The sport utility vehicle has had a profound impact on the American automotive landscape. In the past, families bought sedans and wagons. The minivan then ruled for some time, but the crossover and the SUV have come to be the default option for so many. Most of the vehicles considered to be SUVs today are forgettable, but that wasn’t the case in the 1990s. Back then, Chevrolet was willing to sell you a body-on-frame beast of an SUV with two doors, four-wheel-drive, and one of the best sounding turbodiesel V8s to be sold to the public.
The two-door SUV is trying to make a comeback. There was a time in the recent past when choices for two-door sport utes were thin on the ground. The Jeep Wrangler was the establishment in this category, then Land Rover wanted a piece with its Range Rover Evoque. The Toyota FJ Cruiser had the illusion of a two-door even though it had a pair of rear-hinged rear doors.
Today’s buyers still have few choices. The Jeep Wrangler is still around in two-door form and joined by Ford Bronco and the Land Rover Defender 90. Maybe we might also see a two-door from Scout. Sadly, things thin out from there. Automakers love talking about “coupe” SUVs, but you’ll notice that all of those have four doors.
Yet, rewind the clock more than two decades and you’ll find far more two-door SUVs on the market. Go back even further and several automakers around the globe were building two-door SUVs in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Even Kia was in on the game with its first-generation Sportage, a compact body-on-frame 4×4 available in two doors with a removable top.
It was these times where you’ll find America’s Big Three participating in the two-door SUV market. in the 1990s, you could buy two-door SUVs in multiple sizes from Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors brands. Over at Ford, you could get two-door action in a Bronco or an Explorer. Chrysler was slinging two-door Jeep Cherokee XJs and Dodge Ramchargers. Over at General Motors? Buyers were spoiled for choice. Those wanting a small-scale off-roader could have purchased a Geo Tracker while those wanting steps up could have found themselves in something like a Chevrolet S-10 Blazer or the full-size Blazer, which would later be renamed the Tahoe.
That latter Blazer was something interesting. Most people remember the GMT400-based SUVs in their casual four-door form. I also wrote about one of the four-doors stretched into a 29-foot limo. But these were also available sliced down into a sleek two-door rig. Even better was what was under the hood, as buyers had choices of healthy gasoline V8 power or one of the greatest-sounding diesel engines to be fitted to a consumer truck.
From 4×4 To Crossover: Chevy Blazer History
For many outside of the car enthusiast world, the Chevrolet Blazer nameplate might not evoke memories of anything even remotely legendary or particularly memorable. The Blazer of the present day is a crossover with an interior ripped out of the deceased Camaro. It’s a perfectly fine automobile, but one that’s unlikely to be considered to be revered as an icon two decades from now. That’s also fine! Not everything needs to be the stuff of dreams.
The predecessor of the present-day Blazer was a curiosity of its own. The Chevy S-10 Blazer was a capable off-roader and in the mid-1990s, buyers were even able to get them with a rad two-door body and bold colors. How cool was the S-10 Blazer? Sure, it won North American Truck of the Year in 1995 and Motor Trend Truck of the Year the same year, but even Playboy Magazine nominated it as the publication’s Truck of the Year. I bet many people didn’t even know that Playboy rated trucks!
I still see these old sport utes conquering mud holes and storming down trails. My family had a red 2003 Blazer two-door and loved it. Yet, like the new Blazers, the S-10 Blazers aren’t particularly memorable vehicles.
The last of the full-size Blazers find themselves in a somewhat similar situation. When car enthusiasts on the Internet talk about their desire to make a real 4×4 out of a new Blazer, they’re thinking about the legendary K5 Blazer, not the GMT400 models. But, I think it’s time a light is shone on these GMT400 rigs.
If anything, General Motors missing a potential market with a Blazer is only tradition. After all, the original Blazer was a latecomer. Back in the 1960s, Americans were discovering that off-roading was actually really fun. Sure, it wasn’t a new thing back then. Lots of folks went off-roading just by the nature of their lives. However, people began to see leaving pavement as a form of recreation.
