When Chevy announced their intention to reuse the Blazer name for a two-row, mid-size crossover, the internet went ballistic. “How could they defile such a sacred name?” That was the general consensus among automotive armchair quarterbacks. Apparently, the Blazer had always been this amazing, dynamic, and vital body-on-frame SUV.
The problem with that line of thinking is that it’s flat out wrong. Case in point? Our featured 2004 Blazer.
As Paul mentioned in his 1987 Ford Escort retrospective, American automakers tended to launch poorly engineered vehicles that were generally in need of considerable upgrades even before they left the factory. The corollary to that trend is the car that lives well beyond its expiration date. The Big Three were notorious for that, and to a certain extent, still are. Although the older models on sale today (Jeep Grand Cherokee, Dodge Durango, etc.) have actually been kept fresh and are still in demand. This S-10 Blazer pretty much perfectly represents the fundamentally flawed thinking in Detroit at the time. After finally nailing down the correct powertrain, GM basically just kept the same product for about ten years.
American automakers had to rely on pizazz and salesmanship instead of substance to sell their cars. Maybe that’s not entirely fair. GM deserves credit for the S-10’s exterior design. The tapered yet clean body has aged extremely well and there’s no doubt in my mind that many people purchased these based on looks alone. Plus, the 4.3 liter V6 could cash the checks written by the body. At 190 horsepower and 250 Ib-ft of torque, it was a quintessential American engine: considerable torque at the low end for that satisfying, initial burst of acceleration.
The trade off was a relatively bland interior with brittle plastics. Although from the looks of it, this one seems to have held up pretty well. There’s another reason the Blazer wasn’t the greatest vehicle on earth. It quickly earned the title of least safe vehicle in America and held that distinction for several years after. And it was the two-door models that were most prone to killing their drivers.
By 2004, GM was selling just about 32,000 of these Blazers per year. That was a far cry from the roughly 250,000 the company moved when the 1995 model hit the market. But by the early 2000s a number of compact and mid-size crossovers had arrived that offered a far more refined driving experience.
From the seller:
Great running 4×4 Suv. Rare 2 door model with NO rust – Getting hard to find them so clean -automatic, moon roof , all power, 148k miles
With an asking price of $2895, the seller is being a bit optimistic. But 16 years after this already outdated SUV was sold new, it still does have some value. This could be a very decent short distance work truck. And it could theoretically perform pretty well in the snow if needed. In any event, the Blazer name was not sullied when Chevy slapped it on their modern two-row crossover. The S-10 dragged the Blazer down to hell long before that happened.
Source: Hudson Valley craigslist
I have no idea anymore, thankfully, what a winter beater costs. But a $2895 ask might mean a $2200 sale price. Like most GM vehicles, the drivetrain will last forever while the plastic bits fall apart. Perfect definition of a winter beater.
I’ve never driven a Blazer, but I do have quite a bit of wheeltime behind an ’02 Sonoma HighRider and it’s probably one of the most cheap, crude, hateful pickups this side of the century. It’s a complete relic by modern standards, but even my dad’s 2002 Frontier feels Germanic after driving that thing. The only reason I could imagine someone would buy one of these new is for the 4.3, which was probably the best compact pickup drivetrain that could be had at the time.
I think “rare” in this context means unwanted, by the time this thing came out the world had moved on to four-foor SUVs and two-doors were dead, as they still pretty much are.
Do people really lament this generation of Blazer? To me they always looked “pinched” and very narrow compared to the original S-10 Blazer but I think people are talking about the big K-5 Blazer as the one they miss. Just like the Bronco, people either like the really old Jeep-ish one or the full size OJ one, few people miss the Bronco II.
I don’t know if people lament this Blazer, but when they complain about the new Blazer being a crossover, they breeze right over the later editions of the S10 models.
I agree with Jim that while the first-gen S10, Blazer or pickup, was a styling masterpiece, the restyle was awkward. I drove a 5 speed V6 Blazer in 1985 when they were quite new and I thought it was very refined compared to the typical 4 cylinder small trucks I was more familiar; with the 5 speed even the 2.8 motor felt quite nice. I think when people mourn the “real” Blazer, they’re conflating the full size versions plus generic nostalgia for body-on-frame SUV’s with 2 speed transfer cases. I used low range on my truck a few weeks ago descending a long (several miles) grade on icy packed snow, outside Death Valley on a narrow, twisty, steep dirt road with a cliff on one side, and though maybe I didn’t need it I certainly felt more in control.
