Your Next Project Car Should Be This Rivian R1T

Photo: Pacific Motors

If you have a Rivian R1T truck that has been rear-ended and you need to get your “unipanel” replaced, maybe it would be easier to just buy a whole Rivian shell and transfer over all of the parts from your wrecked one. Or maybe you’ve always wanted to LS-swap a Rivian because GM won’t sell you an Avalanche anymore. Or maybe you want to see what a Rivian is like when it’s running on Tesla motors. Maybe you want to turn a truck shell into a treehouse for your kids. This is your chance, because there’s a Rivian shell up for sale on Detroit Craigslist right now.

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Photo: Pacific Motors

OK, maybe it won’t be the easiest thing to do, because it needs a bit of bed repair around the taillight anyway, but hopefully an accomplished metal worker could get it squared away for you. A dollop of Bondo will do wonders, trust me.

A new Rivian will cost you at least $73,000 with no options, and it’ll be around four months for your new truck to be built. If you want to get this one today it’ll only cost you $10,500, but you’ll have to go pick it up yourself. The Craigslist post includes a link to the seller’s website. I wanted to know more about what happened to this Rivian and how it got in this condition. As it turns out, the site lists the VIN of the vehicle for all of its parts, and a quick VIN lookup indicates the truck was auctioned for $31,250 in February of last year at a salvage auction. The truck in question is listed with a Florida flood branded title.

The Rivian R1T is built from the factory to be able to ford three feet of water, but sitting in salt water for a while is a whole different stress test. While the truck was probably still driveworthy after this, considering the batteries are sealed, most of the electrical connections were probably impossible to salvage. It’s sad to see a truck like this get pushed out of service, but hopefully, it will die so many other Rivians can live on.

What would you do with this salvage truck shell?