Lifted 1987 GMC 2500 Looks Like a Square Lemon on Stilts

The 1987 GMC 2500 we have here falls short of all that, and I would have normally ignored it. But it looks so insane with its bright yellow body sitting on top of those huge wheels that we just had to talk about it a bit. It's up to you to decide if you like it or not.

This particular truck is part of the Chevrolet/GMC breed that has come to be known as the C/K. It ran from 1959 to 1991 and was released in four generations, performing just as expected for a truck family on a truck-hungry market.

Although it comprised a large number of variants, as any self-respecting truck dynasty does, the one that survives the most to this day, and is highly appreciated by custom shops and collectors, is the half-ton C10. That’s probably because half-tons are always fun, and the C10 in particular, especially its early iterations, is highly desirable.

The truck we have here may be a C/K, but it’s not a C10 half-ton, and certainly not something that makes people go nuts when hearing about one getting the custom touch. But, as said, it’s so special in the way it was rebuilt that we just couldn’t miss it.

In the family tree, this truck is part of the third generation, which was in production from 1972 to 1991. That makes it one of those Rounded Line trucks, as GM used to call them, despite them looking boxy enough for the customer base to nickname them exactly the opposite, the square-body truck.

This particular example was born in 1987 as a 2500 in a K configuration, meaning it uses all wheels to gain traction. We have no idea what specs it originally came in, especially in terms of color and interior, but this is what we’re faced with now, a truck so yellow it looks like a lemon, and so lifted it looks like it rests on stilts.

We’ll address the elephant in the room first, and that is the thing’s stance. The truck still sits on a leaf-spring suspension, but it was lifted 12 inches (30 cm) compared to stock. That’s more than the average ground clearance of most trucks out there, but not nearly enough for what the unnamed builders of the GMC had in mind. To fix that, they also slapped four large, 24-inch tires on each corner of the truck, all of them chromed and shod in low-profile tires.

Now, moving on to the body, it’s impressive to see the headlights of a truck at about eye level with an average-height human. It’s even more impressive to see a massive cowl induction hood pulled over the engine bay, and that can get one’s hopes of finding some monstrous piece of engineering hidden in there to very high levels.

There is none. I mean, there is, only not monstrous. The truck is animated by a correct 350ci V8 engine, rebuilt to some degree, and tied to a 4-speed manual transmission. Back in the day, the unit was a mid-range powerplant for the third generation C/K lineup, and it could develop at most 210 hp in factory form - we’re not told if power upgrades came with the engine’s rebuilding process for this truck.

A bit dusty but otherwise a clean piece, the engine shows just 999 miles (1,600 km) of use since being remade. All of them have been enjoyed by people traveling inside, seated on a rather decent-looking beige and brown bench. Other than that, no significant upgrades seem to have been made to the interior, so we don’t get any fancy infotainment screen or sound system.

And there’s one final thing we need to tell you about regarding this truck, and that is, of course, its bed. Yes, it has one, but it’ll probably be a bit complicated to use as intended on account of the truck’s height. If you somehow manage to get things in there, don’t expect to be greeted by some warm woodwork on the floor. There’s only the good-old, dull-looking bed of a working man’s truck, sprayed in the liner.

The truck is for sale and the ones tasked with getting rid of it, Pennsylvania dealer Classic Auto Mall, know this thing is not some kind of hidden treasure. So you won’t get a price tag in the six-digit range, as we’ve seen some C/Ks often go for, but a much more affordable one: $32,900.