The Beginning
Most people wouldn’t even have considered the truck as a candidate for a project build, but not Searle. Before the truck came into our hands, it was previously under the ownership of a car dealer and the odometer had rolled over 200,000 tough miles towing cars all across the country.
In our business, most the project trucks that we see typically derive from late-model, low-mileage trucks. A relatively old 2002 Cummins with enough miles to circumvent the globe 8 times just by its nature will often get overlooked. But Searle didn’t care. He saw it as an opportunity to defy the expectations and have an awesome project build that was full of attitude.
It is from that beginning that the Honey Badger got its name. The inspiration for it came in the form of a viral YouTube video entitled “The Crazy Nasty#$! Honey Badger.” The video features clips of the honey badger, a species similar to weasels, and is accompanied with a humorous narration of the animal’s ferocious defensive abilities and keen diet for cobra snakes.
Of all the classic line found in that video, Searle knew he had a name for the truck when he heard the line, “The honey badger just don’t care.”
“We just don’t care. We’re going to make it a head turner,” said Searle at the beginning of the build. “This truck is the Honey Badger.”
The goal for the Honey Badger was not only to make it awesome and full of attitude, but to breathe new life into the truck. Despite the miles, we had a great foundation to work on as the majority of those miles were on the highway and the engine was bone stock. We wanted to build it up so the truck could easily go another 200,000 miles.