Here’s How I’d Use Bolt-Ons To Make The Slate Into Discovery-Style Seven Seater

It’s been over fifteen minutes since we last wrote about the upcoming Slate truck. I don’t think that we can realistically continue today without another post on this bare-bones compact pickup that quickly escalated from “under $20,000” to now over $26,000 before local taxes.

We’ve seen all sorts of different variations of this much-hyped little truck, but there’s one rather simple-to-make version that I’d still love to see. The Slate is the ideal canvas for a tribute to one of our favorite old SUVs, a chance to recreate one of the first crossover “soft-roaders” with a painfully cool “tough” look. If you can give the Slate fifteen more minutes of fame, I promise you’ll dig this.

A Slate Of Mind

By and large, The Internet seems to be neatly falling into one of two camps. There’s a rabid group of followers who buy into the whole no-paint-color-options austerity; people who are happy to see an “outsider” (Jeff Bezos?) giving buyers a screen-free driving experience that they claim the Big Three will forever refuse to do. On the opposite side are the rest of buyers who see the Slate as sort of cool, but a pretty poor value at $26,400 for a limited-range electric two-seater without paint options or basic equipment that even entry-level Korean crossovers have standard for thousands less.

Unfortunately, I fall firmly into the latter category. I think the whole crank-window stripped-out novelty would be cool for ten minutes at $15,995 but not at the current price of nearly ten thousand more. To me (and many of our readers), $26,400 seems like a lot of money, and for that kind of cash a several-year-old CPO low-mileage Maverick or run-forever Tacoma feels like a far, far better deal on a Real Vehicle with the witchcraft of things like a radio and speakers. Honestly, in many ways the coolness of the whole Slate concept has less to do with the truck itself and more about the custom roof, accessory, and graphics packages that legacy automakers really should bring back themselves. Of course, add a bunch of these options to your Slate, and suddenly you have a “bargain basement car” approaching $40,000, especially when you add the enclosed cabin structure on back and try to make it more like a “normal” SUV.

Recently, I tried to add a few more versions of this new pickup with some twists that might add a lot of extra value for not much extra cash. One was the Slate Caboom with a Datsun King Cab-style extended passenger compartment for more indoor storage space.

Another one that might be cost-effective and life-affirming to drive was a convertible “No Cap” kit to allow you to remove the roof and stow it in the bed.

However, there is one more version of the Slate that might be perfect. I’m talking about adding onto this little truck with some body panels that would almost certainly raise the price to far above the base sticker, but the end result would seem like more than the sum of its parts. If you could have passers-by ask if you’re driving a new Land Rover Discovery, then you’d appear to be money ahead in my book.

So many people seem to lament the passing of that particular tall-roofed British off roader, or at least the looks of it. Considering that these very often “fail to proceed” if you own one, you’ll get to look at it a whole lot.

Back in the seventies, hardly anyone in Europe could afford the Land Rover product they really wanted. That unrequited longing is the thinking behind the vehicle that inspired this special edition of the Slate that I’m about to scribble up.

Mucho Rancho

Oddly enough, there was something from decades before the Discovery that had a similar rough-and-tumble look to that Land Rover but, in reality, would take quite a tumble indeed if you introduced it to serious off-pavement antics: The 1977 to 1984 Matra Simca (later Talbot) Rancho.

What a cool machine! It’s an Autopian favorite, and I’ve written about it before:

The Rancho could lay claim to being one of the first image-over-capabilities SUVs; it wasn’t even available with four-wheel drive. If it looks at first like a Simca 1100 driving out of a glass shed, that’s because it kind of is. The whole front section of this concoction is that old French compact, attached to the spacious, window covered boxy rear cabin.

Yes, if that front end looks incongruous yet familiar, it’s because it’s off of a popular Simca hatchback sedan:

Matra was way ahead of their time in understanding that most people that were getting into things like Jeeps and Range Rovers would never go off road beyond putting a wheel onto the median now and then. It’s the look that matters, and things like hood mounted spotlights (that could only turn on with the car off), a mock push bar and rugged roof rack over the original Simca passenger compartment made this thing look like it was look like ready to drive the Darian Gap when in fact it was only capable of driving to The Gap, if the snow wasn’t more than a few inches.

That big boxy cabin in back was an ultra-spacious place to be, and you could even get it with a rear-facing seat to carry a total of six passengers.

Note that the four rear ones shared two headrests!

So much space in the back of this thing:

Besides being limited by only two drive wheels, there wasn’t an immense amount of power on tap, as I wrote about before:

With only 86 horsepower spinning the front wheels you’d better hope that some of those six possible passengers were pretty small. These things were supposedly popular in period as fashion items on the streets of Paris and London despite the limited overlanding abilities, a “bomber jacket” of a car

Wow, the little two-wheel-drive Slate is around the same size as the also two-wheel-drive Rancho, and the new EV truck has far more power than the old Matra. It might be considered a “stripped out” vehicle today, but the Slate’s got features like air conditioning, cruise control, and keyless power locks that the Rancho lacked and some luxury cars didn’t even have as standard in the Rancho’s days. We’ve gotta bring this back.

Slate Siete Por Favor

The Slate already offers Lego-like pieces to turn your pickup into an SUV with a rear enclosure and (notoriously difficult to access) rear seat, so to make a mock Rancho wouldn’t be tough with some different components. Here’s the stock SUV version below.

