This Detroit Diesel Rat Truck Is An Awesome Steam Punk Masterpiece With 1400 LB

Apr 30, 2023

The 1947 Ford COE is a Mad Max-style rat truck with a twin-turbocharged V12 engine, and a hidden Honda Trail bike in its engine bay.

Nicole Johnson has a YouTube channel in which she regularly seeks out and gets to drive custom cars, trucks, and more, in her quest to experience the wildest side of motoring.

Continuing the same road to discovery, Nicole lands her craziest ride yet – the Detroit Destroyer. Yes, it gets partly composed of a Ford COE truck, but little remains of what was once a humble utilitarian run-around, and now the Frankenstein creation bears more resemblance to a Mad Max get-away vehicle.

Here's what Johnson finds out about the unique pickup truck build, what makes it special, and how it drives on the road.

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This 1947 Ford COE custom dump truck is long, low, and has a post-apocalyptic, ‘Mad Max’-style image thanks to its bare-bones format and various quirky details.

It all but scrapes the floor on its two front wheels and between the retro cab and rear bed, sits the huge engine.

The Detroit Destroyer, owned by Scotty Ray in Las Vegas, is a mid-engine truck.

‘COE’ stands for ‘Cab-Over-Engine’ but there is no engine under the front hood of this rat truck: it hides a Honda Trail 90 rat bike. As you can tell from the name, the Detroit Destroyer – which spends much of its time touring and appearing at shows and events – uses a Detroit Diesel inline motor, that gets paired with a manual-shifting Turbo 400 transmission.

It's an awesome diesel engine, a 14-liter, V12 turbo diesel with two turbochargers making 425 hp and at least 1400 lb-ft of torque; the cast iron construction and size means this motor is 4000 lbs on its own. A Ford F-550 rear axle helps support the mini-dump truck bed up back.

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During the video, Nicole gets to see the Detroit Destroyer's secrets and features, like the hidden rat bike, the gull-wing door to enter the driver's seat, and the network of spanners that become levers to operate the gears. Everything has a steam punk vibe. The inside is pure exposed craziness.

Out on the road, Nicole reveals the big grunt of the loud diesel engine, and it proves to be an interesting experience to drive this machine – the gears are fractions of an inch apart and the transmission won't shift unless the revs are right. Scotty tells her to kick it, so it can change gears, and the torque does the rest.

See the video for the sights, sounds, and Nicole's unflappable enthusiasm for the cool build.

A Ford COE is worth around $30-50,000 but prices vary depending on condition, the Ford F-Series from 1948 (a year after the ’47 COE) is worth about $30,000 on average at auction.

Rat trucks are a take on rat rods, which are custom vehicles lacking in refinement, made with budget parts thrown together into rusty, patina-covered masterpieces. They have a large following, but it's safe to say that not many machines could equal the 1400-lb-ft, diesel-V12 Detroit Destroyer for character.

Hailing from Britain, the home of both MG and Aston Martin, Dave is no stranger to sports cars. Or a little rain. When he's not busy working his day-job or writing songs and pretending to be a musician; Dave indulges his obsession with cars by writing and researching diligently, so that he can inform and convert other people to the dark side.