Many were used by dealerships to draw customers into their showrooms.įor 1975 there was another GM pace car, a 1975 Buick Century, and again the official trucks were provided by GMC. GM planned to build approximately 1000 of these Pace Truck replicas. Included with the package was the special “quadratone” paint job, Indy 500 decals, a rally striped tonneau cover, an inset gold grille and steel belted radial white strip tires. There was nothing particularly special about the trucks other than the extravagant paint job and decals, but they sure did draw attention compared to the relatively plain trucks used in previous years.Īs another first, GMC decided that it would also sell Indy 500 official truck replicas on a limited basis. GMC provided 55 trucks to the Indy 500 with this special paint scheme, including pickups, crew cabs, and wreckers to be used as safety and emergency vehicles. This marked the first time that an Indy 500 official truck was designed to match the Pace Car in colour and style. Painted in white and gold to match the Hurst Olds, these pickups were dressed to the nines. So GMC decided to release a special package for the Indy 500 Official truck. GMC being a truck only manufacturer would not have this opportunity. Other GM divisions had the ability to have one of their cars selected as a Pace Car, which of course was a great marketing opportunity. However, this time GMC decided to take advantage of the opportunity. The Hurst/Olds Cutlass was selected for the 1974 Indy 500 Pace Car, and this meant that GMC trucks were used in the field. These trucks just followed the standard protocol set in the past and were nothing particularly special. In 1973, GMC trucks were used as support trucks alongside the 1973 Cadillac Eldorado Pace Car. This article is going to focus on the special edition Indy 500 official trucks, which were often sold as replicas to the public. There was nothing particularly unique or special about these trucks, other than that they were used in the Indy 500. Through the 1950’s, 1960’s and early 1970’s, these pickups were generally non-descript work horses on the field. The company that provided the Pace Car for the Indy 500 usually also provided support trucks for the field. Reading about the 1979 Ford Indy 500 Official Truck got me thinking, why not write a quick piece on the other special trucks of the Indy 500? While the Ford was the only truck mentioned in the Indy Pace Car articles, there were a number of other special edition pickups utilized during the Indy 500 over the years.
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(first posted ) While reading JP Cavanaugh’s excellent series on Indy Pace cars, I noticed when writing about the 1979 Mustang pace car he also mentioned the 1979 Ford Indy 500 Official Truck.
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