1969
K- 5 Blazer
BY JIM DONNELLY
IMAGES COURTESY
GENERAL MOTORS MEDIA ARCHIVES
TOPLESS TRANSFORMATION OF THE PICKUP T he idea was solid, defensibly good. The industry already knew as much. You could even say that the
other shoe had been in free fall for more
than 20 years. Ever since Willys-Overland,
looking for some post-war preen, unveiled
the first Jeepster in 1948, the wait was on.
Though not in overwhelming numbers,
buyers had demonstrated that a truck
based on pure whimsy would indeed
work. Amid all the gigantism of General
Motors’ sales supremacy in the Sixties,
Ford hit the buzzer first, and the Bronco
crashed out of the chute in 1966. That
same year, Kaiser revived the Jeepster
following a 16-year hiatus, to a reasonably
good reception. But wait—actually, they
were both beaten by International Harvester, whose little, upscale Jeep fighter,
the Scout, buzzed into view circa 1961.
And then came Chevrolet. Thematically, the original K- 5 Blazer had a time
zone’s worth of distance between itself
and its immediate predecessors. It was
bigger, enough so to cast a skyscraper’s
shadow over a Scout, for instance. It
also perfectly demonstrated GM cor-porate-think of the era: Take what was
already invested with dollars, whack it a
little bit and create something new. The
K- 5 Blazer, spun cleanly off GM’s new-
for-1969 light-truck sheetmetal, was the
result of that A-body spawn mentality.
It’s also a prime step in the great arc of
the American pickup away from barnyard and work site drudgery. You
can draw a meandering line from
the early Chevy Cameo to the
Cheyenne, SSR and today’s Traverse that dots right through the
first Blazer.
The Blazer, in many cases, is a missed
landmark. In its initial form, the Chevro-
let (GMC added the Jimmy to its lineup
within a year) was a truly convertible
light truck, with a fully removable roof,
a design that lasted until GM adopted a
more conventional half-cab arrangement
for 1976. Theoretically, anyhow, it could
be ordered as a stripped boulder-hopper,
but GM strategized that the Blazer would
be the polar antithesis of that. Its option
list stretched almost out of sight, mirror-
ing what GM was doing with its increas-
ingly well-outfitted Chevrolet and GMC
pickups. Bucket seats, a rear bench, air
conditioning and a Turbo Hydra-Matic
automatic transmission were offered
from the start. So were Custom and Cus-
tom Sport Truck trim levels. It was a
Blazer blast— within its first three model
years, sales pole-vaulted nearly tenfold.
Most people know that the Blazer was a
shortened C-K pickup (though evidently,
no two-wheel-drive C-Blazers were built
in 1969); 104 inches versus 115 for the
basic C-10/K- 10 pickup. That’s only half
the tale. The Blazer lit up just two years
after GM had executed a transformative
chassis upgrade on its 1967 truck line,
which was particularly dramatic among
its 4x4s. Usage of a new reverse-arch
progressive leaf spring both dropped the
rigs’ ride height and softened their ride.
A year later, GM added integral power
steering to the option list, and made front
disc brakes standard by 1971.
Hello, big rowdy playmate. How much
you acted up depended on the engine
choice, which at first encompassed both
the immortal straight-six and the small-block V- 8. Built through 1995, the full-size Blazer/Jimmy is a GM landmark,
and restoration parts exist in nearly the
same volume as those of its pickup counterparts.
