I like them, too. Just saying a shortbed done the same would look as good. I like the Omaha Orange 4wd. When I had three blazers I wanted to set one up as a smow plow truck. I used to plow using '70 & '71 K/20s and thought a super short rig would be so cool. I envisioned a blazer with half top, painted Chrome Yellow like our state roads trucks. They used to put flat black on the top of the hood and the trucks had black wheels. The guys would paint the bead and lug nuts silver. I'd put K/20 axles under it and put a salt spreader on the back. The tiny bed would be enough room to carry the bags for the spreader. We didn't use salt, we used urea... cow piss pellets
. We did a parking deck that the owner had to resurface due to use of salt, so that was a requirement. Cost more, but that meant charge more.
The idea of going topless sounds great until you think about it raining. You can plan around the weather for your day cruises, but I used to run to the beach to surf and be gone a week or two. Plus in really bad weather, often the case in the Outer Banks, the Blazer took the place of the tent. That's where soft tops became the only way to go for me. I had the one with hardtop and that stayed on permanently.
And I had a brain fart with the 6" shorter comment. K/5s are 11" shorter. I think it's the next generation K/5s grew 6" longer. 6" shorter something, I know that