I miss the Bronco II. The are dimension ally identical to early Broncos, just swap in a 302 and a 9 inch rear axle and you now have a late model “early” Bronco with much nicer creature comforts. And said swaps are easy!
These things are still roaming the streets in considerable numbers and two co-workers are still driving the 4 door variants to this day. 2000 and 2002 to be precise. The 2002 has 220K miles and the 2000 has also been around the horn several times according to the elderly owner. Both owners have similar views on these rigs. Great Winter vehicle that will go through anything. Reliable 4.3 V6. Can’t seem to kill the darn thing. And the interiors are holding up just fine in both thank you very much. It’s the darn salt that is causing things to need replacing like the proverbial brake lines, rubber suspension components and some exterior rust. But for low cost reliable daily driver beaters these late 90’s through 2005 units seem to be holding up pretty well. We sold a pile of them and occasionally still find a clean under 100k example at the auctions or traded in at the Chevy dealers. They have there faults like anything else but certainly don’t seem to be a bad deal if purchased cheap!
I looked at buying a new one about 15 years ago. At the time, GM had just drastically cut the price on the Blazer. The 4 door model was gone and the option list for the 2 door was slashed. The model was decontented. Expensive metallic paints were gone, leaving a few solid-color shades. I think there was just one interior package, grey fabrics and a few features like air conditioning, power window and lock, and alloy wheels. All this came at a bargain price of about $17k (Canadian) , which was an excellent deal.
Obviously GM was simply cutting production costs, squeezing out another year of production from an outdated model, where a low price was the only competitive advantage.
A co worker was disappointed at GM. He had bought a very similar Blazer the year before for $33k. He was furious that he still owed thousands more on his car than the heavily discounted cost of a new one. He sold his Blazer a couple of years later and has bought Fords ever since.
IF I were to own an S-10 Blazer of this generation today, I’d take a ’96 or ’97 ONLY.
The ’95 still had the older “sexy intake” Vortec with the plastic fuel spider. But the intake gasket wasn’t an issue like it was with the ’96-up “W” engines. But the “W” engines had a better fuel spider.
Having owned several of these, GM did a LOT of decontenting for the ’98-up model years. For example, they went to cheaper, thinner-gauge wiring. The black trim under the front door windows begins to curl after a few years.
BUT the 4.3/4L60E is a great drivetrain…AFTER you change the intake gaskets (upper and lower, they have two.)
For 2020, they added a defeat switch for the stop-start system. I’d own one with the 3.6 if I were in the market. I think they’re attractive with the right color combo and Chevy now offers luxury options completely inconceivable for the brand back when they were still building the S-Blazers. Did I mention the 3.6? They run GREAT in the Impalas…
The 3.6L is a great performer, but hoo jeez do they have serious timing chain issues. Increasingly there is evidence that this concerns the newer LFX series ones too. Looks like GM “solved” the chain stretch problem (that initially appeared as a VVT related check engine light) but first decreasing recommended oil change interval, and then increasing the range that the cam phasers will go before triggering a code. They now consistently make it out of warranty without throwing a code so from GM’s end things are all set. My brother’s friend does a LOT of GM 2.4 and 3.6L chains.
I like the looks of these two door Blazers especially in Yellow even though they are outdated and unsafe. The chunk missing from the front bumper amuses me. I’ll have to keep an eye out, but I think these 2005 and older Blazers are pretty much extinct here in Tualatin. I bet a drive out to the coast will result in a few sightings. Occasionally I will see a lowered two door Blazers and those are pretty neat looking.
These are classic GM in that they can plug along to insane mileages, in a shoddy state. Also, these seem curiously resistant to frame rot, and the 4 door models resist rot on the body panels incredibly well (much less so the 2 doors, they must have a dirt trap in front of the rear wheel). My brother had a typical rural customer last year that rolled up in one of these, 240k miles, drivetrain still strong. Front end loosey goose, seems it finally got bad enough with tire wear that the customer wanted to address the shot balljoints. The 4L60E seems to live a longer happier life paired up to the 4.3L than the higher torque/higher weight half ton+v8 applications. On that note, I think it’s insane that Isuzu insisted on using the lighter duty 4L30E in their Rodeo/Trooper for years, despite them being every bit as heavy+v6 equipped as the Blazer.
Could you still get the two door as a V6, manual, 4×4?
Could be a cheap little off-road machine in that guise. Get a plow for occasional personal snow removal, take it down roads that would tear up your “good” vehicle.
The new Blazer.
Super iconic big 3 nameplate revived, but NOT built in the USA.
