Curbside Classic: 1957 GMC 100 Pickup – An Unexpected Truck In An Unexpected Place

One of the downsides of working in the city is having to pay to park in a nearby garage.  That is unless you’re upper management or have sufficient seniority (and I mean sufficient; not long ago, the #1 person on the wait list for the company garage started there before I was born).  My company has contracts with several downtown garages, and there are waiting lists for the ones closest to the office.  When I finally made the cut for the garage across the street, I did a walk-through to get my bearings and found this beautiful 1957 GMC 100 truck down at the bottom level.

Up here in the Northeast, there are very few of these around.  That might apply to the rest of the country as well because in a search of Curbside Classic, I do not find many posts about these trucks.  For me, trucks from this era exist only in movies, such as Every Which Way But Loose, and television shows set in the sixties or seventies – or even more recently – somewhere in America’s Heartland where the young man and potential love interest always seem to drive an old truck like this.  Except, of course, for this ’55 Chevy I came across recently.

Being a child of the suburbs of two Brooklyn-born parents, pickups were not part of my childhood and never interested me that much.  I do, however, have a healthy respect for them, especially stepside pickups of this era, which may or may not have something to do with Every Which Way But Loose being one of my favorite movies.

The 1957 GMC 100-Series truck I spotted represents the third year of GMC’s Blue Chip series, which was the multiverse equivalent of Chevrolet’s Task Force series.  These trucks replaced the “First Series” Advanced Design/New Design trucks sold from 1947 through March 1955.  While the 1955 Task Force aped the front-end styling of the radical 1955 Chevy car lineup, GMC took, let’s say, a slightly different direction.  At least you could tell this generation GMC from its Chevy brother from a distance if it was coming toward you.

The new trucks also expanded GM’s efforts to interest truck buyers in more of the features that were available to car buyers.  The outgoing models had already offered automatic transmission, but for the new 1955 trucks, Chevrolet and GMC also added power steering and power brakes to the options list.  Along with the nice wraparound windshield there was also an optional wraparound rear window.  Interior trim was upgraded as well.

At the same time, GM previewed the modern “fleetside” look with the specially trimmed limited-edition Chevrolet Cameo Carrier and GMC Suburban Pickup, which had fiberglass outer panels over the sides of the bed.  However, it wasn’t until mid-1958 that Chevrolet and GMC introduced their first true fleetside pickups, with steel fenders and a wider bed, to compete with Ford’s Styleside that came out the year before.

 

The big news, of course, was the availability of a V8 engine.  Chevy used the 265 cubic-inch small block from its passenger car lineup.  GMC leveraged Pontiac’s 287 V8 to help justify its higher status – and price tag – in GM’s hierarchy.

For 1957 GMC ditched the heavy bars for a more traditional-looking grille with thin horizontal slats intersected by a slightly thicker center vertical bar framed by a handle-bar mustache.  It still didn’t look as good as the one on the ’55 Chevy but is probably on par with the open slot surrounded by a series of trapezoids on Chevy’s ’57 model.  Buyers must not have provided much positive feedback because GMC reverted to a thick-bar grille style for ’58.

For 1957, GMC also gained Pontiac’s larger 206-horsepower 347 V8.  Other car-like options included a cigar lighter, a clock, custom interior, chrome exterior trim, whitewalls, day/night review mirror, dual arm rests, and a radio.  If you actually wanted reception, you could also order the optional antenna.  Seriously, GM?

For those of you who think even mid-size trucks like the Tacoma or Colorado are too big these days, check out these stats:  114-inch wheelbase, 186-inch overall length (a little over an inch longer than a 2026 Honda CR-V), and a nice 74-inch height so cowboys can ride tall in the saddle.

I don’t see any badges identifying this example as a V8, so it may have the standard 269.5 cubic-inch OHV inline 6 with 130 net horsepower.  As you can see, however, this truck has some subtle modifications, so anything is possible.  A four-speed Hydra-Matic was available with both 6- and 8-cylinder engines, but this truck looks like it has the four-speed floor-shifted manual transmission with a steering column out of a newer column-shifted automatic GM vehicle.  The wood-rimmed steering wheel is a nice day-two mod.  The new-but-old-looking vintage radio helps maintain the classic feel.

The Task Force and Blue Chip trucks took GM through 1959.  The following decade would see the introduction of the even more modern C/K (Chevy) and 1000/1500 (GMC) series trucks.

Since this is not a residential building, my guess is that this truck is owned by the owner of one of the business tenants, especially since it’s one of the few reserved spaces in the garage.  It looks like it’s cleaned and driven on a somewhat regular basis, but I can tell you it’s always there during office hours.  You never know what you’ll find in an inner-city parking garage.

 

Related Reading:

Curbside Classic Capsule: 1955 GMC 100 Series Pickup – How To Tell It’s Not A 1956

CC Capsule: 1956 GMC Pickup – Don’t Judge A Pickup By Its Grille

Car Show Outtake: 1957 GMC Suburban – All Business

CC Outtake: A Couple Of Tasty Treats