Please burn this Trax with fire. Signed, Burt Reynolds

Mecum

An open letter to the buyer of Mecum Auctions Las Vegas Lot 104, the 2024 Chevrolet Trax Bandit Outlaw Edition:

Sorry, but we really can’t be friends anymore.

We tolerated you wearing lampshades for hats, insisting that American Idol singer William Hung was “pretty darn underrated,” and for saying that you like your sauerkraut “the sauerer the better, ha ha ha!

But we must draw the line at your new Chevrolet Trax Bandit Outlaw Edition. If our feet were severed in a horrible accident, we’d turn down a ride to the hospital in your car; we’d just hobble there on our bloody stumps. If Sally Field (she’s still alive, correct?) beckoned from the back seat, we’d just wave her on by. If Kim Kardashian was driving—well, we’d say that’s about right.

Chevrolet Trax Bandit Edition front
Mecum

Really, what were you thinking? That “no reserve” was in reference to your will power?

And what was the creator thinking? That it would be funny to make a Smokey and the Bandit tribute out of a 1.2-liter, three-cylinder, Korean-built SUV? That it would be ironic? A commentary on our petroleum-dependent society? That you could flip it for a profit? Or just flip it, period? We’d like to ask the builder, who appears to have signed his or her name on the one-of-one certificate that came with the car as Srgspae, but we have had zero luck in locating a customizer by that name.

Chevrolet Trax Bandit Edition interior seats
Mecum

Don’t you see the problem, dude? There’s no CB radio. 10-4?

Sad.

Sincerely,

Everybody

 

***

 

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Comments

    Edition #1. You don’t say. I’m usually one to appreciate something about a vehicle I don’t like, but nope. Nothing about this I like. The workmanship appears to be good. There, I said something nice.

    Why waste a perfectly good hard to find NOS Screaming Chicken Hood Decal on that. My fondest wish that bidding runs out at $500 and the creator/seller takes a bath in losses. That is sacrilegious to try to make that into a T/A….. 🦅 🦅

    A man that would drive something like that would attend a ministers funeral in feathers.

    This is like so many things today that should never have been done. These Firebirds build on new Camaro’s are the same. Why spend all this money for decorations when for less you could go buy the real thing?

    This is also why I am against calling any SUV a Corvette. It is clear the Corvette is not a SUV but a sports car. I am good if you want to make a small Front engine roadster and call it a Manta Ray or something along those lines. Even a SUV called a Nomad Tuned by Team Corvette. But otherwise some things are sacred and the Bandit is one of them.

    Not NOS. Either made for this or a reproduction decal

    Now if they just left the pin stripes on and the bird and Bandit off that would be ok. Black and Gold cars have been around in various ways. John Player sponsorship really looked good on Lotus and Norton bikes.

    Someone personalized their car into something they liked more.

    They used something the collector market doesn’t and probably won’t ever consider valuable/desirable.

    It’s not dangerous to anyone else (and no more dangerous than factory to the owner).

    It’s kind of amusing, and many will think it is horrible/tacky and such, but that is part of what makes it amusing.

    I personally wouldn’t buy a Trax or do this, but given silly money I could come up with ideas others would find as bad or worse.

    What if this is this person’s first car, and the gateway vehicle to them becoming one of the top trans am restomodders of the next 50 years? Close the gates, we shrink the hobby…

    I agree with you and snailish, Gayle. I’m going to be 64 the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I see fewer young people interested in cars every year, and it saddens me; my father worked for GM all his working life, and he and my uncles on both sides of the family were street, legit drag, dirt car and bike racers. Should I mention that I’m from Indianapolis? Dad & his older brother did big block Impala SS models (I had no idea Dad’s ’61 was 1 of 415 until long after he passed- I was born in ’59, don’t remember it but have pics of my fat dorky baby self sitting on it). My much younger unk on Mom’s side had a rippin’ built ’67 GTO, I am still a GTO guy, have a ’04 40th Anniversary in TorRed with the Tremec 6spd I just put in winter storage today.
    If nutty stuff like this Banditrax gets lils into our hobby, make more. More kids working on cars, electric or ICE, fewer playing video games or phone twitching is absolutely the best outcome. Do I like it? No. Do I support the ability to modify vehicles to any taste without restrictions? Absodamnlutely. If I could find a “Superfly” style Eldorado based pimpmobile, I’d drive it to work on days that the GTO needed attention, and laugh hysterically at people’s reactions. More kids ‘n’ cars, less gatekeeping, please.

    I certainly respect snailish’s point-of-view here, and he has a valid (if somewhat stretched) argument. But there is no reasoning that anyone can come up with that would make me like this vehicle. To me, it’s just plain horrid – which maybe is the point since I’m viewing this article on Halloween! 🎃

    First mistake was buying a Trax, second mistake was putting a flaming chicken decal on the hood of that thing.

    See what happens when you take away The Dukes of Hazard reruns? Somebody channels the other Hollywood “good ol’ boy” franchise and uses it where it shouldn’t be. Ever.
    Or at least not on anything other than a big-engine, full size SUV.

    Somewhere inside Chevy HQ there is someone trying to pawn this one off onto a public desperate for fun in a SUV world.

    What a scary Halloween costume! I am just young enough and just privileged enough that the TA was a laughing stock in my high school. Almost no-one had a car anyway, as urban-core high schools in Canada in the 1970s might as well have been in 19th-century France for all the similarity my school had to the typical American one of the day. Those of us who were ‘into cars’ dreamed of Lambos (obvs), Peugeots, Model As, Mazda 626s, or BMWs, as I recall. I was in love with the Mini, and got to drive one around the block (under iffy circumstances — not, not stolen, or not quite) before I ever got a licence. I essentially taught myself to drive stick on that car, with all 998 screaming ccs (just shy of this Traxbird’s displacement).

    I leased a Trax for my wife to drive between vehicle purchases a few years back. Good lord, that thing was a rolling dumpster fire. I think it was in the shop six times in two years.

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