The American pickup truck is one of the most versatile consumer vehicles on the road today. Today’s truck can do hard work, haul the family, be your luxury vehicle, and even be your toy all in the span of a week if you wanted. These trucks also have lots of nooks and crannies to store stuff, but it wasn’t always that way. Decades ago, you got a cab to sit in and an open bed for hauling. In the 1970s, General Motors had a crafty idea. It would build crew cab trucks, but, unlike every other crew cab, the rear of these trucks didn’t seat a single additional butt.
Crew cab pickup trucks are pretty much the default flavor of truck in America. Sure, some brands will still sell you a regular cab if you ask nicely, but these trucks will usually be stripped down. Even Slate, which is launching with a two-door pickup, is intentionally making the most bare-bones vehicle to go on sale in a while. Most of those buying regular cabs today are tradespeople, fleets, farmers, and other workers.
For everyone else, the crew cab truck is nearly a universal truck. It serves as the family sedan, the work vehicle, the school bus, the going-to-town rig, and you can even get them with miles of leather and incredible stereos. It’s been a long road to get here, as the trucks of yesteryear had more in common with a tractor than a German luxury car.
When International Harvester introduced the Travelette in 1957, America was greeted with a new kind of pickup truck. In the past, if you had a utility company crew, a group of farmers, or a squad of railroaders, only a few workers could sit in the cab while the rest had to ride in the bed with the cargo and tools. If you had a crew cab truck, it was almost certainly a custom or low production affair. But with the mass-produced Travelette, now company managers could go to the IH dealer and pick up a truck that six workers could ride in all at once.
Detroit took years to respond to IH’s innovation. Dodge came out with its first crew cab in 1963 in its D Series, while Ford hit the market with its own crew cab in 1965 in heavier F-Series trucks. General Motors didn’t come out with its first factory-built crew cab until the 1973 C/K. Allegedly, even Studebaker wanted to make a crew cab truck in the early 1960s, and managed to build two known prototypes.
Now, I must stress that these early crew cab trucks weren’t like today’s family trucks. At first, these trucks were more meant to haul larger work crews than their predecessors. However, they planted the seeds for today’s pickups. They also laid the groundwork for some weird cab experiments. More than one automaker toyed with the idea of making bigger cabs that carried more than just people. In GM’s case, if you bought a truck with Bonus Cab emblazoned on its side, you got a crew cab truck that didn’t actually seat more people.
Using The Cab As Extra Storage
Back in the 1970s, a new sort of arms race bloomed within the pickup truck manufacturers. In 1972 for the 1973 model year, Dodge announced what was then a major upgrade in truck cab space.
Dodge took a standard D series cab, cut out the back, removed the cab-based fuel tank, and added 18 inches in length. In doing so, Dodge created what it called the Club Cab, which offered 34 additional cubic feet of cab space. Dodge envisioned the Club Cab as supplanting the bed of the truck with covered storage. If there was something that you didn’t want exposed to the weather, you just tossed it into your Club Cab. Optional was a set of jump seats, which allowed your truck to carry two extra people in a pinch.
The Club Cab was launched on a D-100 with a special 133-inch wheelbase and came equipped with a 6.5-foot bed. Optional was a longer 149-inch wheelbase with an eight-foot bed. The Club Cab was also available with a D-200 sporting a 149-inch wheelbase and an eight-foot bed. To Dodge, the greatest beneficiaries of the Club Cab would be camper owners, because now they’d be able to have a camper in the bed of their truck and either storage or extra seating in the cab.
The rest of Detroit wasn’t willing to let Dodge have all of the fun. Ford already had a form of internal cargo storage for its pickup trucks in 1972. Optional on F-Series trucks with eight-foot Styleside beds was a locking beside toolbox.
This little compartment not only ensured that you didn’t have to carry a toolbox in your bed, but if you had a camper, you were still able to bring your tools with you without hauling them in the cab.
Ford also responded to the Dodge Club Cab with the SuperCab in 1974. Ford took a slightly different route than Dodge, tacking on two extra feet onto its two-door truck, adding up to 44 cubic feet of space. In the SuperCab’s standard configuration, you got an extra storage space behind the front seat, just like the Dodge. As an option, you were also able to add jump seats.
