Kid Rock’s Chevy Silverado Concept Is More American Than Heart Disease

It’s a $65k one-off dually. You know, to honor the Working Man.

byBen Keeshin|
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Do you hear that resonant ring? Kid Rock has collaborated with Chevrolet to produce the 2016 Chevy Silverado 3500HD Kid Rock Concept for SEMA, and golly if it isn’t a smoke-stacked chariot with a name as long as the mane on its eponymous hero. That echo, reverberating off the sides of purple mountains? That’s the sound of freedom, hauled into Vegas in a chrome-plated dually.

Kid Rock just recently emerged from a period of sweet tea Southern revivalism (see: “All Summer Long,” a nostalgic mash-up of “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Werewolves of London”), but he’s a man of the heartland. In 1971, Robert “Bob” Ritchie was born in Romeo, Michigan, a town of 3,500, sandwiched between Detroit and Flint, where the Silverado is built.

For this concept, Kid flew back to Michigan to meet with members of UAW Local 598, who handed him a freshly shined, and stock, Silverado. It was taken to GM’s design studios down the road. Then, Kid Rock and the team began applying liberty—pure, unadulterated and with a heavy hand—to the Chevy’s flanks.

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First, the emblem got super-sized. Kid Rock pried off the Silverado’s bowties, almost a foot long as equipped stock, and replaced them with blacked-out versions with a combined square footage of a New York starter apartment. CHEVY! cries the truck as it approaches; CHEVY! again, as it departs. It’s a one-vehicle armada. God Bless.

Kid also rerouted the exhaust. Rather than dispensing diesel fumes out the back like a society lady, the Kid Rock Concept blasts them skyward through twin smokestacks, farty trumpets announcing the arrival of a modern-day Minute Man. Though this factory-spec truck won’t roll coal—that is, shoot plumes of acrid black smoke at lily-livered, communist Prius drivers—the pipes are thick enough to augment masculinity. Bed-mounted cannons: for when your manliness ain’t no phallacy.

The truck can roll chrome. Its wheels are lathered in the shiny stuff, upsized to 22 inches. The Silverado’s body is also wrapped in a silvery American flag graphic, driving home the patriotic theme like Casey’s bat to the face. The 6.6-liter Duramax V8 is rated to tow 20,000 pounds. This truck won’t bog under the weight of its own symbolism.

Despite France’s opposition to the Second Iraq War (freedom fries forever!), the Chevrolet Silverado 3500HD Kid Rock Concept interior demands the language: it is the pièce de résistance. Nestled among swathes of grey leather are swatches of material specially picked by Kid Rock to resemble acid-wash jeans. Yes, this truck’s cabin is upholstered in Kid Rock’s pants, an honor not bestowed on anything since Pam Anderson’s bedroom floor.

Jokes aside, we’re all for honoring the American worker. However, one could argue to Kid Rock, who endorses Ben Carson for president, that the instatement of a more progressive tax code might honor the American worker more thoroughly than a one-off $65,000 truck with “Made in Detroit” sill plates. But, then again, sitting on the coast, maybe we just can’t hear the heartbeat of America.

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