Welcome to hoovy's garage the dumbest automotive channel in all of youtube, but i am at co-part to pick up my latest project. It is the dumbest pickup truck ever made a 2004 chevy ssr with light damage. Now i looked at this car before i purchased it, because it's at my local co-part here in wichita, i know it runs and drives and the damage was so light. It's kind of funny that it was salvaged, but i think it may have been for another reason.

So it should be here any minute if i don't get run over by a forklift, and here it comes look at this thing. Oh yeah, 2004 chevy ssr right as it starts pouring rain, but would you look at that? Thank you, yeah! Oh, that's, perfect! Oh and of course it doesn't start, i was supposed to drive this thing out. Dumbest truck ever made getting more help from the friendly folks with co-part. Now, let's oh, unless they got loose on the connection.

Oh he just hit his head. There we go mighty 5.3. Now, let's see if this thing will drive back to the garage, it is absolutely pouring rain outside. So i want to concentrate a little more on driving this thing, a little less on youtubing.

It seems fine it'll, probably make it back home, no problems where we'll go and talk about why i bought the dumbest truck ever made. Why it's awesome and what's wrong with it? Oh yeah, so, as you can see, obviously my hhr has had a little smack in the hiney, which is what sent it to the co-part auction and totaled out, but we'll get into this damage in a little bit and why i think it was totaled. Actually one theory i had is kind of debunked, but first, let's talk about the hhr and why it exists in the first place and really nobody knows it all started, probably with chrysler doing their retro modern tribute with the plymouth prowl or car i once owned, and They did that to experiment with bonding aluminum. They were using a new process of production.

They didn't want to use wide scale, so they made a low batch production car to experiment with this new production method. So it made sense later they came out with a pt cruiser, which was a smash hit as well sort of a niche that they hadn't covered sort of a cheap, hatchback type vehicle that they hadn't made in a while, and then ford came along of course, and They made the ford gt 2005-2006, an incredible vehicle worth way more than its msrp and then there's the ford thunderbird, which probably isn't as good. But it came on a jaguar platform. They brought back the thunderbird, which was kind of neat, didn't sell all that well other than the first year and they ditched it.

After a few years. People love to see the retro thunderbird come back, but i don't think they were excited to see a retro pickup truck on el camino or a mix between a 40s and 50s chevy pickup trucks to come back for basically no reason other than well. Ford and chrysler are doing it, so we can do it too, with this and well, nobody really bought it now. This truck is on the same platform as the much more popular chevy, trailblazer or gmc envoy, and that's why i wanted to see it come out on the forklift copart's getting away from forking out cars.

That are mildly damaged like this, but i just wanted to see it. It has a truck frame underneath and i love big equipment. It looked cool, dropping it down, so no harm done there to see that it also had a shared engine. Initially, the 5.3 v8 300 horsepower, which is what this truck has zero to 67 and a half seconds, and for the privilege of this convertible, el camino style, kind of pickup truck retro styled you paid almost 45 000, which seems insane seven and a half seconds zero To sixty not very good performance based on a truck platform, so you know handle's, okay for a truck, but not all that great a quarter mile of like just under 16 seconds, and so they took the criticism to heart and in 2005 they put in the ls2.

So you got the corvette motor, the gto motor and you could get it finally with a six-speed manual transmission and they only charged like fifteen hundred dollars more for that version of the ssr. So if you're the person who bought a 2003 2004, you sure felt like a sucker in your truck well, that nobody wanted anyway was instantly depreciated. I'm kind of surprised that they built 20 000 of these, and actually production was so under expectations that they actually had to do a furlough of the people at the plant because they had like a 300-day supply and then they eventually gave up and completely closed the Plant laid off a bunch of workers. This thing was a massive failure because it is really really stupid, but very very cool for some reason.

