There’s a distinct formula for a 1970s car maker promotional video. Step one, hire a dude who has been smoking four packs a day for thirty years. Step two, find some cool but ultimately controllable off-road spots. Step three, throw sand, maybe bounce and bash your way over stuff, but make it look fun for the whole family. Step last, paint a picture using some semblance of the truth but just not too much of it.
This 1975 Chevrolet film has all of that going on as we learn about just how bad ass the company’s full-time four wheel drive system is. The Blazer, Silverado, and Suburban are all major parts of this watch and they are captured doing some fun stuff. Blasting dunes, jumping small hills, fording a pond with a stuck Ford marooned in the middle, you know all the stuff “normal” people do every day!
We knew a guy who had one of these full time 4WD Blazers. Firstly we almost died taking the transfer case out of the thing because the NP203, which is the brains of this whole thing, is heavy as hell. That ‘case has a differential built into it so that as long as the shifter is not in a “lock” position, the differential isn’t sending exactly 50% of its power to both ends of the rig. It is sending it where it’s needed, as least by measure of its mechanical brain.
The one great claim is that this setup does not hurt fuel economy. And they qualify it by adding something along the lines, “as compared to similar models…” what does that even mean? We just know that anyone who has ever had one of these trucks talks about how piggish they are on fuel and it defies the laws of physics to be adding axles for the engine to turn gears in and NOT cause said engine to use more fuel, right?
Facts be damned, this is a fun watch.
