shot and posted by Tim Finn
Who says Dodge was the first with an extended cab pickup? Yes, It’s only a two-door, and it would have been fairly easy to make it at least a three-door like the Suburbans of that time, but you gotta’ start somewhere.
This obviously started out life as an 8′ bed C10. Ideally, they’d have started with an 8.5′ bed Longhorn, but that didn’t come along until the spring of 1968, and they are–and always were–pretty rare.
The bigger question in my mind is whether this was converted to this extended cab when new, by one of the many outfits that built special pickup/truck bodies, or a later homebrew job. It looks well done, but that doesn’t answer the question definitively.
Nice job, either way. And no worries about the kids opening a rear door while underway.
CC Chevrolet C30 Longhorn Custom Camper
CC 1974 Dodge Club Cab – The First Extended Cab Pickup
I’m leaning toward a conversion done later, given that this is a C-10 with shortened bed and non-stretched wheelbase (so, not a camper hauler and likely not a tow rig), and the CST trim package (so, not a government or utility fleet order). That basically was the market for crew cabs in 1967.
I’m curious if there’s a seat back there.
Many a custom body like this were done up for the railroads and forestry services. So it could fit in that category as well.
Proportionally this looks like a giant 3-box 2-door sedan. Just needs a tonneu cover.
When glancing at the main page on my mobile device, the thumbnail picture for this article immediately makes me think it’s a Checker cab of some sort. Its the general shape that keeps screaming that to me every time it catches my eye, including but not limited to the cab shape, its squared off reminds me of the Checker’s cabin.
I swear that I have seen a square body extended cab, going the opposite direction on a 4 lane divided highway. It was well done, so far as I could tell from that vantage point (edit, to be fair, I did see it twice in the same area, our work schedules must’ve been opposite one another), almost factory looking if one didn’t know better. The extended portion was normal sized (not nearly as long as this one, in other words), probably close to what a GMT400 or equivalent F-150 SuperCab would be.
There is a guy I see driving around my area with a ’73-74 C30 single rear wheel crew cab, same color as my ’74 C10 (Sunset Gold). We have yet to encounter one another when both in our trucks, but its gonna happen one day and make for a great picture and conversation.
Like mine, his has the original grille, which I absolutely love. Of course his has a little engine displacement plaque embedded in it, being a V-8, whereas mine doesn’t. I’d be proud to sport a “250” badge, Chevy, no shame in my game.
Square body as in ’73-87? You’re probably correct–there was at least one company that made extended cabs, reusing the cab glass from S-10s. They were definitely shorter than the ext cabs GM would eventually make themselves for the GMT400s.
That was probably Centurion, I’ve seen pictures of their extended cab 73-87 generation GM trucks, and they might have done a 1/2 ton crew cab as well. I know they made 86-96 Ford F150 crew cabs. There was an early 90s F150 Crew Cab on Craigslist in Sisters Oregon for a while as part of a collection. I’ve also seen Centurion’s take on a Ford based Suburban using a Bronco rear section grafted to a crew cab on a medium wheelbase.
Yes, I’ve seen several 4 door Broncos (before 2021 lol) but only a few crew cab F-150s (before the 2000s lol). Of the two, I think I’d take the pickup, even though I love me some Bronco.
The 4-door Broncos are probably their most famous product, but CVI (Centurion Vehicles Inc.) was also responsible for making C/K1500 crew cabs, with 6.5′ beds, same as those F-150s they made. From the language used in the literature, it seems that they started with regular cab/6.5’s and stretched the cab 37″ to take crew cab doors. And this was several years before GM took it upon themselves to offer factory C/K2500 crew/6.5’s.
http://8898trucks.com/chevrolet-c-k-1500-centurion-conversion/
I’d love to find any literature for their squarebody extended cab conversions specifically. I’ve heard that they used some of the sheet metal from the bed for the cab walls.
That’s it! Or very close to it. Excellent find.
I know nothing about it but I like it. The proportions are very much like the kind of crew cabs we get here in the EU like the Hilux below. I actually think size wise the old C-10 is not that far from “our” current pick ups and would not hesitate to have something like this here (once I converted it to run on LPG).
There were a number of Chevy and GMC authorized crew cab conversions done in the 60’s. A customer would order the truck at a dealer and after manufacture the truck would be delivered straight to the body company for conversion. I have seen a number of them, some with 1 or 2 rear doors and some with stretched frames and unmodified cargo boxes. Of course most of these conversions were fleet jobs, so this truck being a CST is very unusual. Could have been a well done home conversion.
The more I look at it, the more it reminds me of those Brazilian creations, although they seemed to merge the cab and bed together like a unibody, whereas this was kept separate.
They’re apparently much more popular on Fords, but here is a Chevy I found on google images.
The Brazilian C-10 had a “cabina dupla” from the factory, but it was built on the short WB, like the Veraneio was.