Chevrolet utterly dominated pickup and light truck sales for decades, probably ever since the 1920s, along with GMC trucks, which tried not to compete with its sister division in the early years. This is most evident in the immediate post war years and through the ’50s: The Chevrolet “Advance Design” trucks were everywhere, and still are, while Ford and Dodge were very much less common.
But that all started to change in the ’60s. After Ford’s disaster trying to go head-to-head with GM’s divisions in the late ’50s, they changed their strategy to find niches that they could exploit profitably. And pickups was one of them; it turned out to be the biggest slice of the market, with a bit of time and cultivation. In 1974, Ford introduced its extended cab “Super Cab”. Three years later, in 1977, Ford’s F-Series became the best selling pickup for the first time. It took GM fourteen years to finally bring out an extended cab pickup in 1988. Once again, GM was asleep at the wheel.
Dodge pioneered the concept of an extended cab in 1972, with the Club Cab. It turned out to be a bit too short, at 18″, so it was never a really big seller. But it certainly pointed the way forward with pickups, which had been becoming more wife/family-friendly ever since the first efforts to civilize them in the mid ’50s.
Ford saw the light, almost instantly. Just two years later in 1974, it had its Super Cab. And it was 22″ long, which made it big enough to have a genuine seat across the back, unlike the tiny fold down transverse jump seats in the Dodge. That made all the difference. And Ford sold almost 40k Super Cabs in its first year. That jumped to 68k in 1975. Not exactly peanuts.
This ad sums it all up; there’s nothing more to add. The modern pickup had arrived.
And in 1977, just three years later, Ford overtook Chevy in pickup sales, and they’ve never given up the title since.
And this happened just one year after GM introduced its all new 1973 trucks!
Ironically, GM did offer a new double cab on this generation, the 3+3 model. But it was only available in the C20 and C30 lines, and only with an 8′ bed. Meaning it was huge, especially so in the terms of the times. It ended up being a decidedly low-volume proposition, and all it really did was catch up to Ford and Dodge, both of which had offered factory-built crew cab pickups for some years.
The Japanese saw the light very quickly too, and in 1977 Datsun brought out its King Cab 620 pickup.
Toyota took a few more years, but in 1984 joined the extended cab party. And the rest of the Japanese did too, although I’m not going to look up all the first years for them just now.
You would have thought that GM would rush out an extended cab too, to protect its vaunted #1 sales position for Chevrolet. And don’t underestimate the value of that claim, being the best selling truck in the land. Yes, GM’s combined sales were still #1, but Ford made a lot of hay with its F-Series sales position. Everyone loves a winner.
And its success in comparison to the Dodge Club cab wasn’t just the extra 4″ of cab length; unlike the Dodge, the Ford Super Cab was available with a 6.5′ bed as well as an eight footer, and in F100, F150, F250 and F350 versions, and of course 4x4s. This was a key difference: Ford was truly committed.
If you were a rabid Chevy lover, your only choice was to buy an aftermarket conversion, like this one. They just chopped the front of the bed and added 18″ to the cab, which of course was the same as the Dodge, meaning a bit too short. And it undoubtedly cost a lot more. It clearly didn’t look as good as what GM woulda’ shoulda’ coulda’ done from the factory.
Other than sheer incompetence, why didn’t GM follow suit with the rest of the industry and build an extended cab at the time? One reason may well be the monopoly GM had with its Suburban, a highly profitable vehicle. Presumably Chevrolet didn’t think the market for extended cab pickups would be big enough to justify the investment. Or maybe they were already production constrained? GM did some odd things back then including building the Suburban on the old platform for several years after the new GM400 trucks arrived in 1988.
GM wasted no time with an extended cab on its compact S-10 truck, which arrived in 1983, just one year after the regular cab version premiered. So they were perfectly capable of it, obviously. It’s not like it was all that hard.
In the meantime, Chevy full size truck buyers had to just suck it up. By the ’80s, this cab was getting a bit elderly, even with a few cosmetic upgrades.
Finally, in 1987, for the 1988 model year, the new GMT 400 arrived, with an extended cab. But still only with the long 8′ bed.
Two years later, for 1990, the extended cab short bed Silverado finally arrived. A full 16 years after the comparable Ford version. Who’s in a hurry? Not GM.
Chevrolet once practically owned the pickup market. They gave up the #1 slot to Ford in 1977. Now they’re desperately trying to hold on to the #2 slot from Ram. Who would have predicted that?
In all of my years of looking at, riding in and, on rare occasions, riding in the old C/K pickups, it never occurred to me that GM never offered an extended cab. Ford did it, Dodge did it, but GM was M.I.A. Still the best looking pickup out of the Big 3, at least on the outside. Personally, Ford did better on the interior front.
