Roadster Shop’s All-Steel Chevy Colorado Prerunner (SEMA Build)

The Roadster Shop Chevy Colorado is one of the wildest prerunners ever built — and every panel of its widebody is hand-formed steel, not fiberglass. Built by an Illinois hot-rod shop far better known for six-figure muscle cars, this one-off 2015 Colorado debuted at SEMA and still stands as a benchmark for what the midsize platform can become. Here’s a full breakdown, based on Terra Crew’s walkaround with fabricator Morgan Clark and the truck’s owner, Thomas.

Who Built It: A Hot-Rod Shop Goes Desert

Roadster Shop is a name from the hot-rod and pro-touring world — an Illinois builder known for museum-grade muscle cars and production chassis, not off-road trucks. When Chevrolet wanted to show off the redesigned 2015 Colorado, they handed one to Roadster Shop as a project vehicle. The result was this prerunner, built in-house in roughly four months — from August to the 2015 SEMA show, where it landed among the event’s top builders. New to the platform? Start with our Chevy Colorado prerunner build guide.

All Hand-Crafted Steel — No Fiberglass

The headline is the bodywork. Where nearly every prerunner runs wide fiberglass fenders and bedsides, this Colorado’s enormous widebody is entirely hand-formed steel, molded and blended into the cab and bed — and Roadster Shop designed every panel in CAD first. Only the stock hood, cab, doors, part of the dash, and much of the factory bed carry over; everything else was shaped by hand. The width deliberately overstates the center-mount stance, which is exactly the look they were after.

The One-Off Chassis

Underneath is a fully custom chassis that reflects Roadster Shop’s muscle-car engineering. Rather than a simple plated or tube frame, they re-engineered a factory-style frame with an OEM, almost hydroformed look and internal structures. The rails kick outboard for wide trailing-arm mounting and clean cage tie-in, with a big rear kick for up-travel and a countersunk skid plate shielding the transmission and pinion. The cab is hard-mounted and the body heavily tied in. The detailing runs deep: 12-point aircraft-spec hardware throughout, wiring and plumbing hidden through the bed, and a serviceable dry-sump and fuel tank.

Powertrain: A Dry-Sump LS7

Staying true to its GM roots, the truck runs a built LS7 V8 with a dry-sump oiling system, mounted well back in the chassis (center-mount) like any serious prerunner. By the crew’s account it starts and idles like a tuned Corvette — crisp rather than obnoxious.

Suspension, Wheels & Brakes

The front is a center-mount, center-pivot long-travel setup — see our long-travel suspension explainer for how that geometry works. Damping is a Fox package, and the raw suspension wears a clear powder coat that leaves the weld heat-marks showing. It rolls on Trail-Ready custom beadlocks — 11 inches wide in the rear and 8 up front to fine-tune the offset (more in our beadlock guide). Braking is Wilwood front and rear, and out back sits a Currie cambered rear end with cambered hubs, plus a cutting brake that can lock a rear wheel left or right like a buggy.

Interior & Finish

Inside is a two-seat cockpit trimmed to production-car standard — suede wrapping, a reshaped driver’s dash pod, and air conditioning added after the show, mounted in the center. Everyone in the video keeps circling the same word: it feels like something a manufacturer built, right down to the new-car smell. That’s the level of finish you’d expect from a shop that turns out six-figure street cars.

A Collector’s Prerunner

Today the truck belongs to collector Thomas, who bought it not long after SEMA and has kept it essentially untouched — only a handful of miles, preserved as an art piece. He’s talked about finally taking it to the sand at Glamis, where the soft dunes would let it stretch its legs with the least risk to that one-of-a-kind steel bodywork.

Why It Matters for Colorado Builders

Most Colorado prerunners are bolt-on long-travel builds on a 2015+ truck — that’s the practical path in our Colorado build guide. The Roadster Shop truck is the far end of the spectrum: proof that the midsize Chevy can carry a full custom, center-mount, hand-formed-steel prerunner and look factory doing it. It’s inspiration rather than a template — but it shows just how far the platform can go.

Full walkaround and credit: Terra Crew on YouTube. Build by Roadster Shop; currently owned by Thomas. Specs described here are as presented in that video.