Pretty much of a no sale for me. 🙁
Lots of competition in this segment. My tens of thousands of dollars for a new vehicle would go (and have gone) to manufacturers with a great product built in a USA plant. (Honda, Toyota, traditional big 3, etc.)
I don’t like these Blazers, but I hate the new Blazers. At least you could buy this in yellow and not be judgy mcjudged by fellow SUV drivers for choosing the “unrefined” choice. Beats a beige RAV4 then, beats a titanium RAV4 now.
For me the appliancification of the SUV must be the most loathsome part of this crossover fad, just model after model of milquetoast anonymous isolation chambers. Blazer is a name that harkens back to the fun SUVs that put SUVs in the hearts and minds of people, Jeeps, Broncos, Blazers, Scouts, SUVs with ground clearance, rugged mechanicals, removable roofs, uncarpeted floors, levers and cool stuff like that. Plugging that name onto the latest entry of soccer mom mobiles to plug yet another endless market gap of 2 box 5 door phony off roaders just seems shallow and desperate. These 90–00s era Blazers were junk, but so was literally every other GM product at the time. Suburbans were plasticy trash back then too, but that nameplate hasn’t been softened in the last 16 years, it’s still a huge truck based SUV.
To be fair, the 1st gen Rav4s were a lot more interesting. 2 door soft top option, teal and purple as colors with ubiquitous “splash” graphics available. Rear tire carrier, manual options, and they were legitimately cable little things. Hampered by a lack of a low range for really serious hill climbing, but they had an optional rear LSD and an earlier iteration of Toyota’s fulltime AWD that was pretty effective.
That’s true, I was thinking more about the second generation which was very dull and watered down compared to the sporty first generation
Even the gen2, although yes blander, still had a bit of a sporty character, and I think you could still get a 5spd with the later years that had the more potent (and more reliable) 2.4L 2AZ with 158hp and a nice torque curve. 5spd+ AWD+spunky 4cyl in a short wheelbase in a car that weighed less than 3000lb = low key “sports” SUV. These were still very small vehicles. We had a neighbor with a 5spd one that he drove like a maniac, and installed green washer nozzle lights on (remember that fad?).
Even the third gen, as it fell ever farther into bland-dom, had the rear tire carrier as an option, and the V6 was (and is) legitimately quick. A relative has a 2012, Limited, 4cyl AWD (4spd auto), in slate grey, without the tire carrier option. Yes, full bland-mode. It’s saving grace is that it wasn’t hit with the full force of Toyota’s cost cutting, as my in-law’s 2013 was. That thing is horrible. Super chintzy glovebox latch broke (can only be replaced as a whole assembly, then the console lid, brutally stiff ride on bad roads, stupendously cheap and hard plastic all over the interior. Hardly recognizable as a Toyota to me.
This is the exact point I’ve been trying to make. The Blazer was never that good or that storied. Even the earlier BOF versions–including the famous K5 Blazer–were just following trends, and were built the same way everybody else built SUVs. They were only off-road-friendly because those were the demands from buyers in that era. They are heralded in hindsight because they’re everything modern crossovers are not, but were mostly also-rans when they were new. The final S10 Blazers (and their Bravada and Jimmy siblings) were particularly mediocre, with questionable build quality.
So why shouldn’t the name be attached to a (generally considered) handsome vehicle that’s built the same way everyone else builds modern SUVs (transverse-FWD-based crossovers), just like it was then? By all measures, the Blazer is actually a lot more competitive and relevant now than it’s been in quite some time. I test-drove a 2020 Blazer RS V6 AWD a month ago, and came away impressed.
I would argue that the original K5 should be credited with some innovation as the first SUV built by modifying a high-volume pickup. Everything else (at least in the US) before that time had been its own thing (Bronco, Scout, Jeep). After the K5 we saw the Ramcharger and the 78 Bronco, all three of which sort of took over the SUV market in this country.
Good point. Also throw in the SJ Cherokee in ’74, a slapdash vehicle made from the 7-years-dead 2-door Wagoneer.
It is funny – when new I would have bought an Explorer all day every day. As a cheap old beater I would rock one of these – although that bright yellow paint doesn’t do any favors for the car. And for a beater, there is nothing that looks worse than a yellow car once the rust gets going.