So i'll give you a tour. Why and actually some things started working once i changed the battery that i'm very very happy about, but before we start the tour, i would certainly like to thank copart for sponsoring today's video and helping me find this ssr and i'm sure you all have heard of Them as they're the largest source of online auctions for salvage and insurance cars, and you can find just about anything on there. If you're looking for a project, there's clean title cars listed with mechanical issues or light damage offered on copart, ranging from ferraris to fiero's, repairable oddball vehicles like this one, along with all this retro mid-2000s competition or a good parts car that could help you finish off A project you can search for yourself and see on copart and just browsing. The listings is pretty entertaining, but in order to access a lot of features like view live auctions, build a watch list, get alerts when the cars are selling along with going to view the cars in person and actually going and bidding on the cars.

You need to be a co-part member and copart is hooking up hoovie's garage fans with 20 off a basic membership by going to copart.com movies and signing up that's copart.coms, and the offer is only valid for a limited time. So support me and my generous sponsor by signing up at copart.com hovies and if you find something interesting listed there after you get your membership, of course, that you want me and the car wizard to revive post it in the comments section below now. It's hard to believe that anybody thought that this truck should be made, especially the price point of like forty five thousand dollars. You could get a nice fully loaded z71 chevy, pickup truck four wheel, drive for that or well this, but i got this one a lot.

A lot cheaper than that currently ssr's, these early ones with the 5.3, with this kind of mileage, just shy of 100 000 miles sell for around 20 grand low 20s, and i got mine for many many many, many thousands less than that for well obvious reasons. You can see here it had a nice little hit in the rear, which unfortunately pushed the exhaust well bent it over like that, cracked, the reverse light there, but the worst part is certainly this rear quarter here, which looks like it's had some repair before, and it Did kink it, you can see it's pushed out a little bit here, so you do need to do a little body work here and replace the bumper and originally i had a theory because i found inside the car in the glove box a receipt, an estimate to Fix this car - and it was only thousand dollars which seemed pretty reasonable - shouldn't have totaled this thing out, so that led me to believe that maybe the owners didn't want this thing fixed. Maybe they pushed for it to get totaled, because there were some issues popping up. Almost 100 000 miles on a mid-2000s gm product and well they didn't want to fix it, but that's because i thought some things didn't work that really were fixed with just the replacement of a battery.

We jumped it earlier. I got a battery for it immediately after this is the next day is nice and sunny outside, and the big issue that i found with this truck when i looked at it in person is fixed, and that is the top. This is actually a convertible pickup truck and, yes, it does fold down which is so stupid, but so cool. Allow me to demonstrate windows go down with the touch of the button which you can't differentiate any of the buttons here.

Just by touch the windows, the traction control, the door locks they're, all the same size buttons in the same place, and there goes the top in a really really cool fashion too, and now it's off just look at it with the top down. It does look really cool. The top was designed by carmen like karman, ghia german built by the american sunroof company, asc, and with the top down you have well a convertible pickup truck and it does. It does look pretty darn cool the front end totally undamaged on this thing looks like a 40s or 50s pickup truck.

I love the grill treatment with the headlights being split by the grill, which is well, unfortunately, all plastic, fantastic, but it does look really really good. I also love the wheels on this one. The alloy split spoke, and you see these old school fenders, which they actually had to revert to an old way of auto manufacturing to make these fenders, which are on the front and back it has fender flares, which is really really neat. The door handles circular kind of odd, but it is actually a very comfy cruiser and a pretty nice place to be if an old man was getting tired of getting in and out of his corvette because it was too low.

Well, this is considerably higher, but the fact that it didn't have the corvette engine at first well. That makes absolutely no sense and there's a lot of things in here that make no sense either. I showed you the switches earlier. That's just really stupid.

You go for the windows and you accidentally turn off your traction, control or start to put your top up. It's just really really dumb. The interior is suffering from every gm product of the 90s and mid-2000s hard plastics that look really really cheap. Despite this thing being quite expensive, but it does have a nice stereo, a nice sounding v8 engine, although pretty low on the power and the acceleration you can see, they put the nice cover on top.

But it is a very trucky looking engine in here. Overall, though, very tidy just looks dusty, i'm curious what the car wizard will have to say about it. When he looks at this thing, i just sold him my chevy ss pickup truck, which was made at the same time as this. It's amazing: you could walk into a chevy store and decide between this and a chevy ss, and so many other things.

