I was trembling with anticipation as I waited for CAR to take delivery of the menacing Chevrolet Lumina SS Ute I’d been eyeballing all week. The bakkie in question had received SuperUte surgery by Lupini Power, back in the tuning game after a 20 year hiatus…
What’s so super about it? Well just look at it. No need for bright hues like Barney-aping purple and lumo green, because the visual assault is what those in certain circles call “murdered” – black all-round in other words: black paint, black wheels, dark tinted windows and black load bed cover. The finish is only broken in certain places by yellow brake calipers and suspicious badges that resemble the “S” in Man of Steel.
Still not fazed? Under the bonnet you’ll find the same 6,0-litre V8 featured in a standard Lumina SS, but the shot of testosterone most are looking for catches the eye almost immediately. The “super” in this Ute’s name comes from the addition of a Magnuson Magna Charger blower – which is a pretty straightforward conversion and very neat. The inclusion of Corvette plastic covers is nifty too.
As the SuperUte is essentially still a bakkie, one expects it to have a reasonable degree of comfort, and it does to a certain extent. It still makes use of the thickly-bolstered, but comfortable, leather seats that are standard Lumina SS fare – and which are reasonably adequate for soaking up minor road imperfections.
You need the padding, because suspension kit includes H&R coil springs, which contribute to a 35 mm drop in ride height. Not only that, but the matte-finish multispoke TSW Donington alloys are wrapped in very low profile (245/35 R20 front, 285/30 R20 rear) Bridgestone rubber. Despite the lowering kit, the Ute doesn’t bounce around unnecessarily, but extra prowess is needed when faced with speedhumps to avoid damage to the front bumper, side sills and particularly to parts of the freeflow exhaust system between the axles.
The engine lazily rumbles into life in a characteristic V8 bellow and at low speed sounds louder than I remember from my previous experiences with Lumina SS Ute. Feather the far right pedal and you’re met with a few decibels more than before, but nothing significant. That’s because you don’t pussy foot with this old-school muscle car… the throttle requires a stomp to release a malicious roar quite unlike the high-pitched song and metallic rasps associated with V8s that hail from Italy or Germany. This one sounds like only an American pushrod unit can.
Despite what is supposed to be a stealthy presence, the SuperUte attracts attention almost everywhere, or whenever you put foot. Bystanders point and stare and “fellow owners” approve with a thumbs-up or a nod.
As the driver, the only attention you need to focus on is muscling through the meaty gearshift action and how much throttle you apply after shifting, because the SuperUte forgets about traction very easily – even with ESP on. If you need to be quick off the line, you’re faced with no easy task, as the SuperUte scrabbles for grip, even from low engine speed. The claimed power figure is 400 kW at 5 600 r/min and peak torque is 785 N.m at 3 400 r/min.
With all that grunt on offer, crawling about at low speed in a high gear is child’s play and overtaking seldom requires downshift. When the occasion arises, there’s no obvious drop in pulling power until the far reaches of the tachometer and, even with long gearing, the speedometer needle rapidly fetches figures that make you think twice – if not that then perhaps how loose the tail is under acceleration.
Keep it on full throttle for long and the SuperUte consumes unleaded at an alarming rate, but settle down into a freeway cruise in sixth gear and the range readout grows higher than what you’d expect most owners of a vehicle with this conversion will ever achieve – especially after they’ve fallen foul of the addictive whine of the Magnuson charger and freeflow exhaust boom.
Performance-wise the one area in which this pick-up doesn’t deliver is braking, despite Corvette Z06-sized discs up front and AP Racing four-pot calipers. That’s largely due to the fact that its mass after the SuperUte conversion is now near two tons. LupiniPower has promised to remedy this with an upgrade in the near future. There’s also a Bilstein coil-over suspension set-up and a Detroit Locker limited-slip differential available as options.
Read the full road test of the LupiniPower SuperUte in a forthcoming issue of CAR.
The SuperUte costs R639 000, and this includes a three-years/100 000 km warranty (a five-year plan is optional).
