At the corner of Hancock Avenue and Fillmore Street in Colorado Springs, there used to be a Conoco gas station of the old-school variety: four pumps and a service center that would do oil changes, tire rotations and the most basic of servicing. The last time I saw it operating was when I had my Monte Carlo SS smog-tested in one of the bays in 2000. They had the same wrecker for decades: an early-1980s Chevy C30 that looked like…well, it looked like Junkyard Digs’ newest project, if you painted it black and gold in the vein of a 1977 Trans Am. When I was in kindergarten, the truck looked gorgeous and menacing. When I was in high school, it looked absolutely clapped out but in a strangely good way…kind of an apocalypse vibe, if that makes sense. Virtually every pickup truck-based wrecker I ever saw looked like it spent Friday and Saturday nights moonlighting at the nearest dirt oval, dragging off wrecked Monte Carlos and Cutlasses or shoving some destroyed derby car over into the corner.

You know and I know how popular GM trucks have gotten lately. Finding an intact wrecker for under $3K that runs and drives? Rust or not, that’s still not a bad find. The question here is how good (or bad) will this be on Kevin’s wallet. It doesn’t look like a Ford F-series, and to my knowledge he has no tow-truck experience. But now ain’t a bad time to learn!