The automotive industry was quick to respond. Jeep already had its CJ series while International put its Scout on the market to compete with Jeep. Ford came swinging with its Bronco in 1965, leaving General Motors in a position of not effectively working this growing market. Sure, it had the Suburban, but shorty 4x4s were becoming all the rage. Competition wasn’t even just coming from the domestic brands, either. At the time, the best-selling Toyota in America was the FJ40 Land Cruiser, Nissan sold some of its Patrols here, and Land Rover had made inroads in America, too.
According to Hagerty, GM was quick to respond to the onslaught of off-roaders by first coming up with a concept model. That first concept had a footprint similar to the CJ and the Bronco that the GM creation was going to compete against. According to the publication, this Bronco-sized proto-Blazer was engineered, tooled, and even brochures were written up for a potential launch that could have happened as early as 1968.
However, as Hagerty notes, GM’s accountants killed the project. The official explanation from GM brass was that an examination of the market showed that there weren’t enough buyers to sustain Ford, International Harvester, and Jeep. Indeed, threInternational Scout and the original Ford Bronco are icons today, but back then their sales were drops in very large ponds. Ford sold just 23,776 Broncos in 1966 while International Harvester barely cracked above the 20,000 mark with the Scout. GM figured that nobody would buy a Chevy pleasure 4×4.
Eventually, brass relented, but the vehicle given the green light was vastly different. The vehicle that would become the K5 Blazer was based on existing architecture, namely the K10 pickup with a short box. To make the K5, the K10’s wheelbase was shortened to 104 inches and an integrated body was placed on top of the chassis.
The result was something that was cheaper for GM to build, but also something that stood out in the crowd. The K5 was a full-size SUV with loads of interior room, lots of cargo volume, and the manners of a full-size truck. Sales of the K5 were slow at first, but by the end of its run it sold twice as many units as the original Bronco did in its best year. Americans voted with their wallets: Full-size SUVS were cool.
A second-generation Blazer would arrive in 1973 and became a part of GM’s famed “Rounded Line” trucks, perhaps better known by the “Squarebody” nickname given to them by GM truck fans. The second-generation carried over many traits from the original including a removable convertible top. Upgrades to the design included integrating the hatch’s glass into the tailgate, allowing it to electrically roll down for nice summertime airflow.
The Holy Grail
Those earlier Blazers were great, perhaps legendary, even, but the later model needs some love, too.
In 1992, the second-generation Blazer was succeeded by an evolution of the genre. The third generation Blazer was sleeker, fresher, and built on one of the greatest platforms in the history of General Motors. That’s the GMT400, a platform we’ve been spilling a lot of ink about lately. If you somehow managed to miss our previous coverage, here’s what you need to know.
The GMT400 was an incredible step forward. GM realized that trucks weren’t just being used by workers and enthusiasts of the outdoors anymore. Families were beginning to pile into trucks as family vehicles and as such, these trucks needed to be more family-friendly. Our resident car designer Adrian gives us details:
Underneath, the front suspension did away with the live axle and all its attendant compromises, and replaced it with an independent control arm set-up – sprung with coils for the 2WD models and torsion bars for the 4WD trucks, which introduced the Insta-Trac shift-on-the-fly transfer case, further increasing usability. There was power steering as standard, and ABS on the rear axle to prevent empty-bed lock ups. The front frame rails were hydroformed to reduce weight and increase strength and rigidity.
It’s staggering how advanced for the time it is – flush door handles, flush glazing (with an increased glass area), flush trim. Every detail sits perfectly on the surface without interrupting the overall cohesiveness of the appearance. The profile is simple, almost like something a child would come up with if you asked them to draw a truck. Little more than three boxes placed end on end. But it’s not simplistic and rigid. The filet that runs along the top of the bed and continues into the cant rail and down onto the hood is subtle; not too soft, and not too tight. The feature line management is exceptionally clean; one single line that runs off the top of the taillight, down the bed, creates the bottom edge for the side window and gently arcs down the top of the fender.
