You didn’t mess with my grandma. She was barely 5 feet tall, but she swore like a sailor and drank like a fish. And she always drove 4-wheel-drive trucks. One of them was an orange 1972 Chevrolet K/5 Blazer CST very much like this one.
Grandma was so short she had to grab the steering wheel and pull herself up into the cab. That had to really work her biceps! I’ll bet it gave her a mean right cross. But had she ever needed to defend herself, she would have instead reached for the .22 pistol she always kept in her purse.
My favorite place to ride was the front passenger seat, and I called shotgun as often as I could. Even though SUVs weren’t common in the 1970s like they are today, riding around in that seat didn’t exactly give me the rooftop view of traffic that you might think. Grandma lived in rural southwest Michigan, where serious winter snow and unplowed side roads meant almost everyone owned four-wheel-drive trucks. I was used to looking at tailgates ahead as we rolled down the road.
Grandma preferred the lightly traveled gravel back roads to the highways, though, and so I got to take in a lot of Michigan’s beauty while riding with her. Even when I had to ride in the high and upright back seat, I had a good view. That seat also sat a good distance back from the front seats, giving unbelievable legroom. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but now I think GM should have moved that seat a foot or so forward to give more aft cargo space. It was pretty tight back there.
Grandma and Grandpa had been a one-truck family (a 1972 Dodge Power Wagon, orange over white) until the grandkids started coming to visit for extended stays every summer. Riding three and four abreast in Grandpa’s truck worked while we were all very little, but as we grew the cab became too cramped and so Grandma bought the Blazer. We ran around all over southwest Michigan together running errands and visiting various taverns for lunch or dinner and, for Grandma and Grandpa, always a beer. I knew then that back home in Indiana I wasn’t allowed in taverns. Maybe Michigan’s laws were different. Or maybe it helped a lot that Grandma and Grandpa seemed to know every law-enforcement officer in six or seven counties. Perhaps Grandma’s smile, nod, and words of greeting to any deputy who stopped in were enough to secure us. We were certainly less uptight about such things forty years ago.
After Grandpa finally retired, they sold both trucks and bought a top-trim 1978 Bronco in gold with a white top. The CST package meant Grandma’s Blazer was top-trim too. This is what passed for luxury in an SUV in 1972.
Since starting to write for CC I’ve hoped to find a first-generation Blazer in the wild so I could tell Grandma’s story. These Blazers are all but gone out here in rust country, though, so finding this one at the Mecum auction in May – and in the right year, trim level, and color, to boot – is good enough for me.
Haha granny’s packin’ heat! She had great taste in SUVs, this generation of the Blazer pretty much started the whole SUV as a cool family vehicle thing. The popularity of skiing in the 70s helped that trend take off because if you wanted all-wheel drive you had to go 4WD, no quattro back then kids.
The Chevy/GMC trucks that these were based on were my favorites from GM.
Thanks for posting the pics, beautiful truck.
Brings me back to the 70’s when there were many of these Blazers, partying in the local canyons. Girls wandering from camp to camp, people sharing ‘what they brought’, and even Sheriff’s dropping by in their 4wd trucks and blasting Led Zepplin on the PA’s. And as long as you were not making a total out of control ass of yourself, pretty much letting you do your thing. And letting things slide that today would be totally incorrect, hateful, dangerous,blah blah. Your Grandparents sound like they were pretty nice folks who were able to enjoy, as you said, a less uptight society. Great story. And I really like the steering wheel on that good looking Blazer.
Nice to see one of these in restored shape. A buddy of mine in high school had a ’70 K5 this same orange color, with a 350 under the hood. However it was well faded and had some body damage, as it was 26 years old at the time. He never really liked the orange and showed up at school one Monday morning having spray-painted the entire thing camouflage and having replaced the white fiberglass top with a black soft top. Interesting dude…
That K5 always seemed to be one of the more imposing vehicles in the student lot though, whether in faded orange or forest camo!
Great story Jim. Your grandmother sounds like quite a woman. My own grandmother was generally quiet and mild-mannered, but every now and then she’d crack some wise comment that would completely show her good sense of humor. She had a habit of breaking down into laughter when she was frustrated with something, a tactic I wish I could replicate.
As for the Blazer, I miss 2-door SUVs a lot. It’s interesting in the photos how the door trim looks tacked on, instead of integrated.
I’ll forgive the C2 Corvette steering wheel and late ’70s wheels and hood ornament. This thing looks good! First pre-’73 Blazer I’ve ever seen with factory air.