Hey guys. I thought gm did build a xcab truck in its canadian version. A friend had one. Looked original. In other countries gm did strange things? They had 67 nova. But called it sonething else up north if im not mistaken
Great article as always Paul. The lack of extended cab trucks definitely fits the category of as GM deadly sin. No doubt this was something that helped lead to the loss of Chevrolet’s long standing dominance in the pick-up truck segment. Although Ford didn’t come up with the Supercab first, they certain refined the idea and brought something to market that was desirable and useful to truck owners. On top of that, the general poor quality and horrendous rust resistance of the 1973-1980 GM trucks probably lead to more than a few Ford converts.
It is interesting that GM didn’t take the time to add the extended cab to the truck line-up during the lengthy 1973-87 run. They certainly had the money and resources to do so, but instead they let it whither on the vine. Even in 1981, GM put the pickup line through a mid cycle refresh, but they ignored the extended cab. While the extended cab market was still relatively small at that time, I think it was a fatal error for GM to totally ignore that segment of the market by that time. They should have seen the writing on the wall. No one cross shopped a crew cab and an extended cab in those years. Crew Cabs were in the domain of heavy duty 3/4 ton and 1 ton construction trucks, so GM can’t even use the excuse the 3 3 trucks would fill that gap.
I had forgotten that GM didn’t offer a extended cab short box until 1990. However, without actually looking at the production numbers, I am confident that the vast majority of the early pickups with extended cabs had 8 foot boxes. Ford pickups from the 70s and 80s with extended cabs were pretty common place during this time, but it didn’t seem until the late 80s that short box variants became much more common place. During the 1990s, the extended cab short-box trucks supplemented the long standing regular cab long box as the most popular configuration. And now today, extended cabs (Supercabs, Quadcabs, Double Cabs) are supplemented by the Crew Cab 5.5′ box configuration as the segment leader.
I spent many of my formative years in a Dodge Club Cab, 6.5 foot bed. Sometimes in the capped bed, and sometimes in those jumper seats (I was a svelte-enough young ‘un to do that).
My brother went from driving that family truck to buying an ’88 Chevy extended with the 8-foot bed, naturally called the S. S. Chevy for its prodigious turning circle. He was the guy for it, having been driving tractor-trailers for several years by then.
Very informative piece Paul. Another long delayed feature was extended cabs with suicide style rear doors. It seems to me that only the T400’s driver’s side rear door opened suicide style, but I may be wrong. I know that with the arrival of the T800’s in late 1998 that both rear doors opened suicide style as well as having pop-out windows. Another great feature was the extended cab doors opening 180 degrees instead of just 90 degrees on the ’07 to ’13 Sierra and Silverado.
It is true that the S-10 had an extended cab, but I sure would not want to ride back there. It seems to me that they called those miniscule rear seats “jump seats”. They were barely big enough for a small child and I don’t think the S-10’s rear doors opened at all.
In 1996, the GMT400 extended cabs added a rear clamshell door, but on the passenger side. Ford did the same on the 1997 F-150.
In true GM fashion, though, they stagnated after that. For 1998, Dodge jumped from having no rear doors on the Ram Club Cab to two doors, making their first cab to bear the Quad Cab name. Ford followed in 1999 with both the refreshed F-150 and the new Super Duty line having two doors, but the new 1999 Silverado/Sierras still had only one door. 2000 added the option of a fourth door, and 2001 made it standard.
As for which compact/mid-size pickups got one or two clamshell doors, and when, I can’t say for sure. I do know that the S-10 had two clamshell doors by 2004, and the Rangers did as well by the end of their run.
“Jump seat” can apply to the inward-facing seats of any size extended cab. In a 22″ SuperCab, the hip room isn’t terrible, but in a compact S-10 or Ranger, it’s impossible for an adult to sit comfortably even with a short driver.
(In other GM firsts: I believe GM was also the first to offer leather in a pickup, in 1995.)
The S10 got that option in 1996. For some reason the s10s was on the drivers side, which seems a bit odd considering the rear jumpseat is only habitable by little kids.
According to what GM released at the time, they though the C/K trucks would more likely be used for passengers, so the door was on the right. They figure the S10s extended cab was more likely to be used for cargo, so they put it on the left for the convenience of loading items.
GM also limited on what trucks could get the door at first, limiting it to the higher spec models. It was one of the best pickup innovations of the 90s, but of course they botched it by not moving to 2-opening rear doors immediately with the GMT800s.
And it seems the S-10/Sonoma was the only extended cab to never add a fourth door in its run. I suppose after introducing the crew cab in 2001, they abandoned all pretense of anyone wanting the extended cab to haul human passengers, only cargo and dogs, so the driver’s side door would be sufficient.
Now you’ve compelled me to look up when everybody else did theirs. The Ford Ranger/Mazda B-Series added a 4-door SuperCab/Cab Plus halfway through 1998, but also kept the 2-door extended cab all the way through the end of the model run. And from what I’ve found, every other small pickup (Dakota, Frontier, Tacoma) waited until their 2005 models to make the extended cabs 4-doors.
