Chevrolet SSR Has Plenty of Surface Style

In a single package, the Chevrolet SSR expresses the national yen for speed, feigned utility, top-down driving, and the compound curves of yore. In fact, our arrival at the Greenwood Country Diner was enough to make every farmer, country gent, waitress, and cook drop what they were doing to come out and gaze at the pickup in an all-American tableau of mute admiration. Inside the abandoned eatery, pots of coffee blackened on hotplates – but out in the lot, we all feasted our eyes on Chevy’s Redline Red Franken-roadster.Under such circumstances, the first observation is often an apparent one: “It looks like a truck from the Fifties,” said a local in a John Deere cap. With that, the pump was primed for a whole series of questions: Yes, it’s new, was my answer to the first; no, it’s not mine, that’d take about $46,000.Yup, it’s a V8 – and a 390-horsepower V8 at that. That’s 90 more than last year. The tranny? Oh, a four-speed automatic, although you can get one with a five-speed manual. True, they’ve been out a couple of years, but no sir, you don’t see many of them around. You don’t say – they shot a Hollywood movie here at the diner. With Cameron Diaz, too? Damn. Do me a favor and call the next time she shows up.It all confirmed the notion that this hotrod hay-bale hauler strikes rural folk as the ideal Country Cadillac. That was the conclusion I drew after reviewing the 2004 model. But amid all the bonhomie of the diner lot, I couldn’t bring myself to tell these – my future fellow regulars – something they’d likely figure out if they actually bought one of these top-lowering torque monsters: As anything but a loud automotive statement, the Chevy SSR is just plain silly.Not that it looks all that bad. The SSR’s stylists have evoked GM’s characteristic mid-century voluptuousness with pleasantly modern lines. I did wonder at the need for the lateral taper of the tonneau-covered bed, however, and wished that the roadster’s designers had either rounded off its fenders or allowed them to course down into the doors. Still, the thing’s handsome enough – it’s just that as a truck, it’s a so-so roadster; while as a roadster, it’s no more than a middling truck.Or is that a hotrod?For one thing, there’s the weight. I’m sorry, but a curb weight of 4,760 pounds just doesn’t suggest a roadster’s tossability. Sure, the 6.0-liter engine’s a brute; but the carriage retains enough in the way of truck-like dynamics to reduce the fun quotient down to the point where you wonder what all the fuss is really about.That’s what I did as I sat in the SSR’s cabin. Inside, round instruments, leather seats, a clean, 1940s-invoking dash, and the imaginatively retro use of exposed metal parts made for a cool-looking compartment, even if some plastic surfaces imparted a cheap feel. And while both the head- and legroom the pickup offered were good, the high-riding two place interior’s confining narrowness made the truck’s burgeoning size and ostentation seem a little absurd.Of course, I’m somewhat yonder of the SSR’s target demographic. That country kid who gave me the thumbs up as he passed in his 1969 Mustang doubtless hailed from some culturally distant isobar where the pickup would be celebrated for its Harley Earl lines, 2,500-pound towing capability, excellent braking, controllable tendency toward oversteer, and 5.6-second zero-to-60 acceleration (5.3 with the manual). Undermining all this, however, was its truck-like ride, indifferent steering, and lean in corners, which, while checked, were still too great for anything calling itself a roadster.Of course, the SSR is a one-of-a-kind machine, and I suppose that’s the point. Best to judge it as a revived version of a hotrod pickup celebrated for its virtues, even if its flaws keep it from being the most rational purchase a car-buyer can make. After all, in what other automobile can you speedily haul a load of freight right after spectacularly lowering roof into body at the push of a button? That’s three types of vehicles right there – and we uncovered yet another to bring into the SSR’s hotrod/pickup/roadster/rural male-magnet mix.Back in the diner lot, a farmer asked how to access the SSR’s covered bed. So from inside the Chevy, I popped its tonneau, then came around to where I could reach inside its tailgate to pull the release that would lower it. The farmer regarded the SSR’s black-carpeted bed with its rows of polished wooden rubstrips. “Jeez,” he muttered, “Looks just like a hearse in there.”

Chevrolet SSR Has Plenty of Surface Style

Chevrolet SSR Has Plenty of Surface Style

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