From the start, I will be referring to this burgundy beauty as a TopKick even though I’m all but proof-positive that either the year or the truck is misrepresented in the Mecum Auctions’ listing. Why do I say that? Because the engine cover is the taller, more squared-off version that allowed the Cat 3208 diesel to fit underneath instead of the C50-like setup of the 1970s, and because the TopKick name didn’t really appear until about 1980. The truck could be a 1973-79 example, or it could just be a misprint on the year. Either way, it doesn’t really matter all that much to us.
We’re very short on actual details, so let’s see what we can determine from the pictures. We’ve got a V8 engine, which we suspect is the 366 gas-burner and not the Cat engine. Without pinning down the year, that’s what we’ve got to go with, but those are the only two options to pick from in the stock catalog. It’s a manual transmission rig, but we don’t actually see the shifter so you could be rowing five gears or you could be rowing as many as twenty total using the five-speed with a four-gear auxillary unit. But we’re diving into details that, again, we don’t have.
So what is there to take away from this TopKick other than it’s big and beautiful? Really…that’s about it. It’s the car hauler you should need. You have a power slide bed to make loading and unloading a painless affair and you have the cab of a square-body GM truck, which will be familiar territory, coupled with the size of a heavier medium-duty rig. All you’d need to compliment it is a sweet color-matching truck to haul on the back that’s race-ready at a moment’s notice. Beats lettering up that paint and going into the scrap business to pay for the auction costs, doesn’t it?
Can’t wait to add this to my collection of commercial vehicles. TO HELL WITH MY NEIGHBORS! 🙂
I’d say its probably the brigadier model and possibly have the six cylinder Detroit diesel engine
Nope,look at the auction site, its a turd 366.