An Evil King 'Thing', Rising, Falling and Multiplying in Trucker Culture

Paraphrasing Slavoj Žižek (1991: 65), the paper proposes that: `The Scania Truck does not exist': it is nothing but `the symptom of passionate users', its power of fascination masks the void of its nonexistence'. Along the same line of reasoning, it argues, again paraphrasing Žižek, that `the customized Scania truck is becoming the sinthome of its user'. (c.f. Žižek, 1991: 137). The paper does so by digging into a customizing discourse found in trucker media; by describing some of the customizing endeavours of Lennart Källström, a passionate truck owner, haulier and waste management entrepreneur; and by describing the rise and fall of a customizing King, and the Evil which befalls him in this process. The main purpose of the paper is to explore the workings and the effects of a circular movement of desire, fantasy and ideology at play in truck design development. As is already evident, Žižek is the main support in this endeavour.