From the 1972 through 1982 model years, Chevrolet sold re-badged Isuzu Faster mini pickup trucks in the US as the Chevy LUV. It nominally stood for "Light Utility Vehicle", but also for how you'd feel about their fuel mileage and ease of driving and parking. Get it? Yeah, it was too precious.
Anyway, thanks to the infamous Chicken Tax, the Isuzus had to be imported without a bed attached, in what's called "chassis-cab" configuration, and assembled here. By the early Eighties, both GM and Ford, who was doing the same thing with the Mazda B-series as the Ford Courier, realized "Hey, this is America. The pickup truck is practically our national vehicle. Surely we could design and build our own mini trucks?"
Thus were born the Chevrolet S-10 and Ford Ranger, which quickly came to dominate the mini truck market in sales numbers.
The '83 long-bed S-10 Durango in the picture is an example of a vehicle class that hardly exists anymore. Riding on a 117.9" wheelbase, the long bed had a 7'6" cargo box and the whole truck weighed something like 3,000 pounds and had a half ton cargo capacity.
Testing a 1982 short-bed S-10 with the V-6 and a 5-speed manual against an '82 Ford Ranger and Dodge Ram 50, Car and Driver declared the Chevy the winner. The 110 horsepower 2.8L V-6 pushed the little truck to sixty in 11.7 seconds and through the quarter in 18.1 at 75 mph. Top speed was 96 mph which I can tell you from personal experience felt plenty fast with those agricultural underpinnings. Its current descendant, the Colorado, is a "small" pickup that weighs some 5,000 pounds, stretches nearly eighteen feet between the bumpers... and can only be had with a bed that's six-ish feet long.
This S-10 was photographed in November of 2017 using a Sony a-7 and FE 50mm f/1.8 lens.
To date my only new vehicle has been a 1989 S-15 that I ordered. Fortunately by then GM had done a pretty good job of refining the earlier models, and the 4.3 V-6 was a great addition to the engine lineup.
ReplyDeleteBack when I was selling Chevys, we ferried some S-10s for a fleet sale from down around Macon to the dealership where I worked in the north Atlanta 'burbs. They were all stripped short-bed 4.3L work trucks, no A/C, no nothin'.
DeleteI remember thinking "You know, a little short-bed 4.3L S-10 with a stump-pulling rear end would be a hella sleeper, especially if they were available with a manual gearbox." Alas, no manual transmission then in GM's inventory that would fit the S-10 would handle the 235 lb-ft of torque.
When I ordered mine I really wanted to get the 5-speed, but ultimately the allure of the bigger V-6 won out. I also got the 3.42 rear end and the split bench/bucket seat interior, so it was fine for long drives on the highway as well as the occasional light-to-light sprint. It was well-worn when I sold it in 2000, and the seller eventually did a nice amateur restoration.
Delete