Four Decades Ago, Chevy Would Throw In A Gun With Your Truck

Automakers have tried all kinds of tricks and deals over the years to shift cars. They’ll throw in metallic paint at no extra cost, or upgrade you to a nice set of alloy wheels. They’ll whip up sticker packs and chuck on all kinds of fancy badges to convince you you’re getting something special. Or, in Chevy’s case, they’ll just throw in a gun.

Meet the Chevrolet Outdoorsman—the trim for outdoors types, as you might have guessed. Rather than being offered on a single model, it was essentially a package of accessories available across a range of off-road-ready Chevrolets. In 1985, you could get it on full-size trucks as well as the smaller Chevy S-10 and even the Blazer. It didn’t matter if you fancied a two-wheel-drive or four-wheel-drive, you could pick the package all the same.

There were three packages to choose from depending on your particular hobbies and lifestyle. Chevy intended the Outdoorsman trim to give you a truck ready to go camping, hunting, or fishing right out of the showroom.

Duly Equipped

As you might imagine, it was the hunting pack that included the complimentary firearm. Chevrolet would happily equip you with a .30-30 Winchester Model 94Ae XTR rifle, branded as the Winchester Chevy Outdoorsman.

The lever-action carbine proudly wore a Chevrolet badge on the stock. You also got a Tasco W 4×32 scope to mount on top, along with a Winchester cap, shooting glasses, and a gun case to keep it safe. Not that you had to use it—Chevy also threw in a rear-window rifle rack so you could mount the rifle right in your truck.

If your tastes were more towards fishing, Chevy would instead hook you up with a bunch of fishing rods and reels to suit. To help ensure the fish got on board, you’d also get a lure kit and a tackle box to keep everything in. You also got a Chevy Outdoorsman jacket and a Chevy cap, and a Fiskars filleting knife for processing your catch.

As for the campers, Chevy would kit you out with a tent, sleeping bag, and lantern. In particular, you’d be sleeping in a Bass Pro Shops Outdoors Family Skydome, which sounds far more grandiose than it really is. You’d also get a 12-volt cooler and warmer and a cooking kit so you could keep yourself fed in the backcountry.

Chevy put its marketing weight behind the Outdoorsman trim, going so far as to record an ad with football player and all-around celebrity personality Dick Butkus. In the video above, you get to see the goodies from each package laid out, each apparently adding up to $500 in value, along with the Dick Butkus Singers rattling off the jingle of the time—”Nothing Works Like A Chevy Truck!”

The buy-a-truck, get-a-gun offer didn’t last forever. Most records seem to indicate this was a one-year special for 1985, with the word on the street being that only 200 or so were built. A handful still exist, on the streets or turning up on auction sites from time to time. Finding an example with the original accessory pack still complete is rare in the extreme.

A rare surviving example of the Chevrolet Outdoorsman.

RestoreAMuscleCar recently sold a nicely restored example of the Chevrolet Outdoorsman, complete with the original dual-rifle window rack.

The Winchester guns also show up from time to time on various gun auction sites. They’re often complete in their original packaging, showing the Chevy pickup right on the front of the box.

However, the Outdoorsman name would soon return. In 1987, you could buy a Chevrolet Suburban Outdoorsman targeted directly at the fishing market. It was rigged with interior storage compartments specifically intended for things like gas tanks, tackle boxes, and outboard motors, ensuring they could be stored safely without risk of tips or spills out on the road. Chevy didn’t include a gun this time around. 

Not The First

As it turns out, Dodge had tried something very similar to Chevy, albeit while leaving less evidence behind. Around 1984, you could purchase a Dodge pickup with the Marksman 1000 package. Seldom few details of the package remain, but it included decals on the truck bed and, of course, a rifle.

In fact, Dodge’s package came with a very similar gun to what you would get from Chevy in 1985. The Winchester Dodge Marksman was again a 94 XTR lever action carbine, again chambered in the popular .30-30 caliber. Much as the Chevy gun wore the bowtie badge, the Dodge rifle had the Ram’s Head taking pride of place on the stock.

A restored example of a 1984 Dodge Ram Marksman 1000.

Since the 1980s, few to no manufacturers have specified firearms as pack-in extras for their vehicles. That’s not to say the idea died entirely, though. As you can see in the Ford brochure below, the Ford F-Series Super Duty could be had with a lockable under-seat rifle storage, albeit sans gun.

Free guns come back as an automotive sales strategy periodically, but most often as a gimmick pursued by individual dealers. 2010 saw a Florida dealership throwing in $400 gun store vouchers with new car purchases, branding the deal “Buy A Truck, get a free AK-47.” Later on in 2016, a New Hampshire dealership made headlines when the owner offered AR-15 rifles or 9mm handguns to customers who purchased a new car.

Ultimately, neither Chevrolet nor Dodge made huge waves in the 1980s with their rifle offerings. For that reason alone, it’s perhaps unlikely that free guns will become a common item on automotive option lists going forward. Some truck owners might be in the market for a gun, to be sure. But more often than not, they’re going to want to pursue that purchase separately, rather than shoot whatever the dealer threw in with the vehicle.

Image credits: Chevrolet, Rock Island Auction via screenshot