On the other hand, I am a huge country music fan. Not you’re run of the mill belt out the words to Friends In Low Places after many drinks country music fan. No, I actually paid money to see Merle Haggard, Lyle Lovett as well as Toby Keith in concert – all religious experiences I put right up there with climbing Mount Fuji or jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.
However, being a New Yorker longer than I have been a country music fan I was not always out and proud. Every once in a while I would sneak in a Randy Travis song in between my classical and punk stages. But then an odd thing happened. I moved overseas and for some reason being away from my beloved city I was able to come out of my country closet and embrace the high art that is Willie Nelson and his compatriots. Upon return to my great city, I felt kind of like the outlaw New Yorker running in Central Park to songs about broken hearts and pick up trucks. Knowing the runner next to me was probably listening to latest American Idol schlock, songs like The Fightin’ Side of Me propelled me to run faster!
After all, instead of domestic violence, multiple babies with different mothers and 24 inch wheels only in a country music song will you hear talk of old fashioned romance, a guys wife and a nice dependable used car.
It is with this understanding after the long struggle of the city and country that lived within me that I approached the idea of a Hybrid pick up truck. At its most basic level, the pick up truck is designed to haul crap by day and get you and your best girl to the ho-down at night without fuss. They have been the best selling vehicles in these parts for the simple fact that they are relatively cheap and do exactly what they advertise to do. Yes, there have been advances over time that would make a Maybach blush but the basic formula is the same. Body on frame. Add V8 and voila . . . Cowboy Cadillac.
Like any normal pick up truck, the GMC Sierra 1500 2 Mode Hybrid – a full name only a city slicker up there in Detroit would come up with – starts out with basics. The GMC Sierra 1500 hauls stuff very well by day and can get you to a Trace Adkins concert by night. It builds on the basics of a pick up truck in above average build quality, thoughtful touches like an armrest that you can store a laptop in, lined wheel wells, and door handles big enough for a guy wearing work gloves. In a way, it has gone Hollywood on us.