There’s a neat inset feature running between the wheels and around the rear that provides a border for the trim pieces worn by the higher trim levels, so they look properly integrated and not just tacked on. The inset also works perfectly as the break separating the paint colors of two-tone trucks. The gentle curvature of the body side gives a feeling of solidity and strength – important because you don’t want a working vehicle to look weak. Anchoring the whole thing are wheel arch flares that are small but extremely sharply defined, meaning you get a nice straight consistent highlight along the length of the truck without any interruptions.
At the same time, General Motors didn’t forget that the GMT400 platform was still underpinning hardworking trucks, so engineers made sure they could still perform the job:
To ensure the trucks could still handle the work, engineers sent out about 40 trucks, half were rear-wheel-drive and the other half were four-wheel-drive, into the field. Customers would use the truck as they would normally while General Motors measured what they were doing with loads. Engineers then recreated those loads during development to make sure the truck could handle it. They also intentionally overloaded trucks and then took them for testing because General Motors knew pickup owners sometimes ignore ratings.
The cab was also to be a vast improvement over previous full-size trucks. Remember, these trucks were meant to be daily drivers now. For engineers, this meant designing a cab that didn’t allow an intrusive amount of outside noise in. To do this, engineers pinpointed the sources of noises and added sound deadening in those areas. Streamlining the cab and the mirrors also meant less wind noise. In its promotional video, GM claimed the GMT400’s quiet cab compares favorably to a European luxury car from the era.
The seats had to be cushy, able to restrain child car seats, and there had to be enough legroom for tall drivers, while the climate control had to be easy to operate. Engineers went so far as to create a plastic dummy to simulate a driver. That dummy was then placed in the cab and its angles were measured against medical data gathered by GM and universities about the optimal body part angles for comfort. GM says the GMT400 cab was designed to be comfortable for everyone from a small woman to a hulking football player.
In the past, GM said that the development of these new trucks required thousands of people and an investment of $1.3 billion. Why? GM was already on top with its Squarebody trucks. How do you get people who love their Squarebodies to buy their successor? Make sure the next truck is better in every conceivable way. So GM put in the time and the money to make sure the GMT400 beat the Squarebody. At the same time, GM also lost the truck sales crown to Ford, and GM didn’t want to take silver in the truck race.
GM’s research into what became the GMT400 was extensive. Designers held clinics where they took advice from truck owners on what they used their trucks for and what they wanted their trucks to look like. These clinics taught GM that truck owners wanted something that looked macho, but was soft on the inside. They wanted trucks durable enough to push things with their bumpers, but also had enough car-like features for the whole family. These findings are why GMT400 trucks have thick bumpers with their lights inches above them. The trucks are designed to push open gates and other obstacles without damage. At the same time, GM engineers figured the GMT400 was about as quiet going down a highway as a luxury car at the time.
The Blazer was everything a GMT400 series truck was, but packaged into a 111.5-inch wheelbase two-door family SUV.
That’s not to say that the Blazer was completely soft. These SUVs featured an independent front suspension up front and a solid axle in the rear. The default engine for the Blazer was a 5.7-liter V8 good for 210 HP and 300 lb-ft of torque. Chevy boasted about the Blazer’s car-like ride and up to 7,000-pound towing capacity. Meanwhile, the Blazer was decorated with Four Wheeler magazine’s “Four Wheeler of the Year” award for its off-road prowess.
Oh and if the Blazer wasn’t high-class enough for you, it was also available as the GMC Yukon. Don’t worry, of course I have that sweet John Davis MotorWeek action:
In that review, Davis went over a lot of what I already told you. However, there’s still some interesting stuff in there. For example, the Tahoe hit 60 mph in 9.7 seconds, which isn’t all that slow for a non-performance SUV from the early 1990s. Other good marks came from the quiet cabin, which was only 70 decibels at highway speeds. What wasn’t so great was the fuel economy, which came in at an abysmal 13 mpg city and 17 mpg highway. MotorWeek hit an average of 15 mpg.
