Top Gear’s Top Ten Lairy Pick-Ups

The Mercedes-Benz X-Class pick-up truck has arrived: a posh load lugger that has got parts of the Top Gear office quite excited. Not least because we’re secretly hoping AMG gets its hands on it at some point soon…

If so, it would represent the latest in a proud lineage of People Doing Silly Things To Pick-Ups, and follows many great, nutty trucks as the ute of choice for the discerning nutjob.

So here, in a neither exhaustive nor comprehensive list, is the snappily named Top Gear’s Top Ten Lairy Pick-Up Trucks. Feel free to add your own recommendations in the comment boxes below.

BMW M3 Ute

A couple of years ago, BMW sent out an amusing April’s Fool press release. The joke? That the kerrazy Germans had produced a V8-powered M3 Ute. A pick-up truck… from an M3!

We laughed a bit, then went back to bringing you news about a Trophy Truck smashing through the desert, and the new Kia Soul. Light and shade, and all that.

Turns out, BMW actually built an M3 ute. For real. One actually exists. Inquisitive, we dispatched our expert correspondent (read: resident Australian) to the Nürburgring to go flat out in a rear-wheel-drive, 400bhp V8 with most of the weight removed from over the drive axle.

Click the blue words below to see just how many expletives were required in order to get him back in one piece…

Top Gear drives the BMW M3 Ute

Shelby Baja 700

Yep, long-time Ford bro’ and legendary US tuner turned its attention to the last-generation Raptor, treating the truck to a suite of complements sure to make enthusiasts of the genre involuntarily whoop with glee.

The 6.2-litre V8 got a monster supercharger, new injectors and bigger throttle bodies, and there’s also racing suspension, interior upgrades and the option of custom front and rear ends.

The result? 700 horses of supercharged insanity.

Hennessey VelociRaptor

The VelociRaptor is all kinds of excellent. Bright yellow, big, bad, brash immensely powerful.

This could very well be your perfect next car, if top of your list of requirements from your next car is ‘survive zombie apocalypse’.

Vauxhall VXR8 Maloo

Meet the mighty Maloo, refreshed at the tail end of last year with a new face and a freshly supercharged V8, which ensures it’s over 100bhp more powerful than before. Yikes.

Its 6.2-litre V8 engine is essentially shared with the Chevrolet Camaro ZL1, tuned here to produce a prodigious 528bhp, while there’s a mighty 495lb ft of torque to go with it.

The result is a 4.6sec sprint to 62mph, helped along by a launch control system should you select your Maloo with the standard manual gearbox. Yikes.

Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG 6x6

The most astonishing Mercedes-Benz ever built also happens to be its most bonkers: you’ll no doubt remember the monster 6x6 AMG.

That’s right, six wheels, all driven by AMG’s lovely twin-turbo, 5.5-litre V8, here producing 540bhp and 561lb ft, meaning this near four-tonne monster will hit 62mph in seven seconds, and run on to a 100mph top speed.

But it’s not speed, it’s off-roadability. The mega-G will wade through 1m of water as well as offering 460mm of ground clearance, tyre pressures controllable from the cabin and enough traction to turn the world upside down.

Whatever you think you can throw at it, this’ll handle more. Oh, and if that’s not nearly unsubtle enough, Brabus has also built one…

First drive: the Brabus 6x6 takes on London

Dodge Ram SRT-10

Seems Dodge missed the worldwide memo on fitting fast pick-up trucks with V8s, the American manufacturer deeming it prudent to whack a socking great 8.3-litre V10 into its Ram SRT-10. Welcome to the End Of The World.

The Ram, created back in 2004, borrowed its V10 from the Viper, here producing 500bhp and 525lb ft of torque, good enough to hit 60mph in less than five seconds, and on to a top speed of, well, a lot.

In February 2004, NASCAR driver Brendan Gaughan set a Guinness World Record for the world’s fastest production pick-up, taking a standard SRT-10 (if you can call it ‘standard’), and maxing it to a 154.587mph average.

Straight-line speed sorted, then. Corners? Where we’re going, we don’t need corners…

GMC Syclone

Poor spelling, mad car. This square-jawed chunk of early Nineties American muscle was the world’s fastest production truck back in its heyday, and is still capable of embarrassing some serious sports cars. In a straight line at least.

The GMC Syclone featured a 4.3-litre V6 bolstered by a turbo, with a resulting 280bhp of power. Not much by modern standards, but with all-wheel-drive and much witchcraft, the Syclone still managed to get from 0-60mph in a reported 4.3 seconds and run the quarter-mile in 13.6 seconds. That’s… lairy.

The best thing about it though? It’d only come in black. We’ll take three, if anyone’s got a few lying around…

Mini Paceman 'Adventure' pick-up

OK, so it’s the weediest, littlest ute on our list, but at least it’s a Paceman we can get on board with. Built as a one-off by BMW’s apprentices, the Paceman ‘Adventure’ was aimed to show off a ‘creative vision’ for Mini.

The work experience kids took a standard Cooper S Paceman, and chopped off the rear. There’s no rear bench, but there is a solid roof rack with LIGHTS, a modified chassis for greater ground clearance, four-wheel-drive, and a turbocharged 1.6-litre four-pot up front with 184bhp. 0-62mph? 7.8 seconds, which isn’t too shabby.

And look, there’s even a little ‘snorkel-like’ roof-level air intake. Aww!

Ford F-150 Raptor Supercrew

Though the outgoing Raptor’s V8 was binned in favour of an Ecoboost engine, it’s still a hefty 3.5-litre V6, and makes around 450bhp. So the all-new F-150 Raptor certainly has the muscle to cope with those chunky new looks.

Its four-wheel-drive system is all-new, too, and it offers both the full benefits of an on-demand system with the option to lock it mechanically into AWD. It has six modes to choose from to cover all possible terrains. Our favourites are ‘Street’, for high performance driving, and the excellently named ‘Baja’, for what Ford calls “high-speed desert running”.

Its boxy, no-nonsense body is made of “military-grade aluminum-alloy”, there are racing shock absorbers and a sports exhaust as standard, and a Torsen differential is available on the front axle. That’s the kind of thing we know better for pulling raucous front-drive hot hatches out of corners; here, it will drag you over particularly tricky obstacles.

The Amarok 'Power-Pickup'

It’s only a concept, but it’s a concept that really needs to be made. At the 2013 Worthersee tuning meet, VW unveiled this wide-arch, blinged-up version of its Amarok pick-up, sporting 22-inch wheels and a ride height 80mm lower than standard.

Sadly the grunt didn’t quite match the stance, the ‘Power-Pickup’ employing a 3.0-litre V6 diesel that produced 268bhp and 443lb ft. 0-60mph, VW reckoned, took around eight seconds.

What the Amarok lacked in outright pace, however, it made up for in versatility: on its loadbed lurked a kart. The perfect one-car, two-car garage?