You’re right about the SuperCab Ranger: my brother’s ’01 XLT has 4 doors, but my dad’s ’08 XL has just 2 (no back seats).
GM was selling so many pickups then, why would they convolute it all by adding an extended cab to the mix?
Yes, that is being facetious. While I had never really thought about it, they did miss the boat here. Despite my initial comment, I do wonder if there was some amount of a “we are the leader, we don’t follow the followers” mentality involved.
There is a part of me that would take this further….why did GM not update their pickups sooner than they did? They went from 1973 to CY87 for the 88 model year – that’s 14 to 15 years. Dodge, that perpetually broke third place also ran went from 1972 to 1993. Dodge at least changed the damn tail lights and updated the interior of the cab during that time – GM did not.
And if we wanna be pedantic, we could say that the third-place Dodge even had a new model in 1981, when the D-Series was mildly restyled (an extra “shoulder line” was added to the body) and renamed Ram. The C/Ks got an even milder restyle in 1980, and no new name.
Count me as another who never even thought about the lack of an extended cab on these. I guess the standard cab (of all 3 main players) was so common that I always thought of those three, considering the Dodge and Ford extended cabs as unusual at the time.
I suppose I have been blinded over the years by the 73+ Chevy trucks and their Italian-grade rust resistance and their horrible interior plastics. Which is a shame, because they were otherwise quite nicely done.
The lack of an extended cab is all the more curious given that this truck’s gestation was during the John Z. Delorean years at Chevrolet. If there was anyone who had a handle on trends and a read on the market it was him. But perhaps he suffered from that attitude of trucks being second-class vehicles that was so common in the auto industry for so many decades.
Wouldn’t be surprised… I wish I had a searchable PDF version of it, but I don’t remember a word about trucks in _On A Clear Day, You Can See General Motors_.
There was a brief mention of the “1974 Chevrolet pickup” (really 1973) in that book (pg. 128), but mainly to credit Chevy’s Planning Committee for guiding the development of that truck line for which John said “was the finest American light truck ever built.”
Good call on not only GM, but Delorean (who was running Chevrolet at the time) dropping the ball on the burgeoning extended cab pickup option. Knowing Delorean’s history, I’d guess that the pickup market just wasn’t anywhere near flashy or glamorous enough to get much of his attention. Back then, who bought pickups besides penny-pinching farmers and fleet managers, anyway? Stuff like the Cosworth Vega was much more his style.
OTOH, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that even if Delorean ‘had’ wanted to build an extended cab pickup, there was enough jealousy and dislike of him within the fourteenth floor to squash the idea.
Also buying large number of pickups were customers seeking recreational vehicles to tow trailers or boats, and those desiring camper additions into the pickup’s bed – which led to Chevy and competitors introducing “camper special” pickups with longer beds (and wheelbase) along with heavier duty suspensions. The 1973 Chevrolet/GMC full-sized pickups also had many new car-like features not found on Ford or Dodge trucks for a few more years such as locking steering wheel/columns and a dashboard design that placed all controls within easy reach of the driver, more foam padding in the seat and … a gas tank located outside the cab assembly.
“The 1973 Chevrolet/GMC full-sized pickups also had many new car-like features not found on Ford or Dodge trucks for a few more years such as […] a gas tank located outside the cab assembly.”
Rear-mounted tanks were available long before the ’73 C/K. Some time in the mid/late-’60s, each of the Big 3 offered an in-bed tank option.
IH may have been the first to offer a tank that was located somewhere other than behind the seat, though it was still in the cab assembly. On 1961+ models, the optional second tank was filled at the passenger front fender. I’m not sure where it was actually mounted, though. Some sources are saying it was underneath the seat.
I think if I would have just assumed that conversion with the added extended cab in the pictured example was factory had I passed it on the street. Like others here, the lack of such a thing isn’t something I’ve noticed but now it’s out there! Perhaps GM figured they were making all the trucks they could at the time anyway, back in the 70’s and early 80’s how profitable were trucks for GM compared to the passenger cars? I’m sure still profitable but perhaps not like today with the luxury car trimmings being so common?
I too am surprised GM dropped the ball when it came to these trucks and the lack of an Extended Cab. These trucks do look nice though. I had no idea that model year 1988 and 1989 GMT 400 with an extended cab only came with the 8 foot bed. Geesh, GM sure dropped the ball and I agree, the new Suburban should have come sooner than 1992.
Is everything that GM did or didn’t do always a DS here?
Nope, the GMT800 (circa 2003 Tahoe) is well respected around here.
