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This is a 1987 chevy blazer and it’s an old-school suv in fact it’s an suv from the days before anybody called it an suv this was a four-wheeler and it certainly wasn’t used by moms to transport children or dads to drive to soccer practice today i’m going to review this 1987 blazer and show you all the quirks and features of an suv from the past before i get
Started big news this chevy blazer is currently for sale fail being auctioned live on cars and bids this has a cool two-tone paint job four-wheel drive a manual transmission and a big v8 and it could be yours so once you finish watching this video click the link in the description to head over to cars and bids for the live auction for this blazer where you can bid
On it and buy it only on cars and bids all right time for the crooks and features the blazer and i want to start by showing you just how different this is from a modern suv even though it’s only 25 years old they’re still using the blazer name doesn’t seem that long ago it is a totally different vehicle from what you think of as an suv today and probably the best
Way to illustrate that is opening the tailgate in your modern crossover you walk up to the back of the car press a button and the tailgate beeps a couple times and then automatically opens in this the process is a little more challenging there is no exterior handle to open the tailgate looks like there’s one this chrome piece here but that is in fact not a handle
Instead you pull it out and it becomes a giant lever that you use to roll down the rear window manually turn after turn after turn and then the rear window is down now at that point you have access to the cargo area because the back window is down but if you have something heavy and you don’t want to lift it quite that high there’s still another step for that you
Have to reach inside the tailgate there’s a latch in here you pull on it and then you can let down the tailgate and by the way it is tremendously heavy like oh a very very very heavy piece good luck opening this if you’re a child or if you’re elderly or if you have a grocery bag in one arm and of course to close up everything guess what you got to go through it all
Again you put your stuff in the back then you oh lift that massive piece and then roll up the back window again manually and then once it’s done you snap the lever back into place and you’re good a far cry from a button and an automatic tailgate and of course there is far more to distinguish this from a modern crossover another fantastic example is how you activate
The four-wheel drive system in your toyota rav4 you’re driving along in two-wheel drive until the system detects that you’re slipping on ice or mud or whatever and then sensors activate in the system instantly springs the rear wheels to life in order to give you more traction not the case here if you want to go into four-wheel drive in your blazer you actually have
To get out of the car and manually lock the front hubs that locks them to the drivetrain and you have to do this on both sides driver and passenger in the front because it’s rear-wheel drive until you do that once you have gotten out locked the front hubs manually and then gotten back in you can shift into four-wheel drive and then you’re actually in for four-wheel
Drive not exactly the most convenient thing if it’s the middle of a snowstorm or you’re stuck in the mud you’ve got to go get dirty cold whatever just to put your car in four-wheel drive but that’s how it was and there’s more distinctions between this old school blazer and modern suvs and crossovers a big one is the fact that when this generation of blazer came
Out the body stopped at the top of the windshield that was the end of the body you can see here an earlier blazer with just the windshield and that was it of course these were sold with a roof but it was a giant removable panel that went from the top of the windshield all the way through to the back of the car the problem was there were leaking issues because the
Top wasn’t actually part of the vehicle itself and so for the 1976 model year a major change was made to the blazer wherein the front part got a cab an actual roof integrated into the body of the vehicle worth pointing out it was still only over the front seat so you can see this scene here is where the actual vehicle body and these still removable top meat but
The removable part was only over the back seats and now it wasn’t leaking over the front seat occupants that’s not something you get in your regular honda crv an update in the middle of the model cycle to add a roof and by the way yes the rear panel is still removable even in this blazer model but it’s quite a job it’s a massive piece as you can see with windows
In it and it’s absolutely huge it’s a multi-person job to get it off there but you can remove it if you want open air blazer motoring and next up we climb inside where you’ll find still more considerable differences from today’s suvs and crossovers starting with the transmission this has a manual transmission which is already a pretty big difference but here it’s
A four-speed manual and actually it’s even crazier than that because the first forward gear is actually a low gear that you’d probably use in off-roading situations if you’re stuck or trying to tow something so there’s really only three speed needs that you’re going to be used driving around town a three-speed manual and an suv it is a far cry from today’s 10-speed
Automatics and then there’s the rest of the stuff in here like for example you have two giant gauges in the gauge cluster but even though this has a manual transmission neither of them is a tachometer you have a speedometer as you can see over on one side the other giant gauge is a fuel gauge a massive fuel gauge doesn’t really make sense why it’s so big but
It is and speaking of things that don’t make sense why they’re so big how about the warning lights which are over off to the left and they too are huge see instead of a little indication like you have in your gauge cluster there’s a massive bright bulb staring at you in case one of these things has gone wrong seems like a little overkill and next up another old
