Like Alec Issigonis sketching the Mini on a napkin, Woodcock drew up the lines for his first Critter Gitter on a bar napkin-while drinking beer, of course-and now we’re at generation three. More hunting-related projects came Woodcock’s way until the day that preparation and skill made a rendezvous with opportunity. Here’s why: Take a turn too hastily, and your deer stand ends up on top of you, with the deer strolling away chortling. That actually could be a way to even the odds between hunter and prey. Then the guy came back and asked Woodcock if he could rig a system where you could drive the SUV from the hunting perch on the roof. Essentially, it was a mobile tree stand to hunt deer.
#CRITTER GITTER CINCINNATI INSTALL#
One of his first hunting-vehicle projects was for a friend who asked Woodcock to install a seat and a blind on the roof of an SUV. Pulled Over in a RHD Wagon with a 48" Machine Gun.His father says, “They were sold before he even got them to where he wanted them." Enough so that other hunters and off-roaders wanted them, too. His personal automotive projects turned out very nicely. And like a lot of Texans, Woodcock is an avid hunter. Like other Texans (Jim Hall and Carroll Shelby come to mind), he messed around with cars and trucks. Rex? That alien with fangs and the A-bomb wristwatch in Predator?”īob Woodcock got started welding and fabricating in chemical plants all over Texas. In a pinch, it could double as: A.) a Katrina search-and-rescue unit B.) the world’s best-armed tow truck or C.) the thing you drive after the apocalypse to fight off the flesh-eating mutants.Ĭonsidering its 13,250-pound weight, its huge tires (64 inches tall by 32 inches wide), and the 8.2-liter GM big-block V-8, you might legitimately ask, “What is this thing made to hunt? T.
If it rains, the creek rises, and you get stuck in the south 40, the auto club will laugh, but it will not make a house call.įor all its similarities to a troop carrier or a bomb-disposal truck, the GIII is, in fact, a hunting vehicle. And it’s another 30 miles to the nearest fuel, food, and ammo. The front door of this particular GIII’s owner is exactly 13 miles from the nearest paved road. In Texas, where the driveway to your ranch is 13 miles long, it’s just about right. If you live in a 500-square-foot pied-à-terre in Tokyo or Manhattan, the 30-foot-long GIII is immorally oversized. Your take on the GIII depends on your frame of reference. Texas is the place where, when a guy tells you he’s got a “li’l ol’ ranch,” what he actually has is a spread the size of Namibia. And at roughly $340,000 a throw, that market indicates that a lot of grown-ups never stopped hankering to see one of those math-class doodles parked in the driveway. Bob Woodcock is making a living building these things. But the fact that there are currently 12 GIIIs in the hands of customers from Texas to South Africa should give one pause. The world, after all, is littered with art cars and weird automotive one-offs, feral curiosities that are cobbled together on reality shows or pop up at county fairs where you pay a dollar for a one-minute ride.
The existence of one of these beasts isn’t all that odd. It’s an adolescent fantasy a pure flight of improbability born deep in the teenage limbic system, where physics is kicked in the quadratic equations by hormones and common sense is slain by heliarc welders, Heim joints, and acres of aluminum diamond plate. If you’re 14 years old, bored in math class, and doodling extravagant cars in your three-ring binder, what you’d come up with probably looks a lot like the Critter Gitter, also known as GIIICGWB (short for “generation-three Critter Gitter wide body”).
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From the October 2010 Issue of Car and Driver
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