Jim, your grandmother sounds like a lot like mine. Her last vehicle is my current daily driver – an ’02 Dakota SLT Quad Cab 4×4. She kept a plastic milk crate in the back seat so her elderly friends could climb up when they needed rides to the store, doctors etc. My uncle (who owned an ’01 Dakota) tried to get her to have running boards installed, but she thought they were ugly!
Is that where that wheel comes from? I remember Grandma’s truck had the standard black wheel used in all of the C/K series trucks. I don’t remember what wheels here had.
When Grandma moved to Michigan, she had a 60-something Fairlane wagon. It wouldn’t do for the Michigan winters so away it eventually went in favor of Big Orange.
The standard (there was an optional teakwood version) Corvette wheel had a crossed flags horn button, but was otherwise the same as the one shown here. I can’t recall ever seeing one on a truck.
Can’t blame the person who restored this for replacing the stock 2-spoke. Never saw one more than a few years old that wasn’t cracked, usually in several places.
I don’t think the K5 or the K-model pickups were available with anything other than dog dishes.
Nice to see the air still using the high center vent and two low ball vents. A lot of GM products had that for years and it looked and worked very good.
Nice truck ! .
I worked with a hard @$$ ex gangbanger Mexican guy who bought one just like this new , he drove it to work for decades , using up several 350 engines .
Everyone was afraid to ask him to sell it until we got a new Machinist who asked and got this old original paint truck for $1,500 ! .
Of course , being a machinist he didn’t understand actual Mechanicing and so disassembled it completely , got lost and sold it off piece by piece & junked the *perfect* body tub and frame .
This was in about 2000 .
What a waste .
-Nate
Nice to see one so original and not torn up with boggers or even worse lowered.
Hey cool. My son’s name is Damion. Don’t run into too many Damions-with-an-o.
Your grandparents must have been a hoot. I can’t imagine my grandmother (born in 1903) ever driving any kind of truck but from what I understand she was quite the hell raiser when she was growing up. I do know that she was the type of person who never hesitated to tell anyone what she thought about anything. My grandfather, on the other hand, was the quiet type and “hello” was a major speech from him. I guess opposites do attract.
My aunt and uncle lived for many years in northwest Indiana and then in southwestern Michigan and I’m sure they never had any kind of four wheel drive vehicle. In fact I don’t remember them having a front wheel drive until my uncle retired and they moved to Florida in the mid-eighties. Of course they did live in town(s) so perhaps the streets were plowed well enough that they managed to get around.
Sure. Grandpa worked in Dowagiac in the last years of his career and the streets seemed to be reasonably well cleared there, as was M-62 which went there. But the side roads — forget it!
OK Mr. almost-native, how exactly do you pronounce Dowagiac? I have heard Dough-ay-gee-ak and Dough-wee-gee-ak. Or is in none of the above?
Duh-WAH-jack. Just like it looks! 🙂
YouDaMan!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-MciZVTRBY love the truck!
Love it! I saw a green one much like this on Sunday…older car owners often wave as they go by, and the Blazer’s owner was no exception. I wasn’t sure if he would; sometimes 4-wheelers are a different bunch. 🙂
I recall when these came out – I think I built a model kit of one. But in Fort Wayne, we were Scout people, so the Scout II seemed so much more common than the early K5. I always liked these early ones that lacked the permanent upper door frames of the later models. However, they must have really leaked or were too expensive, because everyone stopped using them (except IH, which retained true “hardtop” type doors.)
An excellent find, and it was enjoyable to read about your grandmother – she sounds like she would have been great fun.
Grandma never removed the top on hers – she heard that was the best way to prevent them from leaking.
Friends with a Scout removed the top once, I think. It was a monumental PITA that was a 3 person job, and then they had to find a place to store it in the garage. But for that brief time that it went topless, the Scout was sure fun to be in on a pleasant summer day.
I can see why so few people took advantage of that feature.
A friend in Sydney bought one of these with a 350 for a spare engine for his ski boat the ute ran great and drove ok for what it was but the rust was incredible, it was fine for boat launching though with 4WD it made it up an down the steep ramp he used eventually the body fell apart last time I saw it there was very little other than the firewall left but it still went. Nice to see one in good order.
I had a miserly sort of co-worker that bought a K-5 Blazer new in 1975.
Beautiful Blazer but then of course the price of gas went crazy.