School feature of the old school blazer you look up and you see no headliner just painted in metal you don’t have some nice alcantara or even cloth piece up here and just painted metal and in terms of other stuff they left off how about a center console it seems like at least that would have made it into this car but it didn’t no storage area in here no arm rest
Even to rest your arm on a long drive you don’t even get cup holders which i suspect people buying this would have wanted now there is a cutout in the dashboard as you can see here which you’re thinking well maybe that’s a cup holder but no it’s an ashtray because you got to think about the era when this vehicle came out they prioritized ashtray over cup holder
Or even armrest now with all that said one big advantage this old school blazer has over modern vehicles is this cool swiveling front window i love these windows you open it up it provides significant airflow into the interior automakers have completely ditched them and it is so sad because these were so fantastic you could get such a nice breeze with this windows
But modern cars don’t have them speaking of cooling down in this blazer worth pointing out it has air conditioning from the factory that was a nice touch and it would have been a pretty luxurious feeling thing in an suv from this era to factory ac and speaking of the center control stack area directly below that ac you can see an old school radio except it isn’t
Actually old school this is a modern bluetooth stereo that looks like an old school radio so it fits perfectly within the dashboard of the feel of this car but actually you can hook up a bluetooth device to it and play your music from spotify or whatever and that is a really cool idea i love to see these old school radios fitting in the style of the car but bring
You more modern tech and next up we move on to the back of the old school blazer the back seat which as you can imagine oh is pretty sparse there’s not a lot going on back here in fact you can clearly see it’s basically just a bench with some seat belts and that’s it there’s no climate vents there’s no climate controls the windows don’t roll down back here there’s
No screens there’s no storage pockets there’s no cup holders there’s no panoramic sunroof there’s no rear touch screen knocked on the back of the front seats there’s a bench and there’s seat belts you sat back there and you liked it worth putting out there is one nice luxury in back ashtrays on both sides of course there are cup holders but they have ashtray it’s
Also kind of funny to see ashtrays in there considering the rear windows don’t roll down like i said it’s going to be smoking in kind of an enclosed compartment in the back but if you had to smoke you had to smoke in the 80s in the back of a blazer and of course children would sit back here in this era and they didn’t have any devices to look at or screens or
Charge ports they simply sat back here and didn’t complain until they got an accident because there’s no headrest or head support at all and their necks would probably go flying safety wasn’t a major priority in this era it was just pretty spartan now one other cool thing that i like inside this old school blazer is this badge over on the passenger side that says
Custom deluxe the badging was always cool and the naming that they used like custom deluxe made you feel like you were buying something kind of special and in terms of badging the cool badging continues on the outside we have this big blocky badge that i think really adds character to these old school blazers now there was a period where these badges weren’t all
That stylish and people removed them they called it a shaved look with no badges but these days enthusiasts buying these trucks love these badges because they really representative of this blazer and it’s air you got k5 on top that was like the model code then blazer and giant print and then this little design which i never understood is that a sun is it a seashell
Regardless why is it there error but it is and that was kind of a little blazer touch and next up we move under the hood where you’ll find another big change compared to modern crossovers and suvs a big change compared to modern vehicles in general and that would be a big v8 this is a five liter v8 and it is old school it’s fuel injected but it only makes 170
Horsepower and it does that while probably getting something like nine miles per gallon so you don’t get good performance and you don’t get good fuel economy it’s kind of the worst of all worlds but that’s how suvs and trucks were back then with these big old inefficient v8s and this blazer is no different it’s part of the charm of an old-school suv a hand also
Up front another throwback to the old school era this massive vertical grille modern cars have these sloping front end designs to make pedestrian impacts less severe not this thing it is a vertical grille a 90 degree right angle with the hood and to top it all off there’s a huge chrome metal bumper in front there was no diminishing the severity of an impact with
A pedestrian if you had an old school blazer now this grille design is kind of an icon in the old chevy truck world the blazer used it obviously the pickup trucks used it the suburban used it this old square grill was very famous for chevys from this period and on the blazer that meant 1973 to 1991. that’s how long this generation of blazer was sold for almost
20 years before it was finally redesigned and then eventually it became the tahoe when families started buying suvs and they realized people wanted four doors now there was also a gmc version of this blazer that was called the jimmy and interestingly jimmy was a nickname for gn general motors if you said it faster it’s like gm gym jimmy they did this because the
Supposed story of how the jeep name came to be as similar jeeps were used in the military as general purpose view vehicles or gp which was shortened to jeep and so gm figured gm jim jimmy and that’s how they got the name for that vehicle and by the way speaking of military there was also a military application of this blazer you can see it here it was massive it was
