Video: this Chevrolet Trailblazer SS is a 1,000hp turbocharged burnout machine

Enthusiasts of Corvette-powered SUVs have an unassuming hero: Thomas Hatcher. The tale of his 2006 Chevrolet Trailblazer SS, chronicled in the latest episode of American Tuned, is one of transformation, modification, and billows of tyre smoke, set among the towering conifers of Washington State.

As we set out to find builds for a filming excursion to the greater Puget Sound region (more to come on that), Hatcher’s SS came highly recommended. In fact, we’d heard it was drift legend Dai Yoshihara’s favourite from last year’s car show at Formula DRIFT Seattle. An odd choice for a guy who made his name sliding around in Nissans, Subarus, and at least one Lexus, maybe, but Yoshihara once competed in a Pontiac GTO which shares the Trailblazer SS’s 6.0-litre LS2 pushrod V8. Maybe he knows something we don’t.

The original Trailblazer SS was a unique bit of theatre from the American auto industry, a muscular response to performance SUVs from Germany, as well as a callback to a history of fast trucks like the GMC Typhoon. GM performance engineer John Heinricy famously developed the Bilstein-equipped Trailblazer SS at the Nurburgring Nordschleife, during the General’s love affair with the circuit in the early aughts. A dealership-fresh all-wheel-drive SS could get from zero to 60 mph in the mid five-second range back then. That was no easy feat for a 2,100kg body-on-frame family hauler.

Today, of course, Hatcher's modified Trailblazer, now rear-drive, gets up and goes much quicker than that. It may have started as a bone-stock SS, but over two and a half years, Hatcher - a former Honda-focused builder - turned this grippy hauler (0.83g on the skidpad in stock form, according to tests at the time) into something extraordinary.

That includes a four-digit power number, partially owing to an 88mm turbocharger, some well-placed carbon-fibre bits - including a Corvette ZR1-style bonnet - and styling touches inspired by Hatcher’s favourite Japanese builds. Does all of that make this Trailblazer SS the world’s largest import tuner car? One might say.