Since practically everything GM has done over the past 50+ years has either shot themselves or their customers in the foot, yeah I’m ok with your assumption. As the long-time dominant industry leader, their myosis and perpetual self backslapping got them to where they are today, just another player in the market, and not a top tier one at that. With the exception of perhaps the Corvette and the Suburban extended family, no one I know aspires to a GM. They’ll occasionally settle for a GM but that’s strictly based on huge financial discounts. And I know a lot of people.
I was surprised to read the headline- after all, aren’t pickups really a GM core competency?
But then I realized pickup trucks weren’t really on my radar until the late 90s when a friend first purchased one as an actual daily driver- until then anyone with a pickup had it as a work vehicle, and they might have been Fords or Chevies or Rams, or maybe Maytags… didn’t really matter.
So, count me in with those who were shocked they didn’t have a extended cab/short bed until 1988. And I also didn’t know that Chevy used to outsell the F series trucks.
In a rather prophetic analysis for Dodge’s new Club Cab, truck correspondent Ken Kelley wrote in 1972 that:
Granted, being a truck writer, he was likely somewhat biased towards trucks, but wow, that was about 20 years ahead of its time! Ford’s customers in the ad in this article showing a suburban-looking family with kid and dog was probably an outlier, as Kelley’s prediction look longer to occur in the general marketplace. I bet in the 1970s and ’80s most extended cabs were bought by folks who would have bought regular-cab pickups anyway, but who liked the extra usefulness of the longer cab. I assume the real conquest over cars didn’t occur until later.
But it is shocking that GM didn’t pick up on the trend in the least bit. I’ll join others here in saying that I didn’t realize just how late GM was to the game with extended cabs, and I have to assume that a good proportion of extended cab buyers in the 70s and 80s were younger buyers, who in turn kept their brand loyalty in later decades, thus compounding GM’s early oversight.
The pickup market expanded strongly in the ’70s. It wasn’t just repeat buyers; the whole shift away from passenger cars to trucks, SUVs and other light trucks was very much underway in the ’70s, and the extended cab clearly played a part in that.
Ford surpassed Chevy in pickup sales in 1977, and has been #1 ever since, and the extended cab played a role in that.
I wonder if factory capacity or some other unknown to us manufacturing issue was to blame. I would think that there is a logical explaination.
Perhaps the side saddle gas tanks could be a factor?
IMO there were to things going on at GM during this timeframe; #1 was the Japanese car threat, and the $1 billion in 80s dollars they spent on completely re engineering their car line for front wheel drive (citation X body, j body etc…this was a huge project that likely vacuumed up all capital expense and management attention. #2 and related, GM was not spending enough time/talent on future planning, demographic changes in the vehicle market. They were still viewing full sized trucks as a niche, and allowed Ford to jump ahead significantly with the ’80 F series. I would image lumbering slow GM was working on the massive ’87 new truck project for years, so the mid 80s facelifts were temporary…they had the brand new truck in the works.
I once heard that GM and Ford had an agreement that GM would not produce an extended cab, if Ford would not produce a Suburban. I don’t recall where I heard that many years ago, or if it could be true or not – but interesting.
You heard wrong. Not true.
These companies did not collude like this. GM was already at serious risk of getting broken up into two companies for having such a large market share. The very last thing they needed was perfect ammunition like market collusion with a competitor. The risks were wayyyy too high.
Problem solved…
Moving into the 21st century, they finally got with the program and offered some weird combos. I have a dangerous fondness for the oddball extended-cab-short-bed combo, which could actually fit in my garage!
https://i.imgur.com/i28yLnV.png
Boy, do I not have my finger on the pulse of the truck buying populace.
Ford also offered a “shorty” SuperCab/5.5′ with a 133″ WB from 2004-09. I personally don’t see the point, as it seems to me to be the worst of both worlds (shortest bed and cramped rear seat), but yeah, if you have a garage that’s wide but short, or if you live in a crowded city with only street parking but still want/need a full-size truck with more seating than a regular cab, I could see the attraction. That’s how Ford advertised it when they first put it out in 2004: “for better garageability”.
Ford still makes the 133″ WB SuperCab, but since 2010 it’s only been used on Raptors, and apparently that’ll go away too with the next-gen model.
I think the Suburban may have been the reason for delaying extended cab pickups. GM certainly did all kinds of bonehead stuff to protect the Corvette so deciding against an extended cab truck to protect the Suburban/Blazer market is consistent behavior, or just plain arrogance. On a related note GM seems to have learned a bit since the updated Suburban in 91 included the shortened Tahoe/Yukon which grabbed a huge share of the soccer mom market.
For completeness, Mazda introduced an extended cab i with the 3rd gen B-Series in 1985 and had the first forward facing rear seats in the class, Isuzu topped the other Japanese by adding a raised roof as well as a longer cab. Also it’s worth noting that both the original Datsun King Cab, and the first Toyota extended cab were just larger cabs and didn’t have any rear seating.
