When Detroit shifted its retro-matic ray gun from Chrysler's PT Cruiser to the Chevrolet SSR, the pickup market took notice. But the SSR took things to a new level, reimagining the sport truck with a bygone-cool that hasn't swept the nation's highways as much as it has the industry's drawing boards. Chevy's Heritage High Roof (HHR) represents the brand's attempt to charm its contemporary SUV lineup with a mix of the SSR's standout styling and the Suburban's heritage.
Recognizing the HHR's promise as an aftermarket upgrade platform, Chevy made an unusual move by commissioning a chop shop build-off before the HHR officially hit the streets. Four companies competed to deliver a custom HHR in eight weeks, one of which was Unique Performance in Farmers Branch, Texas.
Unique started in 2000 as just a hot-rod shop, but now it's a boutique builder of high-end customs such as the Shelby Continuation Mustangs and select Chip Foose-designed automobiles. The company jumped on the challenge of building an HHR custom. Unique tapped Joe Iacono of Iacono Designs to draw up the concept for the vehicle seen on these pages. Joe's no stranger to either automotive design or the SSR DNA that propagated the HHR. In fact, he contributed an SSR-ified Lexus roadster to Truckin's Radical Renderings section back in issue No. 7.
That thumping sound isn't Chevrolet's Heartbeat of America, it's the bumpity-bump of a Kenwood and JL Audio sound system. The crew from Grand Prairie Audio Tint & Security, in Grand Prairie, Texas, spent three weeks at Unique fabricating the doors, dash, center console, and cargo area and installing the system-working evenings and weekends to get the job done by deadline. And what a nice job they did.
Opening the rear gate reveals the five JL amplifiers splayed across a white fiberglass amp rack. Two 500/1 500-watt mono amplifiers power the two JL W7 subwoofers protruding from the HHR's filled-in rear quarter windows. The three remaining 300/2 150x2 amps juice the three pairs of JL Audio XR-650CSI component speakers. Custom enclosures house one set of these speakers in each door, while half of one pair resides in the fabricated dash, providing the front center channel. The other half of that pair was supposed to fill the rear center channel, but the crew had to defer in the interest of time.
Sourcing the sound system from the center console is a Kenwood Excelon DBX-7015 AM/FM/CD/DVD featuring a 6-1/2-inch screen. Underneath it, also on the center console, is a Kenwood KNA-DV4100 DVD-ROM navigation system. Hidden inside the console is a KDS-P901 5.1 Dolby Digital processor, also from Kenwood.