But then, unlike the Dodge, Ford also offered the option to add an entire second row back there. SuperCabs were sold with a 6-3/4-foot box or an eight-foot box on 139-inch or 155-inch wheelbases.
Ford marketed the SuperCab as giving you the seating capacity of a crew cab while retaining two doors. Or, more specifically, the tagline was “Works like a truck. Rides like a car.”
The Crew Cab That Added Zero Extra Seats
Finally, we arrive at General Motors, and honestly, GM might have had the most amusing solution to this. In 1972 for the 1973 model year, General Motors launched the third-generation C/K, known to most as the iconic Square Body. Built from 1973 to 1991, the third generation of the C/K holds the distinction of being the longest-running generation of Chevy truck. GM Authority continues:
The 1973 model year introduced an all-new third-generation for the C/K series Chevy pickup line, including a new look that became colloquially known as the “square body,” also sometimes referred to as “box body,” thanks to distinctive hard edges and panels that created a clean exterior style. “Larger glass areas with curved side windows contributed to visibility from the cab, while a large new grille and a wide stance gave the pickups a purposeful appearance befitting their capability,” Chevrolet writes.
In addition to new styling, the 1973 Square Body Chevy pickup also came with a larger, roomier cabin with more head, leg, shoulder, and hip room than the preceding model year. The cabin space featured redesigned trim and a one-piece instrument panel, as well as “flow-through” ventilation and improved insulation and weatherstripping. Entertainment options included an AM radio or an AM/FM radio. “It all contributed to making the trucks a more pleasant place to spend long days on the road, farm, or job site,” Chevrolet writes.
Buyers could choose from five different gas engine options, with the range-topping 454 V8 making 240 horsepower and 355 pound-feet of torque. Additional engine options included two six-cylinders, a 5.0L V8, and a 5.7L V8. Transmission options included three- and four-speed manuals, as well as an optional three-speed Turbo Hydra-Matic.
The Square Body also had the option of two rows of seats and four doors. If you opted for that one, the cab was called a “3+3” or a crew cab, depending on the advertisement you read or watched. But then came an interesting twist.
In summer 1975, GM decided to do something about the Dodge Club Cab and Ford SuperCab. But instead of building a specific cab that was meant to store stuff, GM had the clever idea to just take a crew cab and yank out the seatbelts and bench seat. Boom, the Bonus Cab was born.
By simply converting a crew cab into a sort of extended cab, Chevrolet was able to brag that its weatherproof cargo area had an impressive 55.8 cubic feet of space. If that wasn’t cool enough, Chevy touted the fact that the cargo area had locking doors on both sides, so you didn’t have to reach behind the front seat to get your gear.
Of course, one of the ideas behind the Square Body was that it was as much of a daily driver as it was a hard worker. So, unlike Dodge and Ford, Chevy didn’t advertise the Bonus Cab with random car parts and such, but three golf bags sitting on the floor. Nearby, three well-dressed gentlemen are seen chatting about whatever dudes talked about in the mid-1970s.
Chevrolet marketed the Bonus Cab as part of a chassis cab build, where the buyer would upfit the truck with a vocational body and use the Bonus Cab for storage. Otherwise, Chevy said that the Bonus Cab was available on eight-foot Fleetside trucks. Bonus Cabs were otherwise the same as crew cabs. If you were a passerby, you wouldn’t even know if a C/K were a crew cab or a Bonus Cab unless you checked out the small badge on the side of the cab.
Bonus Cab trucks would find their ways into fleets, as well as into the hands of private owners who wanted some covered storage. Some Bonus Cab trucks would also be used as donors for conversion truck builds. Of course, you don’t need to toss out an original seat if a seat isn’t there to start!
The Bonus Cab would be marketed alongside the crew cab until the Square Body’s discontinuation after 1991. The Bonus Cab would not return for future GM pickup trucks. By this time, GM had proper extended cab trucks in production and no longer needed to snatch seats out of crew cabs to create extra storage.
Today, the world’s pickup truck manufacturers have largely solved the whole storage thing. Modern trucks have all sorts of nooks and crannies in their cabs to store things, and if you don’t want your gear in the cab, there are all kinds of bed-based storage solutions. Of course, there’s also nothing stopping you from just slapping a tonneau cover on your truck bed to keep your gear out of the weather. Extended cabs are still around, too, only now you’ll usually find them with half doors and front-facing rear seats.