Personally I like having an extended cab since our Ranger was always cramped feeling and even a smaller back seat is more comfortable than squeezing a third person in the middle seat. I also like the enclosed storage space. As an aside the popularity of the short bed extended cab and short bed crew cab has created a major shift in what is seen as the normal proportion for pickup trucks, accentuated by the trend for tall bluff styling. My F150 Super Cab long bed looks like a lowrider next to a modern Chevy 1500 partly due to the stock 4×2 ride height but mostly the extra length behind the cab.
Paul will know for sure, but my sense is that Ford did not become the pick-up sales leader EVERY year (based on brand) until the mid-late 70s. The very time era where GM did NOT have an extended cab.
I think before the late 70s, Chevy might have been the top seller as often as Ford.
Also, I think I seemed to see more Dodge extended cabs than Fords back in the late 70s/early 80s, but all the crew cabs seemed to be Chevy/GMC.
Interestingly, now 4-door cabs are the rage in full-size trucks. In today’s world, if all of a sudden, for whatever reason, demand shifts to regular cabs for full-size trucks, the automakers probably will have a hard time building more.
Yes, in 1977 Ford’s pickups surpassed Chevy’s in sales, and they’ve been #1 ever since.
Not really as gm never smartened up and dropped GMC nameplate. Ford went to making the cheapest pickup playing with volume to make up for small margins.
With how popular the Denali sub-brand is for GMC, GM is smarter to keep it than drop it. But even if you combine GMC and Chevy sales numbers under the pretense of “it’s all the same truck underneath,” they don’t always beat Ford.
To me, at least these past few generations, the GMC has always been styled a little more conservatively than the Chevy, which in my eyes makes a whole world of positive difference. The current gen…the Chevy is beyond hideous. Thus the 9-1-1 STAT restyle currently in the works.
I’ve found the new Chevys look better in the metal rather than in pictures. But I agree, ever since GMC actually started doing their own styling in 2007 (not just a grille swap), they’ve been more tasteful.
If you go back to the 1960s, Dodge was actually the Number Four truck maker, behind International Harvester some years.
The Suburban argument seems compelling to me. The margins on Suburbans (while not as high as today) were considerable, and it seems in keeping with GM’s ladder approach (need more room, have I got the vehicle for you!).
Of course, today we take for granted the ultra-competitive pickup segment, but back then it wasn’t given the same urgency. After all, one could also ponder why Ford waited almost a decade to respond to the GMT400.
By the 1970s GM really wasn’t very good at “thinking outside the box”. It did what it did (which was a lot) and quite often did it very well.
Ford ran rings around it coming up with new niches in the 60s and wasted no time in seeing Dodge’s innovation for what it was and improving it. It would not be at all surprising that the “company men” in charge of Chevy by the time Ford started really selling these simply saw them as a gimmick necessary to sell an inferior truck. Remember that the popularity of the Suburban kind of took them by surprise.
Chevy didn’t update the Suburban and K Blazer until the 1992 model year. The Tahoe was still a few years away at that point….GMC did rename its full size Jimmy to Yukon for the 92 model year ago however.
Chevy renamed the K Blazer to Tahoe for the 1995 model year, which was the same model year that the 4 door Tahoe and 4 door GMC Yukon was introduced.
The 2 door Tahoe was discontinued after the 1999 model year.
Wonderful article! My Partner’s first extended cab truck was a 1994 Chevy S-10, 2WD LT. He bought it 6 years used. He was very satisfied with it for 7 more years! It was quite well-loaded with luxury conveniences. I don’t care for trucks myself, but I found this very car-like, and I drove it as well. We even had friends ride in the quaint sideways “jump-seats” in the back on occasion.
I can’t seem to pin down when a four front hinge door cab came to the F-100 or F-150 line as a standard offering, but I hope that the person that championed it got a little something extra in their Christmas bonus.
My first boss in the early 1980’s drove essentially the vehicle pictured below, in the same colors. He had a little land, did some towing, and had two small kids that needed space in a second row. GM wasn’t an option for him at this size or price point. It was his full-size car of choice, a roomy two-door sedan…
The Super Crew arrived for the 2001 model year. I think that was the first. Before that you were buying a Centurion conversion to get the “blue oval 3+3”.
Yes, that was the first half-ton crew cab (not counting the rare late ’50s IH Travelettes that were offered on half-ton models). But the honor of “first smaller-than-3/4-ton crew cab in the US market” goes to Nissan, with the compact Frontier crew cab in 2000.
But Nissan (and even Toyota) are such niche players in this market that they barely update their vehicles. We’re talkin’ full sized ‘merican trucks here.
I spent my teens in rural Arkansas and in the 70s and early 80s. Back then, families had two vehicles, a car for the wife and kids and a truck for the husband if he was a contractor or had some need for a pickup. If they hauled kids in the pickup, they sat in the bed with or without a topper, but that wasn’t an everyday thing.
