Junkyard Find: 1976 Chevrolet El Camino Classic
The General dominated the American cartruck world, building Chevrolet El Caminos and their GMC-badged twins for a collective quarter-century. I used to see these vehicles regularly in car graveyards, but now they're very rare Junkyard Finds. Here's an example of the Early Malaise Era El Camino, found in a Colorado yard over the summer.
Ford built Rancheros for just over 20 years, while Chrysler made Rampages and Scamps for a mere three years. Of course, all three companies built utes for the Down Under market for a much longer period, but GM deserves the title of King of the American Cartruck.
I find this '76 especially interesting because it was built at Fremont Assembly in California, future home of NUMMI and the Tesla Factory. Back in the 1980s, I had an acquaintance who had worked there around the time this Elco was built, and he told me that they wrecked "a couple hundred" vehicles per year by drunk-driving them from the assembly line to the storage lot.
This is an El Camino Classic, which came with rectangular quad headlights and chrome trim.
The MSRP with V8 engine was $4,468, or about $25,338 in 2024 dollars.
The build tag says the original engine was a 305-cubic-inch small-block with two-barrel carburetor, but a junkyard shopper has made off with whatever engine this cartruck had when it got thrown away.
The two-tone paint added 40 bucks to the cost, which seems like a pretty good deal (though that would be $227 after inflation).
There's no air conditioning, but the automatic transmission would have cost $260 ($1,474 now) over the price of the base three-on-the-tree manual.
It's bent and rusty, but just about any El Camino seems to be worth enough nowadays to have a good shot at avoiding this one's fate.
Starting with the 1978 model year and continuing through the final El Caminos of 1987, these cartrucks were based on the smaller and more angular G-platform Malibu.
1976 Chevrolet El Camino in Colorado wrecking yard.
1976 Chevrolet El Camino in Colorado wrecking yard.
1976 Chevrolet El Camino in Colorado wrecking yard.
1976 Chevrolet El Camino in Colorado wrecking yard.
1976 Chevrolet El Camino in Colorado wrecking yard.
1976 Chevrolet El Camino in Colorado wrecking yard.
1976 Chevrolet El Camino in Colorado wrecking yard.
1976 Chevrolet El Camino in Colorado wrecking yard.
1976 Chevrolet El Camino in Colorado wrecking yard.
1976 Chevrolet El Camino in Colorado wrecking yard.
1976 Chevrolet El Camino in Colorado wrecking yard.
1976 Chevrolet El Camino in Colorado wrecking yard.
1976 Chevrolet El Camino in Colorado wrecking yard.
1976 Chevrolet El Camino in Colorado wrecking yard.
1976 Chevrolet El Camino in Colorado wrecking yard.
[Images: The Author]
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Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I wanted a '69-72 El Camino
I wanted a '78-87 El Camino
Never wanted a '73-'77 El Camino
The Colonnade style just didn't translate to the El Camino. Plus the engines were lousy and build quality poor. The previous and after generations seemed to have fewer deficiencies. Apparently the owner of this Elko felt the same.
Love the "Craig" cassette deck. Craig was the king of cheap electronics back then, they would sell Craig stereos, TV's etc. on the wall behind the cashiers in Thrifty Drug stores in California, those and "Emerson".