Oh boy this thread brought back some memories. HAH! In the 90's I had a fullsize chevy pickup with a headache rack which then had a 102" and a spring mounted on top of it. I spent many hours running flat strap from cab to frame, bed to frame, hood to fenders, fenders to frame, etc etc etc.. probably went way overkill but I wanted to make sure I had a good fairly centered ground plane for it to work against.
It obviously wasnt that great rolling down the freeway as she would run pretty much horizontal, however stationary it was a talker, and yes looked very dorky! There might have been a floor heater with an export radio feeding it the beans.. and HAH I just thought of something else.. who knows how much it really affected things.. but one thing a few of us would do from time to time was to park down on the coast. Then, jump out with a set of welding leads with about 3-5 foot stripped off one end, and throw them in the ocean. The other end, we would clip to the frame of the truck with the idea we were extending the ground plane and 'pushing' the signal towards the water to hit the mudducks on the other side of the bay.
The truckers hated us so much back then, they would literally just shut their radios off once they got close to town.. we didnt have much excitement growing up other than CB's LOL