I agree with others about the poor rust resistance of the GM trucks. I still see Fords from the 70s doing their job, but Dodges or Chevy/GM? Rarely.
Jeep and International also missed the extended-cab trend. Jeep especially since they got a second chance with the smaller Comanche.
I wouldn’t say IH missed the trend, since they quit producing Light Line pickups in 1975, when extended cabs were just getting off the ground.
International offered the Travelette, a true four-seat pickup, all the way back in 1957. At first it was three doors and then went to four in 1961. They were the market leader.
The Chevy trucks were nice looking and rusted away into Swiss cheese by the time the payment book was empty. Being in Colorado and Kansas, roads were filled with these trucks. By 2000, they were a rarity. They rusted away.
So, I would consider that generation of Chevy a Deadly Sin because of the quality issues and losing the market share they dominated for generations.
Based upon a lifelong study, Internet posts, magazine articles, and tell-all books, I think the prime reason for all of the GM Deadly Sins can be summed up in one word.
Arrogance.
Think about it… JOHN Z FREAKIN’ DELOREAN dictated an entire book dedicated to how arrogant the fourteenth floor was. That’s like Michael Jordan complaining other people are too competitive.
Great analysis of an emergent trend which happened under the radar, thanks.
My brother and friends followed the truck segment far closer than did I, but I recall them discussing the puzzling ongoing lack of Chevy/GMC extended cab pickups in the late 1970’s and throughout most of the 1980’s. I recall the salty comment when the GMT 400 was introduced in later 1987: “Well, About time Chevy got off it’s dead ass and built an extended cab. What were they waiting for, an invitation?” So, clearly, many guys noticed that for years.
Most of the prosperity enjoyed in our small town then came from a large number of family men commuting to Rochester Products where they earned incomes well beyond anything they could here. While to a man they all had a GM family car, a number had Ford Extended Cab pick-ups as their second vehicle, some even after the arrival of the Chevy/GMC models.
Great article as always.
I have nothing to back me up, but my theory is that the General feared that extended-ab trucks would cannibalize the Suburban market.
Or perhaps another possibility – if the ‘Burban was built on the same line as the pickups, there might be production constraints?
The truck itself was not a DS but the fact that they ignored the extended cab market for so long definitely WAS.
It’s easy to wonder how much the prospect of a government breakup played in some of these bizarre marketing decisions.
I worked for GMC Truck and Coach Division during this time and money was the driving force behind keeping the old Suburban for instead of going to the new platform. We were selling every single one of them at a good profit. The quality wasn’t there but the money was. Also of interest was a back around 2010-2012(not sure exact time) when GM introduced the new pickup platform the extended cab model was not going to be available for quite some time. I was at the Indianapolis truck show when they announced this to the attendees. The majority of the attendees are construction fleet and government fleet people. I remember walking out and hearing all the talk about this issue. What are you going to buy, Ford or Dodge? Almost all 1/2-3/4 tons bought were extended cabs. Crew cabs purchased were usually 1 ton cab/chassis type not pickups. Another bonehead play.
I was about to ask “was the S-10 at least the first compact extended cab pickup that actually had room for passengers and wasn’t just a 6″ extension?” Then I remembered, “Nope, Datsun did it first with the 720 in 1980.”
I carried passengers (plural, adults) quite a few times in the back of my 720 and I didn’t even have the optional seats. Now I’m not saying they were comfortable …
In 1983-84, my brother-in-law manufactured and sold jump seats for the GM S-trucks. IIRC, the demand for the seat option was higher than GM could meet for awhile, so we stepped in and filled the gap. Sold them strictly to dealers, but I installed a few myself.
Would be a hoot to know if any have survived. Anybody ever see an S-truck with jump seats that didn’t quite “look factory”?
I too really didn’t remember these not having an extended cab, that’s Mandela effect in full swing!In the GMT400s defense, the long bed extended cab appeared to be way more prevalent on 90s pickups including Ford’s than the shortbed versions with that cab configuration, so late they may have been offering it I’m not sure that cost Chevy too many sales. It seems like the short bed larger cab thing is something that became the hot ticket in pickup styles after the turn of the millennium, but maybe that’s just a regional thing, Grosse Pointe Myopia and such.
The rust problem probably overshadows the cab configuration deadly sin as these went on for midwestern buyers, and that problem lasted well past the 73-80s. A friend in high school had one of those early 90s Suburbans with the old body and even it had the fist sized Swiss cheese thing happening throughout the body. With such a long run it couldn’t have been settling to a buyer looking at a new truck in 1980 when a 1975 being serviced looks like the hull of the titanic. Ford’s of course weren’t exactly impervious, but the new body and more frequent restyles at least could shake the fear.