Of course, the GMT400 SUV proved to be tough off-road, too, with Davis saying the Tahoe attacked terrain with a “vengeance.” MotorWeek also praised the ability for the Yukon to carry up to six adults in its cavernous interior. America’s television car magazine also liked the price, noting that at $19,518, the luxe Yukon was priced similarly to smaller four-door SUVs from rival companies.
Finally, in further praise, MotorWeek noted that in 1992, the Yukon and the Blazer had a newer chassis design, more torque, and a better highway ride than either the Ford Bronco or the Dodge Ramcharger.
In its conclusion, MotorWeek noted that the two-door market was already dying in the early 1990s, but it still had a strong niche because the big two-door brutes had better off-roading chops and higher hauling capabilities than the compact SUVs that everyone was going wild over.
In 1994, right in time for the Blazer model to bow out, GM found one major way to improve the SUV. new for 1994 was the addition of the 6.5-liter Detroit Diesel V8 with a turbo. Aside from the clickety clackety sound of a diesel, you can easily identify one of these beasts with their front bumper-based air intakes.
Here’s some information on this engine from a previous piece:
Detroit increased the 6.2’s cylinder bore from 3.98 inches to 4.06 inches. The manufacturer also strengthened the engine’s internals and added piston oil squirters. The new, stronger, and more powerful Detroit 6.5-liter V8 was born.
At its weakest, a naturally aspirated 6.5 made 160 HP and 290 lb-ft of torque. The real fun happened with the factory addition of a turbocharger, which sent HP up to 180 and torque to 380 lb-ft in 1992. Just a year later in 1993, the Detroit 6.2 would finally die while the 6.5 turbo rose to 190 HP and 380 lb-ft of torque.
Improvements in later years came from upgrading the engine to electronic injection pump regulation and trading the Stanadyne DB-2 rotary injection pump for the Stanadyne DS-4, which featured the aforementioned electronic controls. Later improvements included high-flow water pumps and improved thermostats. At its best, a Detroit Diesel 6.5 turbo put out 215 HP and 430 lb-ft of torque.
Putting the 6.5 turbodiesel V8 into the Blazer made for a marked improvement in torque. In the Blazer and Yukon it made 180 HP and 360 lb-ft of torque. That’s a little down on horsepower but a big bump in torque. The other big news was small, but solid gains in fuel economy, with claims for 15 mpg city and 19 mpg highway. Sadly, getting the boost in power meant saddling yourself with a four-speed automatic. A five-speed manual was available but only for gas engines.
The Blazer diesel also found itself in an interesting spot. GM’s decision to drop the big bad 6.5 into the Blazer meant that GM was the only one of the big three selling a full-size two-door diesel SUV in America.
And golly, what an engine that 6.5 is. Sure, it didn’t make as much power as a Power Stroke and sure, some people aren’t super jazzed about its reliability. But who can say no to a soundtrack like this:
A Blip In GM History
The turbodiesel GMT400 Blazer is technically a one-year vehicle because 1994 was the last year for the Blazer. I say “technically” because the vehicle itself didn’t die. Instead, the Blazer was renamed to Tahoe for 1995. The Tahoe would be available in both two-door and four-door forms. If you wanted it with a diesel engine you had to get it with two doors and four-wheel-drive. In essence, the ultimate version of the ’90s Tahoe was this configuration.
Amazingly, GM then kept producing these SUVs with the 6.5 diesel V8 until 1999. A couple of years later, the diesel torch would be passed on to the Duramax V8. Sadly, there are no known production numbers for the diesel variants of these SUVs, but it’s believed that as few as a few thousand were sold one year.
One thing I can say is that they’re being ignored by collectors. The nicest examples sell for under $20,000 and average ones sell for well under $10,000. Those are prices at fancy online bidding sites, too.
Eventually, the two-door SUV lost even more ground and the genre would struggle in the 2000s. Two-door SUVs were still around, but they were largely found as smaller Ford Explorers and Chevy Blazers. Dodge didn’t even bother. Still, for a time, these sorts of SUVs were the bomb with select buyers and now they’re sort of fading away. So, if you want a big SUV with only two doors and a screaming diesel engine, you probably can’t go wrong with one of these beasts.