No frills and it was powered by a diesel engine these were mainly used for like troop transport around military bases that sort of thing not really forward combat like an armored humvee but they were around this blazer as a military vehicle now one other interesting thing in the history of this blazer there was also a smaller model also called the blazer that had
Nothing to do with this one it was called the s10 blazer this was the k5 blazer but if you didn’t know those model designations you just knew that gm was selling two different blazer models that were completely different and this happened for a long time all throughout the 80s and early 90s eventually this blazer was canceled became the tahoe and the other blazer
Lived on for a lot longer and now it’s back in the form of a little crossover that has revived the a blazer name all right driving the k5 blazer and before i do thank you to garage collective here in san diego for letting me use their space to film garage collective is like a cool car membership organization uh with cool events and also car storage and you can
Also check out garage collective in the link below thank you again to garage collective for the space i have reviewed on my channel a old school bronco and 96 bronco and a dodge ramcharger but never a big full-size blazer so here we go all right so first thing about this vehicle and one of the coolest things one of the reasons it’s so popular the seating position
Is just wonderful you’re above everybody or above everything you’re just feeling cool i mean i’m sitting here there’s a hyundai tucson in front of me so a standard modern crossover and you’re just like a tower you’re so far above it that’s kind of cool now one thing that’s immediately obvious the moment you get in this car like i’ve been saying everything else is
So different and old school compared to modern vehicles boy is that true with regards to the way it feels inside it is an old truck i mean this generation of blazer came out in 73 so this is an 87 and they went through 91 but it came out in 73 so you got to figure this design is basically the late 60s early 70s stuff and it feels like it it is a lot of metal it’s
A lot of creaks and rattles in here not as bad as i thought but still it’s not like a modern car and you have this incredibly loud engine i’m going 45 miles an hour and it’s yeah it’s got to be turning three four thousand rpm and i’m in top gear which is of course third uh it does not feel like a highway cruiser it does not feel like a modern comfortable smooth
Car that’s not what this was for like in the 80s in the 70s people didn’t buy them to do like long highway trips like people do now with suvs it just wasn’t a thing people bought these for like true four-wheel drive use the military had them police departments had them people who lived up in mountain cabins had them that was pretty much it it wasn’t like today
Where every other person has an suv now i don’t want to make you think that it’s uncomfortable that’s not really the goal here it isn’t uncomfortable it’s actually nice in here you got a lot of space again like i said you’re sitting up high and it’s pretty drivable it’s really no issue i mean you put this point the steering wheel it goes obviously it’s slow to steer
Slow to respond there’s a lot of body roll all those things are no exact surprise considering it’s a full-size blazer i think everybody would have guessed the issue is more like acceleration is atrocious and the car just feels like a a big burly hulking thing it’s not like the kind of thing you could possibly throw around it doesn’t feel like a car you would drive
In the suburbs because back in this era it’s just not what you did with suvs now one thing i will say it is damn cool like this is just a cool vehicle and you even get that sense when you’re inside it and driving it like i’m reviewing the driving screens as if it’s like something that you’re considering buying and like driving but truthfully for most people it’s
Gonna be like a second third fourth car like it’s something that they want to just kind of have some fun with and it is that it lets you have fun i mean it feels like an old school charming vehicle and i love that and i think that’s what people are loving about these these old blazers these old broncos have all started to become desirable and surprisingly valuable
And i think a good chunk of the reason is it just puts a smile on your face this is not as experience that a modern car has yes it’s creaky and rattly and loud but that’s kind of part of the enjoyment of it the thing about this old school blazer are in old scholar cities in general you know i have a 97 defender it’s not that much different from this doesn’t feel
Quite as big but it’s the same kind of creaky rally big v8 with no power kind of thing and it’s it’s just that they’re cool they’re just cool to drive around you feel like you’re going back in time and it just feels so different from any modern rational vehicle but parts are cheap and it’s kind of fun and it’s just a a cool life experience and that’s why these
Are hot right now and you get the two-tone paint and this like old school charm that you just can’t really get anymore and so that’s the 1987 chevy k5 blazer this is an interesting vehicle and it certainly doesn’t put the sport in sport utility vehicle it feels like it’s from a totally different era but that’s because it is and that’s the charm of an old school suv
And it can be yours on cars and bids anyway now it’s time to give the k5 blazer a dug score and the doug score is here 38 out of 100 which puts it directly between the 1996 ford bronco i reviewed and the 1993 dodge ramcharger truthfully these three vehicles are all pretty similar the bronco feels a bit newer than the blazer but it’s not a huge difference compared
To modern cars all three of these old school suvs are massive bulky ridiculously inefficient and ponderous to drive on the road and they’re all very cool and quickly gaining value and enthusiast interest
Transcribed from video
The 1987 Chevy Blazer Is How SUVs Used to Be By Doug DeMuro
