The ‘Dante’s Peak’ Chevy Suburban Is Getting Restored After Years of Rotting

I can’t be the only millennial car dork who developed a reverence for the Chevy Suburban after watching Dante’s Peak in 1997. In fact, I know I’m not, because Greg Ward of Greg’s Restorations just posted about how excited he was to find it, in a barn in Massachusetts, of all places. Now, it’s getting the restoration it deserves.

America loved disaster movies in the late ’90s (Deep Impact, Twister, Armageddon, and Volcano all came out around the same time), but Dante’s Peak remains my personal favorite. For those of you who might need a little memory jog, Dante’s Peak was a fictional story but drew inspiration from the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption, which killed almost 60 people in Skamania County, Washington.

In the movie, there’s this little mountain town threatened by a volcano that nobody believes is going to erupt, then it erupts, and a hunky USGS volcanologist played by Pierce Brosnan swoops in to save some folks in a spectacularly over-accessorized seventh-gen Chevy Suburban.

The truck gets quite a bit of screen time and is very distinctive with bright orange paint, a huge lift, a big array of lights, a winch bumper, and, of course, oversized tires. I can understand why the studio wanted to use this older model instead of the GMT400, which would have been the current body style in ’97—the seventh-gen truck shares a design with the decidedly more rugged K5 Blazer.

A video that popped up last year shared some facts about the movie vehicle, including insights into the production (worth checking out for the mini model of the bridge alone). If you’d like to take a brief contextual detour, give this a quick watch:

One more sidebar before we get to today’s news—Dante’s Peak also featured an ’80s-era Chevy truck with a service body that’s also super cool. You can see it in action heroically crossing lava right here:

Anyway, what happened to the Suburban immediately after the movie was wrapped is still kind of a mystery, but apparently it was sold on eBay about a decade ago, ultimately ending up in a barn on the East Coast.

And just a few days ago, the truck appeared again, on Greg Ward’s YouTube channel, Greg’s Restorations. Ward does all kinds of classic car work out of his Rutland, Massachusetts, shop and has a pretty deep catalog of completed projects. He’s no stranger to working on movie trucks in particular; his shop worked on a screen-used Back To The Future Toyota, and he’ll build you a clone of the black Marty McFly 4×4 if you want one.

In the first few minutes of the video, Ward pokes around the Suburban in the dark corner of an anonymous barn where he says he found it. Apparently, it took “a couple of months” to get a deal done where he could get it to his own place. You can tell that the weather’s a lot more pleasant in the last few minutes of the clip.

Ward says he plans to get the truck running and have a little fun with it before diving into a full restoration, which makes sense. “We have a lot of experience with stuff like this, especially here in New England, everything rots out. So a lot of our projects are rust-orations.” In other words, once work starts, the truck’s going to be in the shop for a long time before it can come out again. Man, do I hear that. Moving back to New York from California has been such a bummer every time I climb under a car frame.

This old ‘Burb does look pretty rusty, but as Ward points out, pretty much every body panel is obtainable from an LMC Truck catalog. And most importantly, all the goofy movie accessories are still there. The only thing that looks like it’s missing is the winch, which should be easy enough to source a replacement for. The front brush guard is probably the weirdest accessory to me. It’s rocking some bizarre louvers I’ve never seen in such a spot before.

In the comment section under Ward’s video, somebody mentioned that they thought they recognized the rig from having worked on it. The vehicle was reportedly sourced by Cinema Vehicle Services, but it looks like it might have been set up by an Arizona shop. From @jdunereaper1 on YouTube [sic]:

“Pretty sure i worked on that suburban right after it was sold when the movie wrapped. It was brought to the offroad shop i worked at in Cave Creek, Az for a suspension lift. The production team had used stock leaf springs with welded blocks under the front end to lift it, which was completely unsafe. I believe we ended up installing a 6” lift with 35” tires and the wheels that are now on it. It originally had the factory rallies with 33” goodyear m/t’s from the movie. Everyone there thought that it was awesome that we were working on a “movie” truck, but also bummed that the snorkel was only for visuals and was never hooked up.”

Take a look and see the current state of the Dante’s Peak Suburban yourself:

I’m really excited that this vehicle was found, and even more stoked that it’s in the hands of someone with both the skills and passion to bring it back to life. Here’s hoping we get to see the truck brought to better-than-new glory.

Seen any other epic movie cars hiding in barns? Tell me about ’em at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.