It’s not every day that I see a Chevrolet LUV. The badge-engineered Chevy “Light Utility Vehicle” was actually an Isuzu Faster, originally equipped with a wheezy but durable 1.8-liter four-cylinder engine. Zero-to-60 times were… probably not attainable within a quarter mile. I was surprised, then, when I spotted a LUV drag truck out in the wild.


 
The blue color and polished alloys are certainly eye-catching, but the huge hood bulge was the first tipoff that this wasn’t a normal LUV. No one does this kind of work to a LUV for Pep Boys stick-on street cred.
 

Skinny front tires and fat rears, of course. The backstays on what is probably a roll hoop must add much-needed rigidity when trying to get those rears to hook up. The truck’s bed has probably been gutted to fit the drag links for the rear axle, so a tonneau cover is an aesthetic addition as much as an aerodynamic one.

The drag wing and license plate reading “BADLUV” are both nice touches.

Here you see the long arms that keep the rear axle in place.

I didn’t get a chance to meet the owner, but all you need to do is count the number of primaries on these ceramic-coated headers to figure it’s a small-block Chevy swapped in. In fact, this appears to be a pretty easy thing to arrange. The enthusiast site, Luvtruck.com, has an easy swap guide in PDF form. Engine mount adapters to complete the swap are cheap and available everywhere.
You can easily fit anything from a Chevy 4.3-liter V6 to a small-block V8 or an LS-series engine. There are even competition headers specifically for LUV applications, ready to bolt on. I’m starting to wonder why I haven’t built a V8 LUV yet.
The interior is appropriately Spartan. Giant tach, a couple other aftermarket gauges, a wheel and a shifter. I’d bet the GPS on the dash is used primarily as a speedometer.
I assumed the LUV was a forgettable and forgotten footnote in automotive history, but perhaps I was wrong. Clearly there’s a subculture of folks who love these trucks and joyfully modify them.
[Photos copyright 2015 Hooniverse/Alan Cesar]