In the early 1990s, two trends were happening at the same time: sport trucks and performance trucks. Sport trucks need no real introduction: take a pickup truck, slam it to the ground and customize the hell out of it. Factory performance trucks had just started to become a thing: after Carroll Shelby jammed the 318ci V8 into the Dakota, Chevrolet got the clue and jammed the 454 into the C-1500 pickup truck, remembered that you can’t go wrong with black paint, and whipped up the 454SS pickup. Since the GMT400 platform underpinned what seemed to be just about every full-size sport truck on the planet for the next decade or so, GM knew they had a winner on their hands. But did they try for a second chance? Chevrolet got sport models, but their GMC counterpart got left out of the fun for the most part. Or did they?

For their August, 1990 issue, Sport Truck magazine had a black-and-purpleish GMC stepside on the cover, hailing it as the “Kick Ass Corvette Pickup”. This was the GMC Spectre, a fullsize pickup that would have augmented the GMC Syclone pickup nicely. Most of the outside is standard sport-truck flair: it’s dropped low enough that you’d think BellTech supplied the lowering kit, the wheels were no-question early 1990s pieces, and there was a color-matched pushbar and body kit for the whole truck. The big news, though, was underhood: in place of the LO5 350ci small-block, the L98 350, yanked from a Corvette, was under the hood. By figures alone, the L98 was comparable in horsepower, but was down on torque compared to the 7.4L in the 454SS. Yet, during testing, the Spectre was able to outflank and outrun the 454SS on just about every test.

Unfortunately, the Spectre was simply a styling exercise and the truck…or possibly, trucks…were built by a company called Vehicle Research and Development (VRD) in Michigan. And the seller is claiming that this GMC is one of those trucks. At first glance, it’s pretty convincing, but we’d caution any buyer who has $60,000 in their pocket burning a hole to do their research before throwing down the money. Chances are you could duplicate most of this build yourself and walk away with power that would whip up on a lot more than a 1980s Corvette, and probably for less, too.

Craigslist Link: 1990 GMC C-1500 Shortbed Stepside