When my mom started driving my dad bought a beater, a ’78 Corolla 2dr sedan from a fellow physicist. It was originally a California car, but with a dozen NY winters under its felt. Mustard yellow, with splotches of rust starting to form on the doors and fenders (as well as structural rot underneath). My dad went to the hardware store and picked up (bright) yellow Rustoleum spray paint and went to town. We ended up with a bizarre mustard yellow-with bright yellow spots, truly horrifying. Great car for the 2(?) years we had it, so brutally simple with the 4spd and manual steering there was nothing on it to break. We’d do stuff like tie a wooden ladder directly to the roof for transport. Just a crude and durable old thing. You could feel your feet lift up driving through puddles, and our mechanic finally condemned it after it started to sag in half on his lift. Sold it for what we bought it for ($1). At the same time we owned an old wheelbarrow, in the same mustard yellow color, that received the same bright yellow rustoleum spot treatment. Old Corolla and old wheel barrow, quite similar implements actually.
At least you wont lose it in a parking lot among all the boring colored late model vehicles.
I had 2 1991 S10 Blazers. They both literally rusted away (but were still running…just couldn’t stop since the brake lines rusted away too)
I wanted to like these. Heartbeat of America and all that from when Chevy was awesome.
But when these came out in the 90s I knew three people who had them, and all had premature problems with them. One kept overheating, since brand new, and the dealer could never fix it properly. Another had one that couldn’t keep an alignment. The third one had intermittent electrical/charging issues. Pathetic!
All our cars are older, and I still have avoided buying one of these even as they became so cheap while still looking decent. I always liked the looks of them.
Except the one my neighbor has. A yellow two-door “XTreme” model. That word and spelling it that way makes me want to gag. It is most definitely not extreme, with or without an “E”. It is the very definition of MEH, which is also a word I dislike. Use real words and spell them right, dammit!
Now let Grampie nap, he’s crabby.
Maybe you should buy this one? At 16 years and a 148K miles, it was either one of the good ones, or someone went to the trouble to sort out the problems with it.
I don’t really have a lot of experience with these, but there’s enough of them still roaming the roads that I’ve always assumed they were at least durable, if still crude.
I always thought these were extra super dumb, with that forward-angled tailgate glass taking a giant bite out of interior space back there.
+1
Clamshell revisited.
Neat vehicles. I had a 2 door 2wd when we were first married years ago ‘97’. I recently bought an ‘01 2 door 2wd for $2800 for my 16 year old son’s first car. 106k miles and one owner. It’s plasticky of course and has some interior rattles but it’s been super reliable for the first few months of ownership. We put some step bars on it so it looks off road sportyish. The body on frame construction gives me peace of mind with him driving it Too bad GM (or anyone) doesn’t offer something like this today. He saw the new ‘Blazer’ and said ‘they made it all girly!’ PS Also we put a ‘Heartbeat of America’ sticker on that goofy curved back glass. LOL
“The body on frame construction gives me peace of mind with him driving it ”
I’m afraid I don’t follow.
My possibly flawed logic is that it will do better in a crash with a full frame. I did not phrase that sentence well. I neglected to mention that my wife was t boned at an intersection in our ‘97 Blazer and Received only a few scratches. So perhaps my logic is not quite so flawed.
I want it. I shouldn’t. It’s crude, plasticky, gimmicky, thoroughly outdated, and folds like a tin can in a wreck. But it’s still cool.
The combination of the 4.3L Vortec V6 & 4L60E transmission came standard in all ’93-’05 Astros and is certainly a durable powertrain setup (my ’05 has it). Even now with 265k miles performance is still quite brisk for having “only” 190 horsepower in a 4000-lb. vehicle. Yes–ORIGINAL engine & transmission.
Interestingly, I happened to see one of the new Blazers AND one of these 2-door S-10 models (neither were yellow though) on the same day earlier this week. The CC-effect strikes again!
I doubt the ’95-’01 Ford Explorer was any safer than the Blazer when equipped with Firestone tires. THAT’S another story though…
Always liked these Blazer ” coupes”. They where available with a 5 speed stick. As an owner of 3 K Blazers with manual locking hubs and 4 speeds with the ” granny” low , I was hoping they would reserve the Blazer name for a ” real” off roader like the upcoming Bronco not another booring CUV transportation module.
I owned a 1998 4.3 4×4 for 20 years. While everyone was stranded in the snow my truck drove right by them! When I was cut off on the road, the truck responded so fast, I got out of the way instantly! The gas mileage was unbelievably great. GM parts were reasonably priced and easy to install. The interior stayed like brand new. It also had special interior lights, speakers, temp, direction, it was sooo great. What I would give to have another one. I am heartbroken. A person crashed into the back of it 2 years ago and because of its age it needed to go. I still cry about it. Everything still worked! I wish I could get another one…I drove all kinds. Name it. Nothing compared. The pic I’m adding is my last time with it at 22 yrs old.