YouTuber Lists Pros & Cons of Inheriting Dad’s ’90 Chevy C1500 Pickup
Chevrolet C1500 has a lot of sentimental value, but it also has its share of shortcomings, says ‘Eric the Car Guy.’
When you were a kid, your father probably had a vehicle that you now remember fondly. Maybe he took you to get ice cream for the first time in it. That vehicle may have been the first one you ever drove. If you managed to hold on to it until now, many of your pleasant memories probably share space in your mind with unspoken rants about the things that bother you about the vehicle. Eric Cook, aka Eric the Car Guy, can relate. He got his father’s 1990 Chevrolet C1500 Sport. While Cook cherishes it because it used to belong to his father, he doesn’t necessarily love everything about it.
He has no complaints about its looks. However, Cook often has to clarify just what model his truck is. Chevrolet produced the C/Ks (two-wheel-drive trucks had the C prefix and four-wheel-drive trucks were identified by the K prefix) for the 1988-1999 model years. Given that his single-cab C1500 has black paint and a red front bowtie emblem, many people think that it’s a 454SS.
Cook’s truck may look similar, but it’s actually a Sport model with a much smaller 5.7-liter V8. Although it started life with a five-speed manual gearbox (as many C/Ks did back in the ’80s and ’90s), it now features an automatic transmission.
That 350’s connected to one of Cook’s biggest pet peeves about the C1500: its gauges. They’re analog units that feature a white section that grows larger as the orange needle sweeps to the right. We don’t find them particularly bothersome, but Cook certainly does. He hates them, adding, “Just give me a decent of analog gauges. That’s all I need and that’s what I’m used to.”
Cook is also not too happy with the audio setup Chevy offered at the time. He finds the equalizer settings in his truck are superfluous in modern times. “It’s like they were trying to make the dash overly confusing and complicated to make it seem more important than it actually was,” he says.
The C1500’s seats draw Cook’s ire, too. The stock buckets have a tendency to harden and become uncomfortable over time. Luckily, his truck features a more satisfying bench seat from another vehicle, possibly a van of the same vintage.
Even though Cook has plenty to complain about, he points out some of the advancements Chevy made with the GMT400. To prevent corrosion, Chevy dipped the truck’s frame in wax, although Cook has seen many trucks from the same time period as his with rusted-out rocker panels. As he puts it, the amount your C1500 corrodes “just depends on where you’re from.”
The addition of an independent front suspension to four-wheel-drive C/Ks was a big step toward making them more comfortable. Longer rear leaf springs improved ride quality while staggered rear shocks reduced wheel hop.
Despite its shortcomings, the C1500 will always be special to Cook. We’ll never forget it, either. Those “Like a Rock” commercials are forever ingrained in our memory.
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