Funny story about ordering and building this truck:
I ordered it just like the other trucks that my family drove: manual windows and locks, no air, etc. Sometime between the time I ordered the truck and before it was built I got the word that I was going to the Desert Proving Ground. In a panic, I tracked the order down and was able to get air conditioning added to the truck before it was built.
That was only the first hold up. I ordered the truck with the MY0 (aka MY6) manual overdrive trans (3rd gear is 1:1 and 4th gear is an overdrive, with a floor mounted Hurst shifter). This was about the time when Mr Gasket was buying out Hurst and, because GM was not sure they could get the shifters, they placed this transmission combination on "Stop Order". I received word that my truck would not be built and so I started fretting about what I might be able to do for "Plan B" (...order the three on the tree Saginaw trans and then replace it with my own Saginaw four speed with a floor shift, etc).
During this time I was walking through the plant, past the motor line, and I noticed a bunch of these transmissions on pallets: stacked up, dozens and dozens of them. I called the Material Control supervisor over and asked him "...how many of those transmissions do you think you have?".
"Probably a hunnert" he said.
"Don't you think we oughta' build 'em, rather than leaving them sit there?" I suggested
He thought that was a pretty good idea, so when I got back to the office I mentioned it to my boss.
We ended up building one hundred of those trucks under a temporary deviation (one of which, naturally, was mine).