Suburban Renewal with a 1937 Chevrolet Delivery Panel

RB's Urban Surburban Hits the Road

By Tim Bernsau

You probably thought we'd never show you the finished version of the Urban Suburban. We followed the progress of this tricked-out truck for five consecutive months in 2003, followed by eight months of silence. It's called "building up suspense."

So how do you like it?

The idea started with Ray Doe, president of RB's Obsolete. How could he turn a workhorse '47-55 Chevy truck into a progressive-looking street rod? Doe started with a '47 Chevy panel truck and a concept drawing. The truck was a rustless California vehicle that could have been turned into a cool resto rod, but the drawing called for something more radical.

The Urban Suburban is the first vehicle to feature RB's Serious Hardware rolling chassis for '47-55 Chevy/GMC 1/2-ton pickups, panels, and Suburbans and served as a test bed for the product. The chassis is narrower than factory to accommodate stouter rolling stock than was popular 50 years ago and features tubular upper and lower control arms, front antisway bar, and TRW power rack. It rides on front coil springs with parallel leafs in back. The rails were designed to use a Rock Valley stainless steel gas tank.

The Serious Hardware chassis makes the Urban Suburban tough, but Ray wanted it good-looking too. Illustrator Chris Ito had put Ray's idea on paper. It was metalman Alan Swedberg's job to apply it to sheetmetal. As he chopped the top (3 inches in the rear and 2 in the front), he created forward-slanting B-pillars and C-pillars in the style of a Chevy Nomad. Tinted Suburban-style one-piece side windows were created by Mike Cox at The Glass House in San Dimas, California. The doors were shaved and converted to hardtop style to successfully complete the look. The wide factory running board was replaced by a smooth custom piece from Gateway Rod & Custom in Collinsville, Illinois. With the top severely customized, the rear barn doors had to be replaced with a more up-to-date liftgate, modified from a late-'90s GM S-series SUV (Sonoma, Blazer, or Olds Bravada). Swedberg worked the beltline molding into the liftgate design to make the whole thing look like a factory-built piece. A third brakelight was installed above the rear window and a pair of C5 Corvette taillights were added below.

Any wrinkles in the body panels were smoothed out at Kimbridge Enterprises in Clearview, Washington. Extreme metalwork calls for extreme paint, so Chris Odom at Extreme Metal and Paint in Anacortes, Washington, was the obvious choice for performing final body prep and shooting the paint. House of Kolor white basecoat was applied over pale green primer before Odom shot the HOK Shimrin Tangelo Pearl. After Mike Lavallee taped off the rip graphics, the top of the truck was shot with Shimrin Majik Blue Pearl. What d'ya think?

The '47-55 Chevy/GMC 1/2-tons have been popular with truck-building rodders for a while. RB's chassis and the success of the Urban Suburban ought to keep interest up for a whole lot longer.