1972 Chevy K/5 Blazer

Two-door convertible SUV. Phrases we don’t hear within the automotive world that usually. Once we arrived at bike evening this summer season to the standard rows of two-wheeled steeds, it was our good friend Wookie’s 1972 Chevy Okay/5 Blazer taking on area that obtained our consideration first. A topless 4×4 wrapped in iconic ’70s strains 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 function.

In fact, our good friend had a fair higher concept that specific evening, including another dimension to the Blazer by ditching the bench seat and dropping the gate for a bit additional area. Now he had a two-door convertible SUV pickup, good for hauling a complementary ’70s enduro in canary yellow.

Launched in 1969, the Chevy Okay/5 Blazer (now generally known as 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 outstanding achievements as an off-road car designer, serving to design autos which might be cultural icons as we speak, 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 growing a slew of amphibious autos and improved impartial suspension programs for use on autos designed to discover lunar landscapes, main the group that constructed the cell geological coach for the Apollo Area program and the moon’s Lunar Rover.

Whereas there’s little proof to counsel that Hickey himself was straight influenced by Jeep (c’mon although), there’s little debate that The Basic and the Massive Blue Oval had their sights aimed squarely at Jeep’s smaller, open-air, all-terrain autos just like the CJ collection, 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 sensible on the time, allowed the Okay/5 to share physique styling with its pickup truck brother, reducing down on general manufacturing prices. It was supposed to be as versatile as potential, serving as automobile, truck, SUV, station wagon or convertible — an all-purpose runabout.

The general public swallowed the hook. The Blazer supplied the joy and capabilities of the opponents with the added “luxuries” of the time, like A/C and computerized 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.