Two-door convertible SUV. Phrases we don’t hear within the automotive world that always. Once we arrived at bike evening this summer time to the everyday rows of two-wheeled steeds, it was our buddy Wookie’s 1972 Chevy Ok/5 Blazer taking over area that obtained our consideration first. A topless 4×4 wrapped in iconic ’70s traces all hugging a 350 V8 struck us as the proper concept: a summertime, beach-going, drive-in date movie-taker/baby-maker and backwoods overlander multi functional.
In fact, our buddy had a good higher concept that specific evening, including yet one more dimension to the Blazer by ditching the bench seat and dropping the gate for just a little additional area. Now he had a two-door convertible SUV pickup, excellent for hauling a complementary ’70s enduro in canary yellow.
Launched in 1969, the Chevy Ok/5 Blazer (now often called the Tahoe) was dreamed up by iconic automotive and 4×4 designer Vic Hickey as GM’s response to the burgeoning SUV market occupied by the Ford Bronco, Worldwide Scout and Jeep Cherokee Wagoneer.
Vic Hickey is acknowledged for his exceptional achievements as an off-road car designer, serving to design autos which might be cultural icons immediately, together with the Blazer, the Humvee, and legendary 140 mph off-road racer, the Baja Boot (captained by Bud Ekins, Steve McQueen and James Garner). He additionally had a hand in creating a slew of amphibious autos and improved impartial suspension methods for use on autos designed to discover lunar landscapes, main the group that constructed the cell geological coach for the Apollo House program and the moon’s Lunar Rover.
Whereas there’s little proof to counsel that Hickey himself was instantly influenced by Jeep (c’mon although), there’s little debate that The Common and the Huge Blue Oval had their sights aimed squarely at Jeep’s smaller, open-air, all-terrain autos just like the CJ sequence, which had been reducing path for the reason that ’40s.
The design started in Hickey’s head, the place he envisioned a shortened K10 chassis. Platform-sharing, which was good on the time, allowed the Ok/5 to share physique styling with its pickup truck brother, reducing down on total manufacturing prices. It was supposed to be as versatile as doable, serving as automobile, truck, SUV, station wagon or convertible — an all-purpose runabout.
The general public swallowed the hook. The Blazer provided the joy and capabilities of the rivals with the added “luxuries” of the time, like A/C and automated transmissions. By 1970, gross sales eked out the others fishing in the identical pond.
However the query nonetheless stays: Save the Wrangler, is the convertible truck all however misplaced to the annals of historical past, or is there a producer prepared to mount an assault on the king of the Rubicon? Now’s the time, as we could also be within the final nice period of emotionally guided car design, and few autos stir the soul as intensely as a topless go-anywhere SUV.
Carry it again.
This text first appeared in concern 024 of Iron & Air Magazine, and is reproduced right here below license.
Phrases & Photographs Brett Houle & Gregory George Moore
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