There are two things that would be different about this add-on compartment, though. We’d make it taller and longer to allow the space needed for backward-facing or sideways-facing jump seats in back. Now we have the Slate Siete (seven in Spanish). Extending the cargo cap means that we’d have to extend what was once the pickup bed, so that can be done as well with a bolt-on section similar to what you once saw on old Econoline vans. Just like those old extended Ford vans, the original side marker light openings would be sealed and the lights replaced into apertures in the add-on section which matches the contours of the original fenders.

You can also see the massive side windows like on the Rancho, with half the glass able to slide back for a huge opening. Big sunroofs would be available back here too for a nearly open-air experience, but, unlike the open back versions of the Slate you see online with the rear roof caps removed, you could seal the cabin back up on the Siete in seconds. In back, I considered a split tailgate like on the Slate SUV or the Rancho but instead chose to offer a side-opening “refrigerator door” to make access to the rear cargo area and seats easier.

You’d have a rather cavernous back compartment in the Siete with the extra height and length. Who says that you need four side doors to have an occasional seven-seater?

As an option, you could have an add-on air conditioner hanging from the roll bar, considering that a glass box with seven people in it might get toasty in summer. Again, I think the rear-facing one would make the most sense:

However, if you wanted inwards-facing seats, you could do that as well. I’m not sure how legal those would be, but the upcoming (possibly) REO truck claims that it will have them, so maybe a loophole exists (plus you can’t really regulate what a buyer does with a car after you sell it to them). I could see those seats easily folding or removing them for (we might need to install a taller rear roll bar as well).

What about the dead space below the extension we’d need to add? That could be a cargo box or, if we copy David Tracy’s beloved i3 and put a range extender under there, we’d solve one of the big issues that critics have with the Slate- limited range.

Now we’re changing the game for this fun little EV truck. We’re transforming it from a cheap proposition pickup (which isn’t that cheap) into one of the better hybrid SUV values out there.

I Promise No Massaging Seats

We know that the Slate’s calling card is the bargain-basement interior with no screens and crank windows. Nobody can stop talking about it, and it’s getting kind of silly.

Here’s my two cents: the Slate Superfans will cry foul, but my opinion is you can build what I consider to be a “bare bones” truck and still have an audio system and power windows. The sanctity of the “cheapness” would still be there. To that end, I’d offer the bolt-on and easy-to-wire “Speakerboxx” option for the doors that would include speakers that a double DIN head unit could power and motors with mechanisms that sync up to the shafts which currently hold the window cranks. They’re designed with the same materials and radii as the door panels and use the same style switches for the windows as on the dashboard, so they don’t look stuck on at all.

See? Nobody died. It’s still far more basic looking than anything else on the market, but you get the bare minimum features that really don’t count as “luxuries” today. Again, at over $30,000 a Slate SUV needs to give us the stuff that’s standard on a car such as a Nissan Versa or even that old Discovery.

Do We Put “3.0 CUBIC FEET” Decals On The Side Of It?

Now, more people on board naturally means more cargo to carry, so where do you put it? Well, there’s an outdoor cargo area in the carrier above the front cabin, protected by a wind foil. Thankfully, the Slate offers a frunk, but at around seven cubic feet it’s not going to hold all that much. What could we do? Well, if there’s one thing that makes a car or truck look cool, it’s a power bulge on the hood to signify the immense motor below. The Slate has absolutely no engine whatsoever under the bonnet, but a bulge could add precious cubic feet to the frunk.

I actually did this addition (called the “Power Pak”, for packing cargo) as a bit of a joke, but the more I look at it, the shape isn’t that bad. It’s silly but rather charming and very practical; the extra visual mass is helped by the expansive back of the Slate. I’m hoping that the bulge could allow you to transport luggage like carry-on rollaboards upright.

Driver and passenger as stuck looking at the back end of this thing, so as an option the Slate could provide a reconfigurable weatherproof display screen for inclinometer, altitude gauge, clock, map, or whatever you want in a style similar to the hood tachs on your favorite sixties muscle cars that had major horsepower under that bulge, even though the Slate will simply have your American Touristers and Nike duffels under it.

Jason suggested that the display would offer other options like a live view of the frunk interior and a frunk fullness gauge. I can’t believe I was dumb enough to forget those options.

Want It More Like A Discovery? Add Random Shutdown and Electrical Smoke Generators

What would the roof with the needed overhang extensions cost, not to mention that bumped-up hood and even a range extender? I don’t know, but even if it doubled the cost of the base Slate, you would really be getting something that nobody else has to offer today, much sell for around $50,000. Of course, you might decide to purchase an old Land Rover Discovery for next to nothing and get a vehicle with similar looks to the Rancho and capabilities beyond what you’d ever use, but get used to taking special unscheduled off-road excursions like below.

More importantly, if Slate gave us the Siete raised-roof seven-seater, I could finally stop making rehashes of an oddball French box with an econobox chassis over and over again. “No frills” doesn’t have to mean “no fun” or “no use as a family car”.

The Disco or Rancho will come back in some form, or I’ll die on this hill. Maybe Slate Rancho Disco would have been a better name.

Top graphic base image: Slate