Chevy truck enthusiasts

Jerry McMullan is a long-time Chevy fan, and when he wanted to find a cool daily driver, he knew two things. The first was that the vehicle would be a Chevy, and the second was that he knew it had to be black. Having been the proud owner of a couple of previous ’67-’72 Chevys (a ’70 Chevelle SS and a ’70 El Camino SS), he knew that that the style suited him, so he thought that a pickup from those years would be just right for what he had in mind. After a little searching, he came across this ’71 Chevy Cheyenne. McMullan says that the truck was in fair condition when he purchased it (for the now-reasonable, though still hard to believe, price of $11,000), and thus began his three-year odyssey of building his perfect pickup.

In early December,” Gil Palmer told us, “I had a triple bypass operation. I was unable to work or drive. I was bored each day.” On his daily walk he had to go right past his new ’04 Chevy Silverado pickup in the garage. The glimpse at his truck before each walk served as a motivator, and he started imagining things that he could do while he was forced to keep it parked next to his previous project.

The Action Line C10 series, produced from 1967 to 1972, is one of the most popular of the classic era of Chevy trucks. They have been transformed into every form imaginable, from sweet shop trucks to double-throwdown showstoppers, from strip-burning quarter-pounders to boulder-flattening off-roaders, and certainly everything in between. We’ll long remember the days when a black ’70 stepside would pass you on the street, dumped low in the front with Americans all around, running fat rubber out back and sweet-sounding exhaust dumping out in front of the rear wheels. You just knew that guy had something trick in the garage at home, too.