Junkyard Find: 1966 Chevrolet C10 Pickup
Battered old pickups tend to survive on the steets longer than their car counterparts, since a smoke-barfing, rod-knocky Joad Family-style truck can still haul a load of stolen copper wire just as well as a cherry Adnan Khashoggi Edition™ Blackwood. Still, the time comes when the duct-tape bills (or, in this case, the parking-ticket fines) can’t be paid, and another California veteran hauler faces the cruel steel jaws of The Crusher.
The Hayward Police Department red-tagged this flamed ’66, giving the owner 72 hours to move it or face the consequences. Red-tagging is almost always the result of a complaint by a neighbor, generally as one act of many in a lengthy dispute. It costs a few hundred bucks to get your towed car out of the Lubyanka when this happens, and this truck’s owner couldn’t or wouldn’t come up with the cash.
The good news is that plenty of parts, including most of the interior and dash items, have been salvaged and should live on in other Chevy and GMC trucks of the era.
Not much interest in a 2-barrel 283 or 327 small-block of questionable condition these days.
The McGwire/Canseco-era A’s sticker suggests that this truck may have pulled tailgate-party duty at the Oakland Coliseum, back in happier times.
There’s nothing like an old-timey flame job to enrage the Avalon-driving neighbors and get the HPD to whip out the red stickers.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I love this vintage Chevy pickups. The GMCs were a bit too goofy for my tastes but they really did a good job with the Chevys of this era. Another vehicle on my list when I occasionally scan Search Tempest and eBay for projects.
The 67-72's are my all-time favorites but the 60-66's were also pretty cool. Lots of mechanical interchangability between 63-72. In 1993, I came across a '65 C-10 shortbed Fleetside from Georgia. A 305/stick had been swapped in...it was quite driveable and enjoyable for $2800. But my wife said no due to bad memories...a college buddy who's calling card was his '63 C-10 blew his brains out over the failure of his second marriage a couple years before. Bringing that truck home would've been a constant reminder. Someday I'll be driving my '68 C-10. Somebody oughta save this '66.