The Bonus Cab isn’t even close to the weirdest thing that GM has ever done. It’s probably not even in the top 10 of strange GM developments that I’ve written about. But I also love it. When Ford and Dodge tacked some length onto their cabs, GM simply took a cab it already had and chucked the seat out of it. In essence, GM was happy to sell you a crew cab truck that didn’t actually carry extra people. Of course, if you wanted a real extended cab, you were out of luck.
So, if you’re ever shopping for a Square Body and come across a truck that’s missing its rear bench, it might not be an oversight. You might be looking at a truck that was sold new without a seat. Now I want to see what kind of mini camper you could make in the back of a C/K.
Top graphic image: Mecum Auctions
It’s amazing to think that from 1978-83 GM would sell you a one-row 4-door pickup whose rear door windows could be cranked fully open, or a midsize 6-passenger sedan or 2-row wagon whose rear door windows were sealed shut at the factory, from every Chevy dealer and any who combined a Buick, Olds or Pontiac franchise with a GMC one.
GM gonna GM.
An unfortunate thing about the 70s Ford Supercabs is if it is a 4×4 you lose the coil spring front end and get a leaf spring instead, a drastic decrease in ride quality.
When I bought my Ram 1500 Quad cab a few years ago, the PO had done exactly this – removed the rear seats and stored them. I took it a step further, adding a couple pieces of plywood, wrapped them in flannel sheets the wife got at a thrift store and I affixed them back there as a flat area for the doggos on our road trips.
In my Ram 1500 Crew Cab I can just flip up the rear seats and fold out 2 factory carpeted boards that make a big flat floor in the back.
Mine has that too, but we found that while the floor is flat – the folded seats also took up about 10″ of available floor space. We have a 65 pound Pittie and a 100 lb Mastiff mix.
I think I’ve beat you with doggo modifications. I have a minivan that is missing all the seats but the front two. The back is nothing but a sea of easy to clean, hard to keep in place hard vinyl. We had 8 puppies in 3 kennels back there earlier this week.
Nice. We used to have a Mazda5 and I removed the passenger middle seat for the squatty body Pit to get in unassisted.
I always ran my minivan in 2-1-2(3) configuration. A lot easier to get the back row then weaving between the captain’s chairs. It also gave a spot for whatever big dog we had (for the kid’s time it was a 110 lb golden mix that was not fat, just fricking huge).
Vans are great for dogs to pile into. Well, unless you are the 38 lb Pekinese that we had for a bit. I don’t know how her feet touched the ground when she was just standing, she was so fat. The good news is that we got her down to under 20 lbs and she could jump fine. The bad news is that she HATED the Diet. No dog can HATE as well as one of those demon possessed throw rugs.
Mini vans are the answer to so much.
Including how to be teased and considered lame.
The best trait for dogs and a van is the sliding door. Dogs aren’t really good about going around open doors to get in and out of a car. Well, a dog is ok, but as soon as it is dogS, they end up racing each other and trying to take the shortest path, which goes through a swung open door.
With a sliding door, the door is out of their way, and they can all pile in or out of the car at 900 mph.
Reminds me of a friend’s sister who removed the passenger seat from a 510 so she could carry her cello
I removed the passenger seat from my VW dasher to move some furniture, and it was so useful that I didn’t put the seat back in until I started worrying about it being left out in the snow. I also got a little tired of the “friend with truck that you call when you find an Eames chair on the street at 3am” duty.
Of course my grandfather took every thing but the drivers seat out of his Mercedes diesel. Even had a couple of Gurnsey heifers in it once.
I recently found a listing for a Mazda 5 minivan that they removed the passenger side front, middle and rear seats so a casket would fit.
After my wife smashed her kneecap I pulled the passenger seat from my crew cab Tacoma. That way she could sit in the back seat with her leg extended resting on a cooler. She was much more comfortable not having to bend her knee.
My dad told me stories about driving around with a Bass Violin on the running board of a Model A from his teenage years. Big instruments require unique solutions. Fortunately, my son stopped at Euphonium, the parents of the kids int he Tuba section suffered.
