The Blazer was a “sport” vehicle with a removable roof, usually equipped with four-wheel drive, and intended as a “fun” truck for off-road recreation pursuits.
Of course, the distinction was muddled long ago by now…and of course, many newer vehicles fail to interest me in the slightest in the first place. But never mind that: I spotted this unusually-clean Blazer of the 1970s while in Door County a summer ago. Not sure what gives with the tires, though: They look big enough to float on water…
This snowplow-equipped vehicle was sitting idle at the time I photographed it more than five months ago. Now, it’s no doubt getting a healthy dose of constant work…
GM trucks of the 1970s were notorious rusters. This one shows some appreciable signs of that around the edges; though nevertheless it’s in far better shape than most of what’s no longer on the roads…
There was an ’83 Jimmy with super low mileage for sale on ebay awhile back. I keep wondering what the “Sierra Classic Equipment” included that warranted a $983 premium on the window sticker.
The Sierra Classic option gave nicer interior materials and trim, as well as full carpeting. Every one I ever saw seemed to be baby blue!
Sierra Classic is what turned the Jimmy from the park ranger vinyl Jimmy to the full on cowboy Cadillac Jimmy with the velour and bright trim.
Got it, thanks! This one happened to be two-tone “medium almond” and “frost white.”
The president and founder of the company I work for had a orange one that he drove around in the summer without the top on. The thing looked like someone hit every square inch with a baseball bat. That was about 25 years ago.
Always had a new Lincoln to take the clients and management team to lunch. In his heart though he was a redneck.
I heard that GM had a run of bad steel for a few years in the ’70s that made them rust even worse than usual…I suspect the first few years of the ’73-’80 series were made of that steel.
The ’73-’75 Blazers are very rare. They differ from all later models in one significant detail: They had a full removable top just like the 1st gen ’69-’72s (which are my favorites). I’m assuming it was the proposed Federal rollover standards back around 1975 that killed the full removable top. From ’76 thru ’91 only the rear portion was removable. When the “new classic” ’88-’98 pickup design was finally extended to the Blazer/Suburban for 1992, the top was fully fixed, making the Blazer essentially a shortened 2-door Suburban.
I always wonder about the “bad steel” issue–even when I was a kid in the ’70s, the one thing I always heard about Chrysler products was that the sheet metal was thin and tended to rust. So when a company’s products would get this reputation, earned or unearned, was this the result of poor quality control on the part of the supplier, or the auto manufacturer trying to wring some excess profit out of the process by spec’ing thinner or lower-grade steel? (or both?) Seems to me a company with the size and pull of GM back then would only accept the “batch of bad steel” if it were in a position to benefit by doing so.
My uncle worked for a galvanizing mill in the early to mid 1990s. He swore he wouldn’t buy a Chrysler product because of the level of galvanization that Chrysler would accept vs their other automotive clients. This kept my father from buying a Chrysler minivan, the only minivan he ever seriously considered.
I am always interested in this kind of “plant level” intelligence, but I also always wonder about this kind of folklore. This seems related to the “bad steel” legend. But if this was true, how does this explain the Ford Explorers and Aerostars with some of the fastest disappearing rocker panels of the modern era, while the Chrysler minivans were actually pretty rust resistant. Unless Ford eliminated galvanized entirely in its lower bodies, this theory is hard to square with experience. Or maybe this plant did no Ford work. Or maybe other design factors came into play. Just something to ponder.
In the 1970s, as now, the country was going through one of these “Green” conniptions. The automakers, led by Ford, started heavy use of recycled steel.
Trouble is, recycled steel seems (for whatever reason) more prone to rust. In a casting, or heavy plating, it may not matter so much. But with thin rolled sheet-steel, used on a consumer product left outdoors and in salt slush…the effect was dramatic.
There was trouble all through the steel industry and its products. I used to do ultrasonic testing on railroad track, and mid-1970s Bethlehem/Lackawanna rail just isn’t out there anymore. Earlier, yes; and later Japanese rolled rail…but American steel of that era had LOTS of problems.
The top Blazer has flotation tires on it, used in sand dunes and such.
The bottom Blazer is more the way I remember them, crusty rusty around the edges. My MIL’s 2nd husband had one, it was an oily, rusty beat up heap of crap.
Until the first deep snow.
I had a big ugly rusty 1978 K5 Cheyenne….I miss that old turd, my buddy nicknamed it the A-Team van for some reason, even though it was beige, it had orange plaid bucket seats and a stopping distance that would make a freight train blush, it kept you on you toes.
So pleased to live where the tin worm doesn’t exist in great numbers. No snow equals insignificant salt until you get close to galveston and the gulf. Would love to have one of these. Passed up on the chance for one with a diesel that my salesman neighbor drove. Needed the bed of a truck.
I’d love to find a nice diesel K5.
I had heard a similar kind of thing about Fords in the 70’s, too. Allegedly that FoMoCo had signed up to buy a bunch of Japanese steel, but it turned out to be “bad”.
Of course, this would be the kind of thing you would hear growing up in a region where we made steel and Chevys. I can still remember if you bought a Japanese car and left it on the street overnight, by morning it would be a pile of junk.
EDIT: This was supposed to be a reply to the earlier thread about “bad” steel. Oh well, foiled by the internet again!
After a series of station wagons, my mother had one of these. It was a ’78, yellow like the one in the above picture, but with a black top. Tan vinyl interior, 3-speed manual floor shift. We managed to convince her to remove the rear roof section a couple of times.
That blue one looks very nice, it must have been restored. By the time I was old enough to notice, the ’73-’80 Blazers were already rustbuckets in my neck of the woods, though I remember quite a few of the ’81-’91s, and my uncle had several ’85-’91 Suburbans back when they were new. He’s always had a Suburban or Yukon as a daily driver.
Whenever I see these things I hear banjos.
Then you better start paddling faster.
a am iran میگم ماشینای شورولت همه طرح ها کره ای هستن چرا ؟