BUD

3 winches, 2 Rockwells, 1 turbodiesel, and a mind-blowing number of incredible mods.

- Ken Brubaker

IT’S MASSIVE, BUILT LIKE A TANK, LOADED WITH CUSTOM FEATURES, AND incredibly functional. This ’74 Dodge belongs to Sam Ayars of Falcon, Colorado, and he calls it “Bud.” Why? We’ll get to that in a moment.

Sam is retired from the United States Air Force and is currently a government contractor. When it came time to build a truck, he had a plan. “I had my own ideas on what I wanted to build, and thanks to all of the shared knowledge out there on the forums, I was able to make very well-educated decisions when it came time to pull the trigger and purchase the hardware,” Sam says. He also thanks his “wife and best friend” Tracy for all of her help throughout the build, as well as Ben White, Homer Smith, Steve Baker, and Neil Harrison, among others.

He goes on to say, “There were a lot of ‘firsts’ for me on this one. Like most fabricators, I think of myself as an ‘imagineer.’ I tend to think pretty far outside the box, and I like to explore different ways of doing things. And I have no fear of failing. Failing just shows me the proper way how not to do something. I really had no idea how the truck would eventually end up, but I knew for certain that it would be big, capable, and … if successful, ridiculous loads of fun!”We saw Sam and his rig in action at the Fullsize Invasion 2016 in Moab, and it was crystal clear to us that he met his goals.But why does he call his truck Bud? Well, Bud stands for “Big Ugly Dodge.” We beg to differ, and we think you will too. Sam’s Dodge is a beautiful thing.