How many of these Luvs have survived?
I guess not too many, although Paul found one just like it and wrote it up here. At least you can read about it when it was new (R&T 1979 November issue):
Vintage Review: Chevrolet Luv 4X4
– Posted on November 6, 2015
Spotted in Ferndale, Mi. Likely belongs to a book store in Royal Oak.
Also sold as the Bedford KB. Not seen one for years.
My great-grandparents had one of these, in orange. I don’t know a whole lot about it, though. Great-grandpa died in the late 1980s, and from then until 1998 it sat buried under a bunch of other stuff in the back of their garage. I have no idea when it was last driven. When we cleaned out the garage on great-grandma’s request, I don’t think anyone even tried to start it. My guess is that they took it straight to the junkyard for whatever the scrap value would have been.
Apparently my great-grandparents had odd tastes in vehicles. Besides the Luv parked sideways in the back of the garage buried under at least a decade’s worth of stuff, there was a 1969 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight with a 455 buried on the left side of the garage, last touched in 1987 but actually started and ran long enough to get it on a trailer. Then there was great-grandma’s daily driver, the 1981 Ford Granada that occasionally stalled at red lights but she drove until she passed in 2001.
I remember as a kid wondering what kind of truck it was and thinking it looked funny. Even in 1998 as a 16-year-old budding auto enthusiast, I had no idea what a “Luv” was. So, my guess is that there are practically none of these left and that most of them had returned to the earth by the end of the Reagan Administration.
I miss the compact truck of yesterday. They were simple, basic workhorses. 🙂
I don’t know, 0-60 in 16 seconds in that cramped cab? I’m not feeling very nostalgic.
I don’t think a pickup really needs to be as fast and large and luxurious as modern trucks are, but that Luv is waaaay too far the other way for me.
I’ve never driven a Chevy Luv, so I wouldn’t know what it’s like. My dad had a 1978 Toyota pickup. Although the seats weren’t very comfortable, particularly during the hot summer, when you’re wearing shorts, but I found the cab perfect in size. And the 20R engine delivered plenty of torque to do its job.
According to what has been posted recently about the malaise era crap produced in the US the LUV could out accelerate many regular American cars.
Not necessarily. The majority of recent stories about cars with very poor acceleration were about oddities that were usually sold in very low numbers and were rarely available for more than a few model years.
No matter what the politics, economy or price of gas, the bulk of the American maket generally always gravitates toward some happy medium of peformance vs. gas mileage.
These LUV trucks sold in enough numbers to be noticed for a while. A friend’s dad had one for his 5 minute commute to work and weekend gardening projects. Their regualar car was always a large Pontiac V-8.
Generally, the American small pick-up market really got rolling when the domestic manufacturers began building in-house products, usually with 6 cyl engines. Toyota surfaced at the top of the non U.S. brands, and eventually captured most of its market share with 6 cyl engines.
The cramped little 4 popper trucks were usually in the hands of folks that owned them as 2nd or 3rd tier cars, or were in the hands of kids on a tight budget. 1974-1984 were roughly the peak years.
It could out-accelerate some domestic cars of that era, yes. But like Dave says, in most if not all of those cars the bulk of them were sold with better drivetrains.
That said, I’m not nostalgic for those land anchors Paul posted either. At least, not with those engines.
I remember seeing these when I was a kid in the 80’s, and into the 90’s. I always thought LUV was a funny name for a truck, and that they didn’t look much like a Chevy truck. This is before I knew of the Isuzu tie-up.
Nice tape stripes on the one in the article!
The Opel Campo from the nineties was also Isuzu-based.
Currently Isuzu offers the D-Max pickup and the light N-series cabover truck. So far I never saw an N-series on the road.
Isuzus current range goes from little D Max puddle jumpers all the way up to 500+hp tractor units, they offer a full line of trucks.
Volvo, Scania, Iveco, MAN, Mercedes, Renault and DAF. That’s it these days, in Northwestern Europe. All cabovers.
Heavy-duty (top segment) Japanese trucks have never been offered here.
I see LUV’s from time to time…always with a SBC stuffed into it and on a trailer heading to a drag strip.
Okay, I take that back. Some of them probably have a big block.
Never driven one, but I always liked the bodystyle…especially the earlier ‘4 eyed’ variants that pre-date the 4x4s. Those 1.9L engines supposedly are barely adequate. One guy where I grew up had a solid white 4×4 with a stepside bed, 6″ lift and a swapped in Grand National engine. I saw him roast all 4 in it once!
I still see a few of the 1st generation Chevy LUV 4×4 pickups in SE Washington State since we live close to the mountains, they’re IMO more common than the 2nd generation 4×4 LUV pickups.
Working in the auto parts biz (in Washington state)-I have fielded more inquiries about parts for the LUV recently (must be digging them out of fields, barns, and previously-forgotten-by-the-garage situations). I think I have sold more Weber DGV conversions for them in the past 3 years than the last 20 years combined.
I drove one of these at my job, and I had a friend with one, and a co-worker with a Courier, and this article was probably the final BS that eliminated whatever credibility that MT had with me. There wasn’t much left anyway, a couple of past things had made me drop the subscription I had to it. The LUVs and Couriers were garbage, and unsafe as hell. The co-worker nearly lost her foot and was permanently crippled after getting hit by a Nova in her almost new Courier. The firewall folded up like cardboard and her foot was left attached by only her Achilie’s tendon, and some of the skin. The Nova was only lightly damaged. I saw a LUV fold up when it hit a pole at 35MPH, killing the driver, so it wasn’t any better. About 20 years ago, I worked with a guy who was a LUV fanboi. He had two of them and the white one was being restored. It confirmed to me that he wasn’t all there. Not that I had much doubt before that anyway. Last time I saw him a few years ago, he was still driving it.
IIRC, LUV stood for “Light Utility Vehicle” and it was that.
I owned a 1986 Isuzu “P’Up” (no idea what that stood for unless it was just a contraction of pick up. It was 2-wheel drive with the long wheelbase, 1.9 liter 4 cylinder and five-speed manual transmission. It was fine for around town but I actually had reason to drive back and forth to San Antonio from Houston on a twice monthly basis and then to and from Houston to Matagorda County about twice weekly after that for a few months (400 mile round trip H-town to S.A. and 180 mile round trip from H-town to Matagorda Co.)
The little truck acquitted itself well. It got pretty good fuel economy for the day and the longer wheel base and torsion bar front suspension made for a reasonable ride. The lwb model also came with a 19 gal. fuel tank which was useful for those long commutes.