2006 Toyota Tacoma - First Blood

When you're married to a custom fabricator sometimes your custom needs are low on the list, as late nights in the shop turning out customer's rides are generally necessary to keep the doors open.

The first part of the plan seemed easy enough. So with only 200 miles on the odometer, the First Blood Sadistic Taco was pulled into the shop and quickly torn down to the frame. Being the first to tackle a new body-style truck also comes with the agony of being the first to work out all of the new suspension kinks. But Sarah was in good hands, because after all, her husband Bobby is a master Toyota mechanic and custom fabricator who constantly tackles the challenges of new Toyota customization and always takes it to the next level of clean and custom all rolled into one. That is generally Bobby's style-super clean, but full of custom touches. It was fairly easy to convince Sarah to stick with this theme as she also has a clean style and understanding of customs being around the shop for so long. Her two big pieces of input was she wanted to be lower than the others and she wanted some red thrown into the mix.

Going along with Sarah's wishes, Bobby body-dropped the Tacoma an inch and a half past the rocker to assure that Sarah's Taco would be lower than any other attempting to tackle the same feat. Bobby built new custom control arms and a custom wishbone link in the rear, opting to keep the factory gas tank. Another tricky task to tackle was the new Tacoma beds built with composite (plastic) to save weight, material, and help get better gas mileage. The bedsides are still metal, but they are bolted to the composite bed, which created an interesting challenge for Bobby. As he wanted to keep the majority of the factory appearances, he decided to retain and bodydrop the composite bed rather than sheetmetaling and building a new one. So Bobby did what he always does and made it work, retaining the factory look and use while still keeping the clean custom style he is known for.

After the majority of the heavy build fabrication was completed, Sarah and Bobby got the good news that they would be having a little girl. They already have a two-year-old son named Marciano, so they were excited to have a little girl on the way. But, as you can imagine the family priorities came first and after the Tacoma was shipped off to paint, Sarah and Bobby had to focus on getting through another pregnancy. When little Natalia arrived, they both were excited and relieved, but a ton of family time was in order for the Martins crew. They had to take a break from the truck for about a year and in the mean time build their new family.

Once the new fam was settled in, they quickly got back to the finishing touches on First Blood with Image Collision laying down the Surface designed paint job. With the paint finalized, Bobby built a custom subwoofer box to house four Kicker 12s, and a custom center console. The dash and door panels were smoothed and painted, and Jose at A-Plus Upholstery wrapped the seats, sub box, and center console with black leather, perforated gray suede, and a clean red stitching for that Sadistic touch of custom class. Now that everything was back on track, the rest of the loose ends were tied up and Bobby and Sarah finished up their Tacoma just in time for this photo shoot. The Queen of Sadistic Iron Werks finally got a custom truck of her own to cruise-well at least until they get the itch to build something else (which, if we know Bobby, will be soon). For more information on the mods, check out the Lowdown.