Not many years before becoming a pickup guy myself, with a “King Cab” Datsun 720 I. 1983, my sister and her husband bought a SuperCab Ford. They had a couple of kids and had just gotten a farm north of Toronto. 2WD of course, because her husband believed that no one needed 4WD despite the fact that they were 1/4 mile off the the plowed dirt road. I rode in it a few times, and the last time I saw it in the late ‘80’s it was s seriously perforated by rust. Come to think of it, by then I had my own SuperCab, a 1986 Ranger which’s as the first year for that style in the Ranger.
In 1987 I took a long motorcycle trip through BC and Alberta to Alaska, with many miles of remote roads in the Yukon and Northwest Territories as well. The ubiquitous vehicle there was the SuperCab Ford. At the time, I remember thinking how ideal that setup was for rural families, and wondered if it was cause or effect that the only dealerships for hundreds of miles were Ford stores. By the time I returned home, the all-new GMT400 was starting to hit the roads, including extended cab variants.
I remember when the GM400s came out, and the extended cab was only available with the long bed. It was not uncommon at the time for these to be a household’s second vehicle. For those who used these to commute, these could be challenging to drive on older, narrow city streets, and maneuvering them around elevated parking garages was sometimes a bit scary.
I don’t think the two are related, but it seems like GM came out with their extended cab at about the same time that reclining seats became common on domestic cars. Having occasional back issues, for me the inability to recline the driver’s seat is one of the biggest drawbacks of a standard cab.
From what I understand, GM came very close to releasing extended cab models with the 1981 redesign of the C/K series trucks, even to the point of building prototypes. Story was GM was selling every full size truck product they could build at the time and the GMT-800 project (all new 1988 C/K series) was on the horizon, so the decision was made to wait and introduce extended cab pickups with the new generation. There was also one factor from a manufacturing standpoint that could have influenced that decision as well. The 1973 generation of C/K trucks like most all full sized trucks built up to that time used one-piece frame side rails. Every wheelbase had its own unique frame, and consequently frame rail stamping dies. The GMT-800 series trucks used a very clever modular frame made up of welded sub assemblies. 2 formed front sections (4X2 and 4X4), simple C-channels of varying lengths under the cab (regular, extended, crew), and 2 different formed rear sections (short and long bed). Same design of thicker material for 3/4 and 1 tons. With that concept GM could build most any configuration imaginable at minimum expense, and as an added bonus the welded frame was substantially stronger and more torsionally rigid than the previous design. Must have been a great idea, because both Ford and Dodge eventually adopted similar designs. Maybe a little influence from the DLR/DFR 8000’s welded/fabricated frame? Probably not, but who knows?
I think you mean GMT400. The GMT800s are the 1999-2006 trucks.
The GMT400 would’ve also been the last full-size truck (I think) that didn’t share any frame lengths/wheelbases between any configurations. The GMT800s use the same WB for extended cab/6.5′ and crew cab/5.75′, which is pretty much standard practice.
Yes, I meant the GMT-400’s.
Makes sense. There must have been some unreported corporate politics delaying the GMT-400 (not 800) design for many years, and the extended cab was just a causality of that. The old C/K was on the market for whatasit 18 years, even in a somewhat protected market that’s seems completely nuts.
1967 international harvestor was the first! How could you forget that fantastic truck with 3 doors.
Good write up albeit tone deaf to the time. You almost never saw pickups outside of agriculture areas and something like 2% had 4 wheel drive so very unpractical for the average family. They where about half the cost of a sedan with most not having carpet or headliner’s. They were work trucks period and city people looked down on you for driving one. Now days the cubicle cowboys have ruined the modern pickup.
The 1957 International Harvester Travelette was the first crew cab, not the first extended cab. No forgetting here.
As has been demonstrated multiple times in the comments, even by the late ’70s, pickups were being increasingly used as family vehicles, with or without 4WD. A pickup can be quite practical in just 2WD.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by that last sentence?
I suspect he means urban folk who buy a pickup because it’s cool and trendy; not because they need hauling or towing capability, or off-road clearance. The ruined part may refer to the way the manufacturers have gussied-up the interiors to cater to these folks.
I know one thing – a loaded pick-up these days is quite loaded, and one must be loaded to write the check.
That’s what I figured–the typical sentiment that’s been going on for the past 40+ years, that doesn’t reflect reality or have much relevance to any conversation. Base model pickups still exist. Nobody took them away.