Automakers would never take chances like this nowadays and well. That's why it's kind of cool it's totally stupid, but it is cool. Now, issues like i said before the top, thankfully works it didn't work when the battery was dead. I thought it was an issue i was going to have to deal with, but this, unfortunately it doesn't pop.

I may be in another situation when it comes to my maserati, the metharati, where i discover some weird things in the back, because the electric popper in here it it doesn't pop the rear hatch. Nor does the fob and i have an abs brake light, which is sort of famous in gm trucks of the area where the modules go bad, so pretty common thing there so really minor issues that killed my first theory of why this thing was totaled and sold As a salvaged title at a co-part auction, so my second theory is with that estimate of only three thousand dollars. They may have thought that they could just get a bumper, because when i searched online you can actually find one of these it's listed, but it's actually a trailblazer bumper. So it's not even close to the same bumper, but you think it is it's not very expensive and really there is none of these available new and very very few.

I got very lucky finding one used, so i actually found the bumper before i committed to buy the car. I didn't have to source it from latvia or anything like the maybach, with all those parts much easier in that sense, but maybe because the body shop couldn't source the bumper is why they punted it sort of like my jeep gladiator rubicon, that was totaled. My last company car with freddy's that i sent on to somebody else. It was totaled out because there was no parts availability because it was such a new truck and you just wait for so long for parts they just punted it and totaled it.

Even though it'd be very very easy to fix, so maybe that's what happened here, but there may be some other issues. So let's drive it up to the car wizards and see what he thinks. I can leave the top down. It's nice and sunny now in my convertible stupid, pickup truck i'm flooring, it that's 40., finally, up 255, very, very pathetic, but it does make a very good noise and of course, the engine on these things are very solid, albeit underpowered, by modern standards.

For such a heavy vehicle, but with the top down experience, this goes from stupid to really fun actually, as i'm about to have a final destination moment with the road greater here, okay, anyway. The one thing that strikes me about this truck is how smooth and comfortable it is. If you were to test drive one of these things, you would probably be impressed by that fact. You'd get the old school kind of land yacht ride experience, because it's a truck platform like the old cars that were on a perimeter frame.

This is sort of similar in that experience, so i guess i really like it. For that reason, let's see how it takes a turn holds in the corner, pretty well actually yeah, that's pretty darn good and thankfully no serious mechanical issues that i'm worried about with the car wizard. I didn't notice any leaks, but we'll see when we get up there. The abs light, obviously, which is standard feature on these trucks from this era.

But when you drive this thing, it feels less stupid. It covers a lot of bases for an extra car. People want to have an extra truck around to haul things. You have that you want an extra fun convertible.

Well, you have that as well, and it's a cool classic cruiser that you could take to a car show because it's retro inspired and neat and low production. So it covers a lot of bases, your classic car, your truck and your fun convertible weekend car all in one. It's not that dumb wizard! Oh you want me out of the way no over here. Okay.

Well, wizard is the dumbest truck ever made a 2004 chevy ssr. I know you're a fan right, yeah. I've always liked these stds. I guess if you're gon na have one it's going to be this, i suppose of all the retro styled cars, not it's an ssr, not an std right, yes, not an hhr, which i think i said earlier.

I called this an hhr which i mean it's hard to keep them all straight, but this one's the only the five three engine wizard only the five three. Yes, it's not the ls2, so it's kind of a bummer and it was uh slightly damaged which sent it to a co-part auction. Oh that's, not slightly yeah i had the bumper sent over here. Is it showed up? Yet? Yes, it's actually back there.

Oh cool okay! Well, that'll be replaced and this will be fixed, but i'm curious about what else you find on this thing. Put it up in the air and see if there's any leaks. But i want to check under the hood and see what it looks like sure sure, yeah, the only issues that i'm having are an abs light, and i can't get the el camino bed area hatch to do anything. It doesn't do anything at all.

