1974 Chevy C10 Boogie Nights Is a Former USAF Pilot's Idea of a Fine Custom Pickup Truck

Somewhere in Salt Lake City, Utah, is a garage known as Cato's Custom Upholstery. Owned by a guy named Phil Cato, the shop is mostly in the business of making custom automotive interiors, as the name reveals. But the truck you're looking at now has more than a Cato interior – it was rebuilt from the ground up with the former pilot's vision in mind.

The vehicle is part of Chevy's famed C/K family of trucks, which was the backbone of the bowties offering in the workhorse segment from 1959 to 2002. It is a member of the third generation of the bloodline, having been assembled in 1974, and its name is actually a little trick.

The truck is titled in this form in official papers a 1977 Chev PK4700. The guy who owns it, and the people over at Barrett-Jackson, the ones who will be trying soon to find a new owner for it, call it a C10. But in all fairness this was not born as one of those impressive half-ton trucks, but it is deep down a three-quarter-ton version of one.

Made for this world in a Chevy factory as a C20, it not only received a major frame-off restoration but was also modified and modernized to become the green beauty you see before your eyes now.

We'll start with the exterior, because that's what hits you first when resting your eyes upon this machine. The first thing you'll notice is that the design lines are not spectacular in any way, being the same as they were when the truck was made.

But there is a kind of paint job and graphic scheme placed over the all-new sheet metal now making up the truck's body that you will encounter nowhere else.

The truck is painted in a green something called AvoCato, a mixture of paints put together by Cato himself and another custom crew called Rockford Smith, and it is a hue that can also be noticed in the bed of the build. Over that, a rather complex graphic scheme was created using contrasting Akzo Nobel colors.

Moving inside, the touch of an interior specialist is immediately noticeable. Moore & Giles leather dresses pretty much everything that's worth dressing; a foam bench has been designed for the bottoms of the driver and passenger, and a combination of a Sparc Industries steering wheel and New Vintage gauges sit in front of that, in the dashboard.

The “modernized” part of the build as far as the interior is concerned comes in the form of a sound system comprising 6.5-inch Focal speakers, a 10-inch Kicker subwoofer backed by an amplifier of the same make, all made to scream by a vintage-looking Classic Alpine tape deck running a Bluetooth system.

Separately, the air conditioning has been kept in the original location, but the system got restomodded too. All around the cabin new rubber, glass and seals have been fitted.

And now, a little something about the truck's mechanical bits. The C10, which in this modified form is known as the Boogie Nights, had both its suspension system and drivetrain upgraded.

When it comes to the former, the changes mean a full QA1 coilover suspension was installed, giving the truck a proper ride height in any circumstance, along with the ability to handle today's roads.

The engine that animates the truck, on the other hand, is now a much more modern 6.2-liter V8, made by GM just six years ago, in 2018. It is tied to an eight-speed automatic transmission, something we don't often see in such custom trucks, and breathes out through a MagnaFlow stainless dual exhaust system.

The undisclosed power levels of the engine are kept in check by a braking system made up of Baer components, hidden behind Halibrand wheels of the same diameter front and rear: 20 inches.

The Boogie Nights Chevy C10 is a relative newcomer to the custom scene, but it has already been featured in the Street Trucks magazine and has been at the center of attention at SEMA. It has even become the cover truck for the Auto Metal Direct catalog.

The 1974 Chevrolet C10 Boogie Nights is one of the stars of the auction Barrett-Jackson is holding in Palm Beach in mid-April. Like all other vehicles going under the hammer there, it is selling with no reserve, meaning it's impossible to estimate how much it could fetch.

As usual, we'll come back to this story and update it with that crucial bit of information as soon as the hammer falls and we learn more about that.