[markeb01]

Although they are now rare and desirable to restorers, I was a 12 year old car kid when the 1960’s were brand new and I thought the Chevy was cool looking and the GMC hood was hideous.

After Chevrolet spent millions designing the entire 1960 truck line with a space-age theme, it seemed that GMC was given a $50 budget and told to make it look different, so they made it as ugly as possible out of spite. After all the investment spent on Chevrolet styling, I was amazed the early GMC hood ever gained design committee approval and actually made it into production.

All these years later I’ve come to appreciate the uniqueness of the 1960-61 GMC hood, especially because so few have survived. Back in the 60’s – 70’s every person I knew with one of those hoods threw it away right after buying the truck and swapped to a 62-66 Chevy or GMC version instead.

From what limited production numbers I can find, it appears about 3 million 60-66 Chevy trucks and 744,000 GMC’s were produced during the same period. Of this total only 179K of these were 60-61 GMC’s (less than 5%). Considering how many were scrapped early in life, plus age and attrition I’d speculate they are nearly extinct now. Finding an excellent example of either a 60-61 Chevy or GMC hood at a reasonable price is very difficult today.