No but the engine, it sounds really really good good old, chevy, 5.3 yep before all that cylinder deactivation, junk ruined them right. It is junk. That's for sure. I don't see anything leaking or pouring out in the front here, because the ac works good ac works.

Well, the only mystery is like i said, the rear hatch that abs light. We know it's always with that module soldering whatever it is right, yeah just solder the circuit board on the abs module, that's typically what it always is, but i'm curious if there's a manual release for this hatch, because i don't know what's back there, there could be There could be six hundred pounds of meth with the way i am with cars exactly so maybe we can find a a release on this thing. Well, we found the manual release, which was actually hard to find because ssr owners don't want to share it because they don't want their stuff stolen out of the back right and it's released one side, but not the other. There's two latches one on here: one here and this one's being the stubborn one, but can you peek in there and see, do we have? Is there bars of gold or anything interesting in there? I see a cardboard box really yeah a mystery box, so you're saying there is a mystery box inside of there there is okay.

Well, you have a quest, i suppose, to get the other latch loose and figure out what's going on, but in the meantime, should we put up on the lift and see what else is wrong? Let's do it cool, no rust, please, let's take a look at this trail. Please, please, please yeah! Okay, surface yeah, normal yeah! Here's, our big oil pan! It's dry up front a dry oil pan! Yes, what in the heck is going on over here? Well, that's weird. Is it? Is it missing something it seems like there should be one on this side, but it's just a c shaped. What would you call that piece this well, that mounts to the strut? It's like the spindle where's, the spindle.

Oh it's right here. This pivots right here and up top, i imagine trailblazers, don't look like that. That is weird right. I i don't know i don't work on a lot of trailblazers.

I guess maybe they would do it this way. So you could do all-wheel drive and then there'd be a front drive as you can see where a cv shaft would go in right here, yeah. So that's trailblazer, i suppose yep, that's all trail blazers! Okay. Does it drive nice and tight? It does feel nice and tight brakes feel good.

Everything feels really good on this as good as these can be there's a little bit of oil seepage here. I believe it's coming from the oil pan. Okay, you can see it up there, it's it! Probably we could go through and tighten all the bolts. It would solve it all right, transmissions, nice and dry yeah.

Your cats haven't been cut out of here, that's good, that is nice and then the fuel tank's sitting right here in the middle big one. That's a big shaft, that's a big drive, shaft too all right ring. The bell. Do i have a little exhaust leak.

Is that what this is? No, that's normal! That's so that condensation! Oh all, right! Your joint looks good. You really like that. Driveshaft yeah! I keep touching it. Coil springs in the back bricks, look good there yeah and then we get to the accident portion of this, which sadly, this is bent and kinks here from getting rear-ended i'd, have an exhaust guy cut it and push really hard, although it is, it is restricted and Kinked out so yeah probably would want that fixed time.

Oh here cut this piece out right, okay and as far as the frame goes from taking that whack. What is that uh good question? That's the cup! That's why your latch won't work or something maybe see the cabling it's all busted up. Oh, it happened to be a million dollar wound like achilles or something like that. It hit the maybe hatch, control huh.

That's why it's not working well. How about that? That's too bad. It looks like the frame just barely got touched here. I popped it, you popped it.

I popped it. I heard something: okay, now we can see the mystery box. Hopefully let's let it down. Oh you did it uh-huh, okay, ready, i'm ready one.

Two! Three um running boards running boards in a roof rack. So that's that's not this car, i assume and what's that a hood install instruction, so it's hook hat strap. Oh, a hat, strut, conversion, okay and i guess originally this car would have had running boards on it - looks kind of bare under there where i put the lift and i figured something goes there and now we know i know it kind of looks like hell, though Those things yeah, they do all right. Well, i guess we'll have to look up and find out how much that electric mechanism is to pop everything, and if i can even find one i already have the bumper but otherwise fix the abs tricks.

Abs yeah how much wrong with this thing? Really there isn't you really scored, i think, all right. Well, the dumbest truck ever turned out to be a pretty decent purchase, not bad. Thank you for watching.