Hunter Offroad

Those of you out there reading this who hail from the Phoenix/Tempe area, I have another recommendation for you. Check this out:

Way back when, probably like in the year 2000, I was eating at Jack in the Box with my son when he looked up and yelled “look at that daddy!” Sure enough, sitting in the parking lot in front of the store was the most bad-assed vehicle that I had ever seen. At that moment it was empty but I waited until the driver came out to get back into his super rig.

 

After introducing myself I asked the owner, turns out his name was John, what exactly this thing in front of me was. Back then he called it Zeus. It had the body of a sand rail type dune buggy, but it was built on a Chevy truck platform. Zeus had a number of incredible features, there were four custom bucket seats for the passengers, and the rear area of the truck had mounts for an emergency litter basket, those emergency baskets that you see people being hauled up the side of a mountain in if they had just driven off of a cliff in an accident. For me it was love at first site, with the truck, not John, and so began my relationship with John at Hunter Off Road.

 

A few years later as I was getting ready for The Great Mexico Debacle” as I have taken to calling it, and I had a sudden and urgent need to have a frontal defense system installed on my 1995 Isuzu Trooper 4x4. When I say frontal defense system I am not just using a fancy term for a brush guard. I needed something that would clear the road for me if a couple of Ford F-150’s operated by the cartels down in Mexico decided to block the road to keep me from escaping an ambush. I even demanded that the frontal defense system be capable of breaking through a brick wall if it was absolutely necessary. More importantly I needed it done by the next day and it was then about 3:00 in the afternoon. Just about any other company on earth would have told me to go get bent.

 

Well, the frontal defense system, aka “the devils horns” as the Mexicans would later come to call it, never did get to break through any brick walls. It did, however, demolish the front end of a Mexican State Police “Ford Lobo”, or F-150 as they call them down there, during the ambush that I will describe in another post. Basically one of the Ford Lobos rammed me head on in an attempt to stop me. Aside from barely scratching my paint, the cop driving the Ford F-150 not only didn’t stop me, he totaled the front end of his truck. I would have gotten through what actually did turn out to be an ambush thanks to John’s work, but the cops were smart enough to aim about six or seven AR-15’s at my tires. While gearing up for the mission I couldn’t afford the run flat tires that I had wanted to outfit my Isuzu Trooper with, so the party was over when all four of my tires were blown out, along with a shit load of rounds into the body of the Trooper itself. Again, the details of the above mentioned foray will be related at a later date, but the work that John had done for me can be seen on my Trooper in the video below. Pay close attention at the :07 through :09 second marks of the video and you will see Hunter Off Roads’ work in fairly decent detail.

 

 

Visit www.Hunteroffroad.com, and go to the “pics” section on the sight to see some of their amazing work. The picture shown at the top of this entry is the current incarnation of the original “Zeus” that I fell in love with eight years ago. John is now calling it the “War Wagon”, Tactical Off Road Vehicle. Ask John and he will tell you; the day that I become rich I am going to buy that truck. I’ve been telling him that for eight years now but someday it will happen… wait and see.

Anyway, John at HUNTER OFFROAD is a true master at what he does. If you can come up with an idea for your 4x4, John will make sure that it comes to life. Or, if you’re not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and you aren’t sure what you want, but you just know that you want the sickest looking 4x4 in town, then hit up John and he’ll do the thinking for you.