If you're a Russian mobster legitimate businessman, an up and coming rap artist, or a Dallas housewife with a love of fresh air and birds shitting on you, then today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe Escalade will be right up your alley. But will its price be up there too?
What is it with $15,000 lately, is that some sort of lotto-winning combination of numbers? Just last Friday we had a cool plastic pretand-a-Porsche for fifteen large, and then on Monday a gas-passing Mustang for the same amount. Now, just yesterday, RIGHT HERE, we had a 1986 Pontiac Grand Prix 2+2 and its asking price was… yeah, you got it, $15K.
Okay, I'm starting to freak out a little bit here, and it's not just the leprechauns under the bathroom sink telling me how cool I'd look with a soul patch. I know that, dammit! You however also know that yesterday's Pontiac was pricy, and it was met with a decisive 90% Crack Pipe loss.
Don't worry, I've checked and today's custom 2004 Cadillac Escalade DOSEN'T cost fifteen grand, and so I think we're safe. What would not be safe is your anonymity were you to roll in this custom Caddy, because it gets the party started.
The ad notes that this is one of three such conversions. The makers perhaps stopped upon discovering that there was demand for only two of them - one for Kanye West, and one for Kanye's invisible friend (also named Kanye West) who keeps telling Kanye how great he is and that he deserves all the best shit. That of course leaves a third, and that one - this one actually - was made for some other rapper to give to a family member.
This is a two-wheel drive Escalade, which of course is based on the Tahoe platform. Power comes from an Alpine Stereo… er, 5.3-litre V8, and as you would expect that's paired with an automatic gearbox, and there's power everything. It's pretty much par for the Cadillac course.
What isn't however is that full convertible top. Making a hatchback 4-door truck into a convertible is a herculean task, and is a challenge akin to getting Ann Coulter to willingly wear a Chādar. This one pulls it off with what looks like a fully articulating soft top. The lower part of the hatch remains, but one has to wonder just what happens when you pull the release on it just south of the Cadillac crest.
There should be little issue about a diminution of structural rigidity owing to the loss of the roof as (a) this is a body on frame design, and (b) there's still a basket handle at the B-pillar for seatbelt mounts and to keep the squeaks at bay.
Along with the drop top, this 'Slade features 22-inch pizza plate wheels, custom tail lights, and apparently more LCD screens than the NSA. So much attention has been lavished on this truck that the ad claims there's over $70,000 in upgrades evident. Or maybe it's $142,000 plus $70,000 for a total of $210,000? It's not exactly clear but the maths doesn't add up (I know, I used a calculator) and the ad is a little sketchy when it comes to where all that money went.
Due to claimed legal reasons the seller is also iffy on the identity of rap star that originally commissioned this custom for... his mom. Of course a quick Web search easily shows that it was <REDACTED BY GAWKER MEDIA LEGAL>.
Dammit! Oh well, that Web search also shows that this Escalade has been sitting on this dealer's lot for a while now, its price apparently being whittled away over the months by time and apathy. Right now it's at $24,990 and while it could eventually be circling the drain at a lower offering, we've all got ground to scratch and eggs to lay and hence can't wait, am I right? As such, I now want your opinion on this mystery rapper's mom's ride and more importantly its almost $25,000 price tag. Do you think that's a gangsta's paradise? Or, for even that much is this seller dreamin?
You decide!
Hemmings Classifieds, or go here if the ad disappears.
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For $24,990, That Escaladed Quickly