The SCG Boot Is Hero Worship Done Right – RoadandTrack.com

Hero stories become more impressive with retelling. Memory is malleable, and nuance is forgotten as we recast everyday events into other-worldly feats. That’s what we have here with the Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus Boot, a modern revisiting of a Sixties legend that forgets the details in favor of a knockout ending.

This is a bona fide off-road racing machine that—somehow—has a license plate. Like everything else SCG intends to build, it was designed for competition but carries just enough DOT-approved equipment to qualify for a 17-digit production-car VIN.

This story originally appeared in Volume 9 of Road & Track.

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It’s 5550 pounds of ugly, like a spider on 39-inch tires. The headlights are too high and too far back. Aside from the most rudimentary pieces—doors, roof—there’s hardly a body panel you could identify by name.

It’s like that for a reason. SCG’s Boot is an arm’s-length reinterpretation of the original 1967 Baja Boot. Cobbled together by legendary hot-rodder Vic Hickey, the Baja Boot was an experimental off-road racer loaded with innovations like four-wheel independent suspension, space-frame construction, and a rear-mounted small-block Chevy V-8. As a competition vehicle, it wore bodywork that was pragmatic and minimal—and breathtakingly unattractive.

The SCG Boot exaggerates everything about the Hickey-designed original. The modern rig has 18 inches of suspension travel to the original’s six. A 6.2-liter GM small-block hangs over the rear axle, and an optional supercharger brings horsepower and torque to an even 650 each.

Clambering into the Boot takes practice. You heft yourself over a race-ready roll cage and settle into competition bucket seats; a removable steering wheel helps the effort. The Boot is a “multipurpose vehicle” in the eyes of federal regulators, so airbags aren’t required. The dashboard is awash in huge switches with myopia-friendly labels, the better to operate at 100 mph on sand.

Driving this thing makes every mainstream off-roader feel toylike. The steering is hefty but super quick. The brakes are barely useful when cold and get warm only when you romp it. The engine sounds like every other small-block, but its rumble is outshouted by the whining transfer case. Forget the other off-roaders you’ve driven—piloting the Boot feels like operating military machinery. (A cushier four-door Boot with a stretched wheelbase and a more civilized interior is coming.)

Halfway through my first corner, I was certain we were headed for a rollover. In a curve, the Boot’s cabin knuckles over to a lurid angle. Pillowy suspension and half a yardstick of travel allow body motions you could time with a stopwatch. But the Boot is as stable as bedrock, and once the suspension settles, you corner it like a rally car, steering with throttle and letting the front axle tug you straight.

The first time I jumped it, I was sure my career was over. At the moment of weightlessness, time slowed to a halt. My brain calculated dire math, the kind that comes with bent suspension components and phone calls from angry bosses. I screamed.

The Boot landed like a kid jumping on a hotel bed—one soft bounce, then off and running, pure unbroken stride. Same thing the next six times I jumped it.

It’s unfair to compare the Boot to conventional off-roaders. For one thing, it costs more than a quarter-million dollars. It has no mass-market underpinnings, no fear of warranty claims, and no desire to out-luxury a Range Rover.

It almost makes you feel bad for Ford. The Blue Oval spent years planning the return of the Bronco, an all-new SUV with impressive off-road capabilities and styling faithful to the Sixties original. Ford built a gnarly competition-only rig, the Bronco R, for the 2019 Baja 1000, only to have the SCG Boot kick sand in its teeth. The Boot won Class 2 in that race and then again in 2020.

Here’s the thing: The original Baja Boot set the paradigm for modern off-road racing trucks—and directly inspired the Humvee—but as a competition machine, it was kind of a failure. It broke down in its first race, the 1967 Mexican 1000 (which would become the Baja 1000). Steve McQueen drove it in competition twice, at the 1968 Stardust 711 and the 1969 Baja 1000, and DNF’d both. Bud Ekins and Guy Jones took overall victory at the inaugural Baja 500 in 1969, but that was in a second Boot powered by an Oldsmobile engine.

The modern-day Boot reframes the story by making the original into a deity, then avenging it. Memory may be hazy, but the legend of the Boot is secure.