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(from Mercedes-Benz
Press Release) Legendary Motorcar Company: A Legendary GLK
Regardless of your sport
- snowboarding, wakeboarding, skateboarding or any other extreme
discipline, the Rock Crawler from Legendary Motorcar Company (LMC)
is designed to be the ultimate companion for those seeking an
adrenaline fix.
What started out as a
go-anywhere brief focused on the off-road prowess of the
Mercedes-Benz GLK, quickly turned into a do-anything reality when
avid skateboarder Ryan Klutt, the 14 year-old son of LMC founder
Peter Klutt first heard about the GLK tuner competition.
“I thought right away
that it would be great to put a rail on top to turn it into an
interactive snowboarding car, and it kind of went from there,” he
explains.
Legendary Motorcar,
which is more typically associated with race car fabrication and
classic car restoration scene than with custom-tuning of road cars,
then set about creating a vehicle that can not only get extreme
sports fans to remote locations, but can also play an active role in
the sport itself.
Central to the work carried out on the GLK is the gasoline-powered
tow winch built into the rear of the vehicle. The “Grinch Winch” is
growing in popularity within the extreme sports community, able to
tow boarders of any description at speeds of up to approx. 50 km/h.
It can be transferred to either the front or the rear of the vehicle
and has a hand throttle for tow speed adjustment.
But it’s one thing to
use a vehicle for towing a boarder, it’s quite another to integrate
the vehicle into the boarding experience. The Rock Crawler also
features a detachable ramp system, side and roof-mounted grinding
rails and a custom push bar.
Chief Engineer on the
project is Ken Stewart, whose specialty is building race cars for
Legendary. “We set out to make the Rock Crawler do something that
vehicles were never intended to do,” he explains. “And the GLK was
perfectly suited to the task. It’s not too large and has great
interior space for mounting the kind of equipment we needed. It also
has this young, active image and the grinding rails work really well
with its aggressive styling.”
Legendary used stainless
steel bars to create the roof and swing-out side-mounted grinding
rails. Using the winch and ramp combo to get airborne, boarders then
“grind” or “jib” their boards along the length of the vehicle before
reconnecting with the ground/snow/water at the other end.
A Perspex panel fitted
to the roof of the Rock Crawler protects the GLK’s panorama sliding
roof from boarding debris or, indeed, mistimed boarders themselves.
A folding roof-mounted light bar also enables the Rock Crawler to
provide play area illumination for its sporting buddies.
To accentuate the visual
impact of the Rock Crawler, Legendary worked with graphics
specialist Ron Gibbs to create stunning imagery against the backdrop
of the GLK’s standard Arctic white paint finish. The detailing works
together with the clean lines of the GLK’s exterior design and adds
emphasis to the Rock Crawler’s extreme sporting credentials.
While the other
specialists in the competition opted to lower the GLK’s ride height
and increase wheel size for visual or performance reasons, Legendary
realised, in order to achieve the go-anywhere character of the Rock
Crawler, ride height would have to be increased by 38mm and wheel
size would have to go down.
The GLK comes as
standard with 19 inch rims but, working with National Four Wheel
Drive, Legendary selected 18 inch Jesse James Black-Widow rims for
added all-terrain toughness and to incorporate the extra rubber on
the Toyo Open Country AT mudder tires. Meanwhile, ride height was
increased with custom-made spacers on the lower control arm at the
rear and billet aluminium spacers at the front.
Inside, Legendary has
left the standard interior. The GLK’s base dimensions provide plenty
of stowage area for all manner of sporting gear, including boards
and bikes.
To meet the on and
off-road performance requirements of the Rock Crawler, Legendary
examined the drivetrain of the GLK 350 and decided to leave well
alone. “The 3.5 litre V6 has plenty of pulling power and, with
4MATIC all-wheel drive, the standard GLK is perfectly able to get
wherever the Rock Crawler needs to be,” comments Ken Stewart. “And
after all,” he adds, “that’s where the fun really starts.”
More information on Legendary Motorcar Company:
http://www.legendarymotorcar.com