As a 16 year old, I removed the front passenger in my 67 VW so that I could haul a push lawn mower. Made enough money mowing to fill my tank every week.
This is what I did to my Tacoma access cab and it’s silly jump seats.
I love this!!! I might not if it wasn’t a square body Chevy though.
That is some chonky wood veneer on the interior, especially around the instrument cluster. Is that original?
Can confirm. Factree!
Factree is as close as any of that stuff ever came to a real tree.
Yes, but the seat and door trims don’t “belong” to the same trim level so one isn’t original to the truck. The woodgrain was reserved for the fancy trims – Cheyenne and Silverado – while the plaid vinyl was the base model Custom Deluxe work-truck fare.
Green on green seems more common than that metallic lime green (which is an original color if close to it, the 2-tone with a pinstripe instead of chrome moldings is not), but I think they limited the interior colors available on the Crew/Bonus Cab.
This seems like a less convenient van.
Umm, probably what a lot of dudes universally have talked about through the eons: girls, music, girls, cars, girls, booze, girls, money, girls, hobbies, girls, current events, etc., and girls, girls, girls!
I know there are dudes out there who are more evolved and think differently than I do, I just don’t know many of them.
And sports. (Or do they only start talking about sports as a way to seem less crass when the ladies show up?)
Yes, sports too!
I’d always wondered why GM didn’t offer a proper extended cab until the 88 models – now I know
I find it amusing they were basically making the front part a minivan, but with an 8′ bed tacked on behind it.
“Did you see how Gerald Ford fell down the stairs in Austria?”
“Tell me about it, he was complaining on the links the whole afternoon on Saturday!”
No rear seats but they still had interior door handles, ashtrays (heart emoji) and window regulators? What bean counting twerp decided it was more cost effective to use existing doors rather than just putting a blank door card (or, you know, storage space) on the rear doors and leaving the hardware on the shelf?
Any unique part that has to be produced and stocked for an option with a small take rate is less efficient than just using the standard part. The doors are likely all preassembled with the guts and door panels already installed.
Plus, this was the 70’s, chances are a lot of people rode back there regardless of factory seats or not. In the 90’s we used a dirt bike helmet as a “seat” in the back of my buddy’s ext cab S10.
Heh, I was looking at that interior and marveling at how many of the parts look identical to those in my dad’s 1990 Suburban.
You’d think they’d at least use the low trim level rear door panels regardless of the trim package you ordered up front.
Just a note on how to spot an aftermarket crewcab(ish) conversion. If the rear door has external hinges, odds are very high that it started life as a stock factory truck. Fabricating internal hinges for an added door would be really difficult (expensive) while fabbing external hinges would be fairly easy.
Its so bizarre to me that adding extra doors to a truck was seen as a real innovation.
Adding a windshield and doors to a truck was seen as an innovation, but that wasn’t until after The Great War.
If Porsche did this, it would cost more than the version that had seats in the first place.
Silverado GT3 RS.
A Silverado Clubsport with a roll cage would actually be insanely cool, if impractical.
Salesman: Congrats on your new Chevy Bonus Cab!
Buyer: I’m still not sure what Bonus Cab really means.
(Truck’s rear door opens, Cab Calloway emerges)
Cab Calloway: I’m your bonus Cab!
Salesman: Isn’t that awesome?!
Buyer: Please tell me I did not just buy Cab Calloway. There are so many things wrong with that I don’t know where to start.
Cab Calloway: Hi-de-Hi-de-Hi-de-Hi!!!!
Buyer: Please leave and speak no more of this sir.
Cab Calloway: Ho-de-ho-de-ho-de-ho!!!
Salesman: Can I interest you in undercoating?
Buyer: I was at the Ford dealership. I could have stayed at the Ford dealership.
Once you spec “Bonus Cab” you can also add the Nicholas Brothers or the Blues Brothers package!
That, or Yaphet Kotto as Parker emerges to talk about the bonus situation.
Throw in Jones the cat and I’m sold.
The company my dad worked for in the early/mid ’90s had some of these. They bolted storage boxes in the rear cab section so they had a more secure place to put expensive equipment and tools. I can only imagine how annoying it was to drive with all of that stuff rattling around on steel shelves, but I digress. I remember all of this because my dad had the opportunity to buy a few of the company trucks in an employee auction (back when companies were bold enough to sell stuff to employees). Since nobody but him wanted any of them, he picked up several trucks for a few hundred bucks. One was a crew cab squarebody, but he wasn’t actually sure if it had a rear seat or was one with the storage boxes in the back. My whole family was anxiously awaiting my dad picking up the truck to find out, mostly because my mom was mad about him buying multiple vehicles without talking to her first AND one of them may be lacking an entire section of seating which really made her blood boil, but it turned out to have a rear seat. The crew cab was slated to be mine once we fixed the head gasket issue that led to the company selling it, but instead some random guy offered my dad more money for it than he paid for all the cars combined and it was gone and my mom was no longer angry.
My father in law bought up obsolete equipment from General Dynamics (his employer) for years. When I helped him clean out the garage, he had accumulated a museum of cold war spy communication technology.
Imagine they’d added the option for the front bench to be able to fold flat and use that space.
Instant sleeper cab!
My thought as well! Missed opportunity for a drive-in-movie special edition!
The lack of the proper extended cab for the square bodies created a cottage industry for companies offering them. No idea if the image link below will work so I linked to a forum post as well. Some of them looked pretty decent, and some looked exactly like the afterthought by a small company that they were.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTPhquK2YwrKL0VQm_RXu1xBZGZQZP9F4B2sbxGGdj21XztMBzRSaqq7oPP&s=10
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTYEd9GVEv0vLd05nIQ0cPK0AoEFOyTu8LZkNNH_Mt9ZOU9u54M4W-FgmY&s=10
https://www.gmsquarebody.com/threads/extended-cab-square.1495/
Something like this is what got me really interested in getting a Santa Cruz. If you take the back seat and under-seat cubby out, you’re left with a nearly flat floor in the back. Add a little platform to make it actually flat, and you’ve got a perfect riding area for a dog.
Did they do the Porsche thing and charge extra to remove the rear seat?
I don’t like the idea of having an internal cargo space with no containment, no tie-downs, nothing more than carpet to keep anything behind you becoming a missile in an accident. This should have come standard with a bulkhead divider.
That’s how a lot of people use current crew cabs. There’s a reason “flat floor!” and folding seats are standard in full size crew cabs now.
It’s also how every tradesperson uses an extended cab.
…yeah, I’m somewhat aware. It’s just easier to stomach when it isn’t the primary intended purpose.
To be fair, on that day and age the whole vehicle was not very accident-first-thought.
Today: Giant, 4 door trucks with all the bells and whistles when most could just use a minivan or a small, brown, manual, diesel station wagon with 4.5 crank windows.
What was with the three door Suburbans?
Don’t look at it as a large SUV missing a driver-side rear door, you have to look at it as a large SUV that had an added door on the passenger side…before this, they were all two doors.
A long time ago, an older coworker had one of those 3 door Suburbans and a Porsche 914, both in black and in immaculate condition. This was around 1986. It reminded me of Jeremy Clarkson’s joke about Cayman drivers… for when you’re not quite as prosperous as you wish you were (I can’t find the exact words and it might have been about the Boxster.).
I love it.
Like a van, the rear door was only on the curb side of the truck, for loading & unloading cargo.
Like IH, GM was too cheap to bother stamping out left-side doors for these trucks.
I’m trying to focus on cooking breakfast and not going down a rabbit hole of three-door wagons, but I’ve already peeped the Studebaker Scotsman files… (no three-door Scotsman’s ((?)) as far as I can tell, but my vision is fading with hunger.)
Two door wagons are one of my favorite models (along with TRUE club coupes and business coupes).
Top of my list is 1960 Ford Ranch Wagon (swoon) and the 1957-59 Mercury Commuter. The weird mid ’60’s Malibu wagon is also a weird one. Pinto sedan delivery (or the Cruisin’ Van with the porthole) are also wonderful.
Kinda disappointing they didn’t put any actual slide out boxes, shelving, racks, tie downs, or anything to really organize stuff or stop it from sliding around back there. Just some padding on the floor.
Is it really disappointing? This is GM half-assing it at it’s finest!
You were supposed to build that out yourself if you wanted it, or they were hoping third-party suppliers would step in. Different users would want different setups.