(Topshot: Autopian/Bring A Trailer Seller)
OBSessed.
GM built these for the military also.
At least Ford is bringing back the two doors. As a childless person who still likes to move things I’ve always had an attraction to a two-door Blazer (either S10 or K5). Heck, I wish my CX-30 was a two-door.
The wheels on those GMT400s were just so clean and good looking, as was the body design. Probably peak GM truck as far as aesthetics.
About a decade before this, my family had a 3/4 ton Suburban with the not nearly as mighty 6.2L NON-Turbo diesel and before that a “heavy-duty half-ton” GMC pickup with the same engine to haul a gigantic slide-in camper around. But even with a whopping 130hp or so they did just fine. People were in less of a hurry in the ’80s. The engines never gave any major issues, but they ATE the stupid “hydroboost” hydraulic brake boosters like candy.
I took my driver’s license test in that beast of a Suburban. Got out of having to really parallel park because there were no spaces big enough on the test route. Examiner had me fake it in the parking lot of the BMV and called it “good enough”, LOL.
GMT400 may be peak American pickup.
Wow. I don’t recall ever seeing the 4/5-door Tahoe in that gorgeous green paint. That color is very similar to the green I bought my ’01 Jetta TDI slathered in. Very fetching.
But if I’m going to drive something in that weight class, I want all the doors I can get.
I had a mid-90s Tahoe as a company car. I’m glad the gas went on the company’s credit card, but it was a pretty quiet and comfortable freeway cruiser. It did have an odd steering twitch on freeway on-ramps. It was weird and a little unsettling when the steering wheel went limp and rotated about 15 degrees and then felt reconnected. I mentioned it to our maintenance people, but they never found the cause. And I’m not sure they actually tried to recreate what I felt several times a week in my travels.
Another rare variant of this Blazer/Tahoe (maybe not a Holy Grail, though?) is the 2-door version with “barn doors” at the back. I suspect the take rate was <10%. I’ve seen no more than a dozen.
I worked at a warehouse in the early 90s with a random collection of white fleet-spec 3/4T pickups. They were used for local runs for equipment with and without trailers and moving stuff around the warehouse yard rather than long-distance towing. The collective favorite was the Ford with the 4.9 I6. The GM oil burners were at the bottom of the list.
The diesels were exhausting to be around, and they became even more annoying in the cold months—the 4.9 didn’t have the same torque, but we never cared since they never failed, always started, and were smooth and quiet.
The new Blazer should have just been a Shortened Tahoe that is basically this format. Give it those little “suicide doors” that some extended cab pickups have.
“But who can say no to a soundtrack like this:”
Me. In no world would I rather have the 6.5 TD over the 5.7.
My dad’s company had one of these, a ’94 Blazer 6.5L. It was assigned to one of his employees who put some serious seat time in it. By ’97 is was over 300,000 miles and was replaced by another sweet ride – a ’97 1500 regular-cab, short-bed Z71 in blue. In the past, his company would dump the fleet vehicles at auction, but if we could strike just right we could pick up a vehicle or two for almost nothing because it was easier for the fleet manager to deal with. I was really hoping to snag that Blazer for a few hundred dollars, but the person who put all the miles on it snagged it first – apparently the day they fleet manager gave it to them, they asked for first dibs when the Blazer was ready to be retired. Even though the 6.5L isn’t amazing compared to the 5.9L Cummins or 7.3L Powerstroke (or the 6.6L Duramax), it was a great match in the GMT400 Blazer.
I could be wrong, but I -believe- these were unavailable in Calfornia – I think all of the GMT400 family with GVW’s under 8600 were locked out of the 6.5 TD, which probably really hurt the overall numbers produced. I bought a 1993 GMC 3500 with the 6.5 and still have it, it’s a perfectly fine engine if you’re not trying to be one of the diesel-bros or constantly haul really heavy stuff, it’s built for economy, not POWERRRR. Just needs the PMD relocated on the post-’93 models.