Times are changing, and truck styles as we know them are evolving. Years ago, the criteria of a custom truck was to shave up the exterior and smack those rockers to the pavement. This may still be the standard of building, but there comes a time when it all becomes the norm and everything starts to look the same.
Even though a body drop is a radical mod, it's become an ordinary thing. Because of this, you need innovators to step up the game with new ideas to take projects further than the average builder. It involves going outside the box and venturing further with new designs that push the limits. The process takes research and thought to put an idea together that will translate well onto your vehicle. Once you have your idea, it's still a risk to try something new because when no one has done it before there is a chance that it may not come out right. But, if all goes well and your idea comes to life, you will have a killer truck that stands above the rest.
For Rene Garza, Jr., it's more or less about lowriding in a new way than changing trends in the truck scene. Rene first got into lowriders with his friends, and it was all downhill from there. His first custom vehicle was an old-school Monte Carlo that he dumped major coinage into, making it a traditional cruiser. After a while, he got tired of rolling the outdated custom, and it was time to move on from there.
Since his family is big in the health care business, turning the next project into a reality would be no sweat. On the flip side, being a part of a family with deep pockets can get you in even deeper trouble. Because the greenbacks were readily available to him, it was easy for Rene to tragically fall into a certain "dependency" and lead a path to unsafe waters. His father then realized the problem and did what any father would do for their own child by offering his helping hand at the time of need. Mr. Garza sat his son down and divulged to him that if he was to straighten up, the two of them would build a vehicle together.
As you can see, he took his father's advice to build the truck you see here. Since Rene was into the lowriding scene, he wanted to build a vehicle in that style. His father is one who will only buy new luxury vehicles, so they started out with a brand-spankin'-new Cadillac Escalade ESV for the project. Next on the list of things to do was to fully rebuild the truck with a better suspension, mobile entertainment system, bright upholstery, and of course, a balls-out custom paintjob.
Luckily for Rene, he read in one of our other Primedia magazines about Kandy Kustoms in Corpus Christi, Texas. He made a phone call to tell them how much cash was going to be dropped and if they could do what he envisioned for the project. Soon enough, the crew from the shop made a three-hour trip to Rene's home town of Edinburgh, Texas, to talk about what really could be done by the shop. Since the shop has a history of high-quality lowriders and could do everything in-house, the crew drove the Caddy to their shop that very night. Once it was at Kandy Kustoms, the crew put in a plethora of man hours to make everything so dead-on beautiful.
After five months of straight work, the truck was returned to the owner and he was completely blown away at the craziness and quality. Rene got his life back on track, and now he had a big source of encouragement. This amazingly cool truck puts a unique twist on the lowrider style that even sport truck lovers can appreciate. As the Cadillac merges two styles-sport trucks and lowriders-it breaks all the rules and creates its own along the way. It goes outside of the norm for sport trucks, but it shows how much more can really be done.