Land Rover has it all backward. An SUV comes from a pickup. Like the Chevy Suburban. It’s just a station wagon Silverado. It has always been a derivation of a pickup. But Land Rover doesn’t do pickup trucks. Why? Land Rover is crazy for not making them.

Tooling up for an SUV means you’ve got most of the expensive tooling

If you tool up for an SUV you’ve got most of the expensive tooling to make a pickup truck and create another revenue segment. More money is always good when you’re in business. And it must have made sense in the day because it did a couple of them over the decades. The 110 and Defender had pickup options. 

And they make cool-looking pickup trucks as you can tell from this custom made one-off. It comes via Mexico. A company called VA-K Innovation stitched this LR4 together in five months. This just seems like a production no-brainer in these days of pickup madness. 

VA-K blended existing sheet metal to make this look factory fresh

Based outside of the lovely city of Guadalajara, it looks like the folks at VA-K did a fantastic job. The LR4 is an integrated body-on-frame platform so VA-K used as many OEM parts as would work to stretch it out just a bit. Then it blended existing sheet metal to make this look like a factory production.

The rear doors were modified to remove the relief for the wheel openings. The filler panel above the rear lift-up window is from the back of a standard LR4. Most of the tailgate is the same as that on the SUV. It was a lot of figuring the least amount of body modifications to get the most effect without totally reinventing the wheel. Or in this case the LR4. 

The inside of the bed had to be fabricated

The inside of the bed had to be completely fabricated. Because of that VA-K went the old school route finishing it off with a wood floor and chrome metal rails which fits the Land Rover vibe. The gray/green paint is a nice choice. 

This flavor of Land Rover came with a 370hp 5.0-liter V8 so it’s no hell raiser. But that’s not what this is about, anyway. And you could always throw a turbo or supercharger onto it to huff more power through the V8. VA-K isn’t saying how much this cost, but they told the Drive they would do another one if a customer stepped up. 

Now that they have the first one figured out the next one would probably take less time. It’s that “pioneers die with arrows in their backs” kind of thing. Let the first guy pay all of the money and everything after that builds on the cost and experience from the first. Better yet, why doesn’t Land Rover start producing a pickup truck that puts it at the pinnacle of pickup truck perfection?