Badass Targa Truck Is a Father-and-Son Project Now up for Auction

Car and Driver

4 days ago

Here's possibly the most badass farm truck of all time, and it can be yours via an online auction at Bring a Trailer that ends June 1.
Claiming bragging rights as the first truck to compete at the Targa Newfoundland, it's spent the last decade getting honed into an unlikely track weapon.
No long-bed pickup is going to be faster, as this beast is geared for a top speed of 180 mph.
Picture this: you're at a track day in your Ferrari, and la dolce vita couldn't be sweeter. Some of Maranello's finest work howls an aria of combustion as the revs climb, the chassis settles as the curves beckon, the sun shines down like it's afternoon on the Mediterranean. Bliss. But then a shadow looms. A really big shadow. A very loud shadow. Madonna! Is that a flippin' farm truck bearing down?
Meet the Targa Truck, a 1971 GMC C1500 pickup truck built up into a full-on racer. Yes, it's a long-bed. Yes, it's a manual. Yes it's going to beat up on exotics and take their lunch money. And it can be yours.
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This beast's story starts in a perhaps typical way, a father-and-son project intended to provide shared focus and maybe keep a teenager out of trouble. Current owner Mark Bovey's father bought the GMC for a crisp $100, a rust bucket needing rescue. Bovey Jr. was 14 at the time, and over the next eight years he and his dad brought the truck back to nicely restored condition, hand-patched floors and paintwork done at home in the family garage in Ontario.
The engine was swapped to a 427-cubic-inch V-8, hooked up to a six-speed T56 manual transmission. The suspension was lowered and fat tires fitted: it was a street-rod truck with attitude, a rebel without a cause. A longtime friend challenged Bovey to take it to a local autocross. There were plenty of raised eyebrows when a long-bed GMC rolled up, and they raised even higher when Bovey's run times started undercutting Subaru STIs and the like. And this was with drum brakes and manual 24:1 steering.
Eventually, Bovey upgraded to proper brakes, a NASCAR-style steering box, and a host of other go-fast parts. Now a track-day and autocross regular, it has earned a grudging respect locally. Still it had to sting for the owner of that Ferrari to be giving a '71 GMC the point-by to pass.
When the Targa Newfoundland organizing committee put out a social media post saying that they'd never had a truck compete, Bovey responded with a tongue-in-cheek message: "I can scratch that itch."
The Targa Newfoundland is an annual tarmac rally held in Newfoundland and Labrador, comprising 1100 to 1200 miles of tricky, grueling stages. Locals nicknamed the place "The Rock," and the challenging terrain is known to break a car or two. Plenty of groundswell support from the Ontario crowd helped crowd-fund the Targa Truck's attempt in 2014, and the GMC was built up with the necessary safety gear and modifications to provide reliability and strength.
As usual, there were a few quiet chuckles when the long-bed GMC rolled up for inspection. All mocking stopped when the truck started crushing stages, hammering out fast elapsed times. The cheers followed soon after, because who doesn't love seeing something that was never intended to go racing haul the mail?
Courtesy of Mark Bovey
Bovey's father, Martin, came out for the last couple of stages, got to watch the truck run, and even pitched in on a roadside repair. The GMC finished second in the classic class, beating out a Porsche 911 and a Corvette.
The truck rolled over the 200,000-mile mark while on the Targa, and the event left its mark. Back home, Bovey began tearing things apart again, looking to take what he had learned and apply it to make the GMC even faster. The eventual target was to take it to the Mount Washington hill-climb in New Hampshire, a 120-year-old tradition that's older than the Indy 500 or Pikes Peak.
Courtesy of Mark Bovey
You don't successfully campaign a GMC pickup in tarmac rally without the motorsport crowd noticing. Over the decade since the Targa, Bovey was able to work with IMSA competitors like Mantella Racing and AWA Racing, rally legends Frank and Dan Sprongl at Four Star Motorsports, and pro drifter Pat Cyr. The truck was entirely transformed, lightened, cut apart, and welded back together, with the engine set back and a roll cage built to Mt. Washington spec rules.
The list of modifications reads like an encyclopedia, but the headlines are: 3611 pounds vs. 573 horsepower at 6100 rpm and 530 pound-feet of torque at 5000 rpm. The onboard M0TeC computer is set up for traction control, and can take on more race functionality depending on this GMC's next mission.
Initially built by a father and son, this 1971 GMC now has to go for similar reasons. While most of the truck is wildly re-engineered, some of those hand-patched sections still remain, fingerprints from 37 years of ownership. But Bovey has three sons now, including young twin boys, and life is pretty full. Thus, he's put his longtime project up for auction.
Theoretically it could be made street legal as all the running lights—including the license plate light—are wired. It would take someone with a particular sense of humor to own such a machine, show up at track days, weather a few initial laughs then watch the jaws drop.
But picture it. A red Ferrari in your crosshairs. Thundering V-8 underhood. Life would be sweet.
The auction ends on Sunday, June 1.
Brendan McAleer
Contributing Editor
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels.