute character, and dressed the part of the good humor man most of the week. I have to admit I teared up a little bit when he said he was taking this to the Goodguy’s Nashville show and he had plans to go over to Vanderbuilt Children’s Hospital and give ice cream to all the kids.
^^^^^^This is the best thing I have read today, awesome!, hope he makes somes kids day. 🙂
This is PJ Burchett, builder of The CruisinCone! Thanks for the article! I saw this van rotting in a field and couldn’t stop thinking about it. I had to give the owner a six pack of PBR just to TALK to him! He was storing hay in the van, so to get the van I had to build him a shed! More technical info can be found at http://www.cruisincone.com. Tons of pictures are on our Instagram (@cruisincone).
HAHA! That has to be the funniest story of car buying I have ever heard in a long time. Almost as good as a friend of mine who wanted a ’68 Camaro RS/SS 396 car that was in a backyard for years being used as the dog house. He had build a right nice dog house to get it….