One word: Suburban. My family spent most of the 1980s in one, first a ’79 and then an ’83. At the time, I could never understand the point of a truck as a family vehicle. Pickups were for work, and I looked down on these poor souls trying to fit more than three people into some silly cramped extended cab, when we rode in spacious comfort while easily hauling anything they could haul. “Normal” people who had a truck also had a passenger car for the family. An extended cab was still a work truck, good mostly for storing tools. I rode in one once, on one of those jump seats, and absolutely hated it. I was not happy like that kid in the Ford ad. And short beds? If it didn’t hold a standard sheet of plywood flat, it was useless. Our Suburbans did, with the back seat folded. And lack of styling changes over the years? That was a good thing. Plenty of parts at any junkyard, plus the reverse snobbery of owners like my stepdad, who was proud of his “trucks” that Chevy got right the first time. As far as he was concerned, Suburbans were the best utilitarian vehicles ever made. For luxury, when he retired, he bought a ’90 Mitsubishi Sigma, the “Japanese Mercedes” of its day. I understand how GMs lack of extended cabs seems like a deadly sin in retrospect, but at the time many people didn’t see it that way.
“And short beds? If it didn’t hold a standard sheet of plywood flat, it was useless. Our Suburbans did, with the back seat folded.”
…but then it could only carry 3 passengers; same as a regular cab pickup.
In practice, one very rarely has to carry both plywood and the family at the same time. I do not remember a single such instance in our case. My stepdad demanded that a vehicle should excel at both, but not necessarily at the same time. Our Suburbans were used as work trucks during the week (he was a carpenter and handyman) and were as good as any long-bed truck in that role, for his needs. On weekends and vacations, they were family cars for our family of six and excelled at that too. My stepdad would have seen a short bed, extended cab truck as a downgrade, because it wouldn’t be any better for passengers (and sometimes worse), while being significantly less useful for boards and plywood. These vehicles work well for many people today, but they are a compromise. My point was not to denigrate them, but to explain how some people perceived them differently at the time.
This was one of those, “WTH” things that totally shocked me. I only found out when my Chevy forever best friend went to buy a truck and when we went to the Chevy dealer and saw nothing but standard cab K10’s, we wondered if you had to order an extended cab pickup. My friend wanted the ext cab for his two huge dogs that really didn’t fit comfortably in a standard cab with someone in it with them, When the salesman said that GM didn’t make an extended cab pickup, just the double in a 20 series, we were kind of shocked. He ended up buying a disastrous Ford which famously broke the crankshaft and the snout and harmonic balancer flew around under the hood, causing major damage. He had a OJ style Bronco after that, but ended up back in the Chevy family with an ’81 or ’82 Blazer. I would love to see internal messages about an ext cab truck, I’m sure someone suggested it, and was shot down. The logic behind it would be interesting, as bonehead moves always are.
I’ve had 3 pickups, one a standard cab, and the other two extended. My first was a ’00 GMC Sierra, with the suicide doors. I liked it well enough, but at least once a year, I would be unable to get in because the doors were iced shut. When the Sierra was wrecked, it was never right again, and I went to an ’03 Ram 1500 Quad Cab 4×4 and I loved that thing. The back was used once in a while for 2 legged passengers, but 99% of the time, it was my dogs back there. If I wasn’t handicapped now, I would almost for sure be driving a Ram 1500 QC now. A friend has a Ram Rebel and it’s great.
Dodge stopped offering the club cab for a while in the early 80s. It may have been available for special order but not dealer stock. When they released the cummins they offered it again. I think they were common with people who towed 5th wheels and goosenecks. A market dodge lost a lot of from 79-88 when no big blocks or diesels were offered.
Absolutely correct–it was dropped after 1982, probably as a cost-cutting measure, but Chrysler wisely kept the tooling around to reintroduce them in 1990 when extended cabs were the hot thing.
Crew cabs, OTOH, stayed around until 1985, when they were dropped from the line to make room at the Warren Truck Assembly for the upcoming Dakota. (Also dropped at that time were the narrow Utiline beds, which had been produced with few alterations since 1953. And except for the Mega Cab in 2006, crew cabs wouldn’t return to the full-size Rams until 2009.
Between having no cabs besides regular and no engines larger than the 360, it’s a wonder that Chrysler was able to sell any 3/4 or 1-ton Rams at all before the Cummins partnership.
I’m amazed they did as well. It seems 360 powered 1 tons with dump and flatbeds were a somewhat common purchase thou. At least locally in my area. I still find a number for sale that were previously owned by towns, landscapers and masons. My guess would be price has a big part to do with that. I hardly ever see any regular pickups bigger then a half ton thou. One local mason still has two mint condition gas powered one tons one a rack body they other a mason dump.
A friend worked as a fleet manager for a large Dodge dealer in the late 80’s, they sold a ton of reg cab half tons with a long bed and a Meyers plow. He told me they were all sold on price, they had a rebate system with plow installed and if they hit a certain volume it became reasonably profitable so they blew them out 10-15% less then a Ford or Chevy to get the rebates. He was there with the first Cummins arrived and told me there was more excitement over that truck then any thing else on the lot.
I really want a crewcab first gen ram. Have since I was like 15. Hard to find in my area thou. I saw one sell a town over about 4 years ago but I didn’t have the cash at the time. Just have to keep the Ramcharger trucking.