Every month, gracing the pages of this publication are many of the most extravagant vehicles from around the world. Sport compacts, luxuries, SUVs are the most common. What's rare is seeing a Semi. However, this particular truck that you see here in the next few pages is a complete work of art. James and Debby Cotta have the honor of owning this truck dubbed the "Millennium Mack." What is even more intriguing about this 1956 Mack B-73 BLT (hard to believe it is that old) is that it took eight years to complete.
James Cotta's passion for big rigs started after he got behind the wheel of one, at the tender age of 14. Needless to say, he knows a lot about big rigs and how to drive them. The first truck he drove is the same one you see here. The difference is that his father bought it back in 1975 for only two thousand dollars. Since the truck was about twenty years old, it had seen better days. That didn't matter to Cotta who received his Class 1 license when he was sixteen. He drove the truck every time he had a chance to. After a few years, the truck finally started to fail. It just couldn't take it anymore and it was laid to rest in Cotta's hay barn.
Another passion James has is car audio. For a little over a decade, Cotta has always had a "system" in at least one of his vehicles. The synergy between his love of car audio and his passion for the Mack were always evident and he vowed to himself to build the Mack into a show truck one day.
When it was finally time to rebuild the Mack into a show truck, Cotta knew exactly who to take it to for the audio system. In 1989, Cotta purchased a Crew Cab Dually and just walked into Lodi Auto Stereo in Lodi, California not knowing much about car audio. This is where he met owner Gary Patteson. "I was leaving for a ski trip and just told him to do it up. Well, I didn't give him much time and he exceeded all of my expectations," recalls Cotta. Ever since that time, Cotta has brought all of his vehicles to Patteson's shop.
Something DifferentPatteson knew that the Mack was not going to be one of your "run of the mill" installs. It would have to be as outrageous as the rest of the truck. Patteson and his team including Manuel Arisman and Jason Bishop saw it as an enormous honor to work on the show truck. They didn't even hesitate in saying yes and were up for the challenge. They knew that attention to detail would not be the only factor in the installation. The sound quality had to knock your socks off as well.
The truck presented many challenges during the installation. The first challenge involved mounting the source unit and equalizer. By design, the firewall protrudes into the cab where the newly constructed center console resides. The reason for this is to accommodate the rather large engine Cotta had installed. Well, this is where Cotta wanted the Clarion DRX6675Z head unit and Arc Audio PEQ 7-band parametric equalizer installed. The team has to dismantle both units and apply ribbon cable to both components. Although, it was a tedious process, Patteson wanted to make Cotta happy. Hand-made billet bezels were fabricated for a unique cosmetic appearance.
Money Is No ObjectRainbow Reference Series CS260.30 components (6-1/2" mids and tweets) were used up front to provide the mids and highs. This series of speakers comes to you from Arc Audio. Hand-made in Germany, they provide accurate sound reproduction. The cost is a measly $7500 for a set. The installation crew fabricated a set of kick panels for the components. They started with a stick frame followed by cloth, resin, body-filler, and more resin. Body-filler was again added and sanded smooth. The finished kick panel was then painted to match the exterior color of the truck. Positioning of the speakers was just as important as the perfect finish of the kick panels; so two lasers were used for exact placement and positioning of the speakers.