Did I mention he was miserly?
The high gas prices combined with the fact that his new found girlfriend lived 45 miles away had the Blazer being traded in after 2 years of ownership for a VW Sirocco.
I thought (but never mentioned) that he would have been money ahead finding a girlfriend that was geographically closer to him.
My uncle had a ’75 base model. It rusted badly and he had repainted it in the original metallic blue, but redoing all the originally-white painted trim plus the grille which was silver (plastic!) matte black.
Now THATS a truck! A far cry from todays flabby SUVs and crossovers which are either butched up minivans or neutered 4×4 trucks. Keep your flat screens, ESC, parking assist and 3rd row seating. Give me 2 doors, a fully removeable top, easily hot-rodded V-8, dual range transfer case, solid axles and God willing, a granny gear 4 spd manual trans. This looks perfect with the rally wheels, and white over orange color scheme…although Id liberate that top for an open body and a 6 point roll cage right away.
Jim, your gramma sounds like she was a hell of a lady!
Now that’s my idea of an awesome grandma!
This one caught my eye
http://southcoast.craigslist.org/cto/4559498848.html
Wow… a northeastern rig with no visible rust?!?!?! Someone mustve turned it into a bubble boy in winter time. If its solid, and the mechanicals are right, that is worth every penny! The prices on old school 4x4s are following suit on what happened with the muscle cars.
My grandmother was also five feet (less now), but the other characteristics certainly don’t apply to her, eg I have heard her use some mild cuss words when she is really cross! Nevertheless she is a very strong character, having run a farm (with my grandfather) for 50 years plus many community groups/organisations. She drove a series of big Fairlanes over 35 years or so, but still took those around the gravel and dirt roads in the area.
I thought I would look to see how much this sold for, it seems it was auctioned 2 years ago & you need to log into the Mecum site to see results. There is also an almost identical truck coming up at this weekend’s Mecum auction, except it is light blue. It has an identical steering wheel, perhaps part of the CST package?
http://www.mecum.com/lot-detail.cfm?lot_id=PA0714-194692
This truck was in this year’s auction. Here’s the link.
http://www.mecum.com/lot-detail.cfm?lot_id=SC0514-183101
The truck looks more red in these photos…odd. Grandma’s truck was orange, and this one looked orange under the fluorescent lights.
I don’t remember hood ornaments available on any ’67-’72…
18 years ago I bought one of these in Tangerine Yellow for $800. 307/TH350. Rusty but I welded in some new metal and used some filler and got it roadworthy.
One memory involves trying to locate some original Southern sheetmetal for the rear where rust had attacked the most. When you consider just about everything back of the doors is unique (I know Blazer doors are frameless but IIRC GM used the same doorskins…) it seemed like the easiest course of action.
So I called Glenn’s Southern Truck Parts in Murrysville, east of Pittsburgh and now long defunct. I told the gentleman what vehicle I was trying to get Southern rust-free sheetmetal for, and he responded with…
…laughter.
I spent the 90’s with too many car projects, not enough time/money and an increasingly PO’ed wife. The Blazer went to a guy in Jackson Michigan who came to Pittsburgh on Thanksgiving Day 1998 with $2000 cash and a trailer.
The buyer sent some jpgs of the finished product about a year later…I wish I knew where they were, but the family all admired what he’d done…and it was done right.
I ended up holding onto the two projects I still have today – ’57 Handyman and ’68 C-10. All the rest…there were 4-5 others…went bye-bye. And as my Never-Ending Whole House Reno (which ALSO dates back to the 90’s) nears completion…and the bank account dwindles…the question marks get bigger on when I’ll resume work on them. At least they’re indoors and dry. And NOT covered with anything more than dust…if only to keep the dream alive. A dream my wife has resumed sharing, now that my promise to her about the house is coming true for both of us.
Here are a couple Country videos in which 1st-gen Blazers play a role.
Reba McEntire “I’d Rather Ride Around With You”…and this Blazer has a hood ornament too! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_ETqzcEGzk
The Blazer in Cole Swindell’s “Chillin’ It” has been nicely redone and plays a leading role… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh-eN–JK8Q
Although one publicity still shot shows him behind the wheel, looking like he’s making a turn…except the shifter is clearly IN PARK!
Yes I’ve called his photographer out both on-air and on FB over that flub…with a grin of course!
My paternal grandma was a quiet, sober, Methodist Iowan who drove Ford Falcons. Yours was way more fun Jim!